I’m looking for some cultural insight. This is a question for particularly for people outside of the anglophone world: [name_f]Do[/name_f] parents use place, word, surname, and invented names in your culture like they have done in English-speaking cultures in recent years, or is this not really an observed phenomenon? I am just going off my own anecdotal experience when I say that I have always been very adjacent to Hispanic cultures in the places I have lived (I am non-Hispanic), but I can’t think of one instance where I met a child (or adult) with a given name that was simply a word in Spanish, a location, or a surname. It seems to be a Caucasian American thing.
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I am Italian, living in italy since i was born, and I can speak for my culture name choices. Surname names don’t exist in my country as well as invented names. We have many names and is not common at all to invent one. The spelling is also almost always traditional, without changes from the “traditional name”.
Regarding place names the only one that come to my mind, and that is popularly used, is [name_f]Asia[/name_f]. Also [name_f]Emilia[/name_f], that is the name of a region in [name_f]Italy[/name_f].
Word names are rather common, but only if the name is already established as a name, exaples are:
-Bianca (white)
-Fiamma/Fiammetta (flame)
-Sole (sun)
-Luce (light)
-Vera (true)
-Viola (purple)
-Margherita (daisy)
-Costanza (costance)
-Grazia (grace)
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I’m from the Netherlands. Surname names are forbidden by law here, so those aren’t used. I’ve never met anyone with a place name.
Some nature word names are popular, like Merel, Iris, Roos and Jasmijn for girls and Mees for boys. The origin of the name might differ from the origin of the word though. For example Mees means chickadee but it’s also a short form of Bartolomeus. Besides some of these established names, word names aren’t really in use. Word names from the category Joy, Grace, Hope aren’t a thing here.
Sometimes parents use invented names but that’s very rare.
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I’m half Icelandic. In [name_f]Iceland[/name_f] most people don’t have surnames, and no surnames are used as given names.
There’s a list of names you’re allowed to use (but if you want to use a name that’s not on the list you can put in a request). [name_u]Nature[/name_u] names, and especially animal names, are a thing in [name_f]Iceland[/name_f], but not other word names such as place names.
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hi! im for argentina, and here we don’t use thaat many names really, i can probably mention 20/30 female and male names and almost everyone you meet is gonna have one of those names, the names depend on the generation tho ofc. but unique names are becoming a bit more used.
we don’t use surname names, place names or word names unless they’ve been stablished a while ago. regarding place names tho, names like roma & india are some that are becoming common now.
here are the ones i can think of:
word names:
- luna (moon)
- sol (sun)
- alma (soul)
- rocío (dew)
- delfina (feminine form of dolphin)
- nacho (very common! it’s the nn for ignacio)
- azul (blue)
- celeste (light blue)
- rosa (pink or rose)
- león (lion)
- jazmín (jasmine)
- salvador (savior)
- mora (blackberry)
- pilar (pillar) lol i almost forgot this was a word
- marco (frame)
- [name_m]ángel[/name_m] (angel)
there must be some others but these are the ones i remembered. tbh, i don’t even associate most of these with the words, that’s how stablished they are
place names:
- pilar - is also a city in buenos aires
- roma - is starting to rise up in popularity but i’ve only heard of one baby named this
- india - i think this one is way more uncommon but could be rising up in popularity
- asia - i’ve heard of one baby that was gonna be named this so i remembered
couldn’t think of any more!
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In [name_u]Germany[/name_u] you basically won’t find any surname names, rarely find word names and those tend to be nature names (still, very few), place names are also basically unheard of (which is why I find kids named [name_u]Berlin[/name_u] or [name_m]Dresden[/name_m] so strange) and invented names only go so far as stringing lots of vowels together and adding a few Ls and Ns (kidding, but also doesn’t feel like I am) - however, most of these might as well be established names in other parts of the world, they just weren’t previously known in [name_u]Germany[/name_u] so they feel invented.
The only names of these kinds that are popular in [name_u]Germany[/name_u] seem to be word names taken from other languages.
Oh, regarding place names, I think one reason why they don’t really exist is that places are neutral in [name_m]German[/name_m], both cities and countries, and while that’s the case in [name_f]English[/name_f] as well, in [name_f]English[/name_f], everything is neutral while in [name_m]German[/name_m] other things have genders so something that doesn’t have a gender doesn’t feel ver human-like, if that makes any sense at all, haha.
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Maybe it’s where your from but for me (a Hispanic (Puerto Rican) that lives in a very large Hispanic community) they are definitely there and some are very popular, I mean just look at Luna and Cruz. Names like Mariposa, Luna, Agustin (is also a surname as well as a first), Amaro, Ángel, Sol, Salvador, plus tons are pretty popular in Hispanic communities. Here’s some I can think of (plus the ones listed)~
Luna (moon)
Cruz (cross)
Mariposa (butterfly)
Agustin (like I said before is also used as a surname)
Amor (love)
Ángel (angel)
Sol (sun)
Salvador (savior)
Blas (blaze)
Rocío (dew)
Rosa (rose)
Valiente (valiant)
Rivera (river)
Rio (river)
Gaspar (jasper)
Alsina (comes from a city in Spain)
Socorro (help)
Flor (flower)
Estrella (star)
Silvestre (wild)
Sierra (mountain range)
Vega (meadow)
Viva (life)
Silva (forest)
Vida (life, used in a different way than viva)
Lobo (wolf)
Trinidad (both a country and a surname that’s used as first)
Vela (candle)
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Historically (I mean, 50+ years ago), Irish culture followed a lot of the naming conventions of other European countries that are Catholic. Children would mainly have been named after relatives or saints. It used to be the case that a priest could refuse to christen a child with an “un-Christian” name (which usually a meant a name that wasn’t a Catholic saint’s name or in the Bible). I know of a case where the mother’s choice of “Terri” was changed by a priest to “Theresa”. Obviously, nowadays most people are less religious and there is a lot of American influence on names from US popular culture, as well as a revival of names from Ireland’s pre-Christian history like [name_f]Niamh[/name_f], [name_f]Aoife[/name_f] etc.
Because of this religious culture, place names, word names and surname-names were all pretty rare in [name_u]Ireland[/name_u] until fairly recently, though there are exceptions.
In countries that are predominantly Catholic, surnames tend to be used as a given names when they’re the surname of a saint. Xavier/Javier and [name_f]Chantal[/name_f] are probably two of the best known ones, though there are others.
TBH, I would be surprised if you’ve never met a person with a Spanish word as a given name e.g. [name_f]Mercedes[/name_f] and [name_f]Dolores[/name_f] are both word names.