Italian and Dutch Berries!

General Name Discussion
1

More market research for my novel. :slight_smile: I’m in need of naming an Italian and a Dutchman who are both in their late 20s (so would have been born around 1986-1990). What names would have been popular then? I found some popularity lists on behindthename.com, but they don’t go back to before 2000, so I’m not sure how realistic they would be?

Or has anyone come across older lists than that?

I was thinking about [name_m]Leonardo[/name_m] “[name_m]Leo[/name_m]” for the Italian, but I don’t know if that is really believable for the time in which he was born…

Thanks, Berries!

2

I’m a Dutch berry!!

I found a website with the Netherlands’ top 20 names in various years, the closest ones being 1981 and 1999.
I decided to give you the names that appeared on both lists.
Those names are:
[name_u]Jan[/name_u]
[name_u]Sander[/name_u]
[name_m]Bart[/name_m]

Ya, you’re probably thinking: well, that list was kind of thin…
So that’s why I’ll include the top 20 list from 1981, which would have been close (I chose not to post the list from 1999, because most of those names hadn’t even been given names before then).

Top 20 boys names 1981 Netherlands:

  1. [name_m]Jeroen[/name_m]
  2. Martijn
  3. [name_m]Peter[/name_m]
  4. [name_u]Jan[/name_u]
  5. Martijn (I know it’s a duplicate, which is why I don’t quite trust this list.)
  6. [name_m]Mark[/name_m]
  7. [name_u]Sander[/name_u]
  8. [name_m]Robert[/name_m]
  9. [name_m]Patrick[/name_m]
  10. [name_m]Erik[/name_m]
  11. Maarten
  12. [name_m]Pieter[/name_m]
  13. [name_m]Bart[/name_m]
  14. [name_m]Frank[/name_m]
  15. [name_m]Wouter[/name_m]
  16. [name_m]Paul[/name_m]
  17. [name_m]Marcel[/name_m]
  18. [name_m]Richard[/name_m]
  19. [name_m]Vincent[/name_m]
  20. Sebastiaan

I hope this helps you find a name for your character!

3

There’s a very easy tool for Dutch names which you could use to pinpoint even the year and place of birth for your character so the name is as accurate as possible, I can’t copy paste the URL right now because I’m on my phone and I’m in Portugal till tomorrow night, but I can post it later if I don’t forget and you could always PM if you want specific advice on anything either name or character related.

4

I am married to a Dutch man in his early thirties, so about the right age. Names of him and his friends are:

Joop
Jamie (but that name is quite unusual for a boy in NL)
Roy
Tom
Wouter
Bas (short for Bastiaan)
Jan
Andre (mid-20s again)
Henry
Patrick
Marcel
Marcus
Mark
Jeroen (Yeh-roon)
Maarten (A version of Martin)
Martijn (Marr-tyne)
Robert

I hope that helps!! They very clearly match with the list above too :slight_smile:

My favourite from that list is Bas, or Marcus!

5

Thanks, everyone! @honnepon, I almost just PM’d you, but I needed to name the Italian, too, so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone. :] If I don’t see another response to this soon, I’ll probably PM you, but I’m leaving for holiday in a couple days, and don’t know how much access to the internet I’ll have while I’m gone. I might just PM you preemptively on [name_f]Tuesday[/name_f], just in case, haha. But that resource sounds really great! If it matters, I have sort of envisioned him living in [name_m]Amsterdam[/name_m] his whole life, until he was signed to the [name_m]German[/name_m] football team he plays for, and he was probably born in 1987 or 1988. I’m so excited for this resource!! :slight_smile:

Some of my favorites that had been in some of the popularity lists I had found were [name_m]Peter[/name_m]/[name_m]Pieter[/name_m], [name_m]Lucas[/name_m]/[name_m]Lukas[/name_m]/[name_m]Luuk[/name_m] (sp?), Sebastiaan/[name_m]Bastiaan[/name_m]/[name_m]Bas[/name_m], [name_m]Bram[/name_m], [name_u]Sander[/name_u], and maybe [name_m]Thomas[/name_m]/[name_m]Tom[/name_m]. I came across Marinus on another list, which I love, but it definitely seems like that’s one of the newer names. I was thinking van Maarten for his surname, although I have to do more research into Dutch surnames before I fully commit to that, so I probably wouldn’t use Maarten as a FN, but I do like it as a part of his surname. I hesitate with [name_m]Peter[/name_m]/[name_m]Pieter[/name_m], [name_m]Lucas[/name_m]/[name_m]Lukas[/name_m], and Sebastiaan, though, because I already have a [name_m]Peter[/name_m], a [name_m]Lukas[/name_m], and a [name_m]Sebastian[/name_m] on the team, and I could definitely see [name_m]Lukas[/name_m] and [name_m]Sebastian[/name_m] being fairly prominent in the story/series. So I’m not sure what that leaves. [name_m]Bram[/name_m], [name_u]Sander[/name_u], and [name_m]Thomas[/name_m]? I had a [name_m]Thomas[/name_m] in the story already, a [name_m]German[/name_m], but, after almost a year of planning, I still can’t “see” the [name_m]German[/name_m] [name_m]Thomas[/name_m], so I might just take [name_m]Thomas[/name_m] for the Dutchman?

Any Italian Berries out there? I’d love to hear some Italian names, too!

6

One more question, Dutch Berries! I found this link today while looking at Dutch names–out of curiosity, how many of these names (at least for boys–I’m not too concerned about girls at this point) are believable for a guy born in 1987/88 in the Netherlands? Most? I don’t know that I feel the need to stick to super popular names from their country of origin for each person–that’s fairly unlikely, anyhow–but I want it to at least be believable. I’ve heard it’s extremely unlikely for a Russian to have a name outside the top 10, but approximately 1 in 100 kids here in [name_u]America[/name_u] have a top 10 name–in your opinion, which way does the Netherlands swing? More toward everyone having the same names, or more uniqueness in names?

Thanks!