Often see people from the Hispanosphere that have the name Ivan, which is Slavic for John.
Speaking of John, think I’ve seen more Ian (Scottish), Sean/Shaun (Irish) and even Evan (Welsh) than John in Australia.
Often see people from the Hispanosphere that have the name Ivan, which is Slavic for John.
Speaking of John, think I’ve seen more Ian (Scottish), Sean/Shaun (Irish) and even Evan (Welsh) than John in Australia.
Comments
Ukrainians are often referred by Russian versions of their names even if they are ethnic Ukrainians and have Ukrainian names in their documents. In Ukraine it is very strange. When I was a kid, people weren’t differentiating between Russian and Ukrainian names at all, they were treated not as separated names but as words to be translated.
Ian is becoming a fad name currently even though we have slavic versions Ivan, Jovan(read Yohvan), or just Jan (Yan), and not to mention Ian breaks your tongue because you pronounce it E-Ahn
Another fad was eastern-slavic names, Aleksej, Oleg and Kirilo. We don’t have a south slavic variant for Oleg, but Aleksandar and Kiril were the native variants
English names are becoming more common in Ireland. Names of biblical origin have always been common, like Michael, Thomas or David.
You get Irish versions of these like Mícheál, Tomás or Daithí. However, native Irish names like Fiachra, Tadhg and Conor are becoming more common again
Jan, Johan, Johannes, Jo, Hannes, Hans, Jean, John, Ivan, Sean and Ian are all fairly normal names in Flanders. Some are more common in different age groups though.
[deleted]
Occasionally you’ll meet Germans who are “Steven” instead of “Stefan” or use the English pronunciation of their name (“Michael” turning into “mai-kell” instead of “mi-sha-el” or “Susan” being called “su-zn” instead of “su-sann”).
Otherwise, the trend has been to use English / French / Spanish names that don’t necessarily have a German equivalent, like Hailey, Jaqueline, or Luna.
Yeah, Ivan, Alex and Mathias are quite common despite the native Slovak forms being Ján, Alexej and Matej. I’m sure that there are other examples as well.
Ivan is somewhat popular amongst Italian males born in the 60s/70s as well. We have our own Italian variant, Giovanni, which is of course popular amongst all ages.
We’re also seeing more and more Michaels around (sadly sometimes spelt fonetically as Maicol) and we have our own native Michele.
I also know some Pablos (Italian variant would be Paolo); Christian or Cristian (Italian variant is Cristiano); Mary sometimes spelt Meri (Italian variant is Maria); Katia or Katy (Italian variant is Caterina).
Sasha is also used for women!
So obviously names like Iain aren’t foreign to us, but it’s common to use both, particularly amongst the older generations. It wasn’t the done thing/wasn’t allowed/was heavily discouraged to register Gaelic names, so in the case of my family, Iain only ever got called John in the army and the last person to call Mòrag Sarah was a teacher back in the ’50s.
But yes, typical English names are the most common here though.
It’s a trend in Hungary too. Martin is now more popular than its older version Márton, Elizabet is getting more popular than Erzsébet, Szofi is more popular than Zsófia, Dominik is the #1 boy name while Domonkos is all but forgotten, and Barbara has been more popular than Borbála for decades (although some old names are making a comeback). The social acceptability of these names varies wildly, though. The ones I’ve mentioned are considered acceptable, with a slightly “middle class suburb” vibe, while other foreign names are seen as lower class. You’d never want to name your kids Marcselló instead of Marcell, Rikárdó (instead of Richárd, which is kind of a “jock” name in itself, but still on the acceptable side), Ketrin instead of Katalin (Katerina is tolerated if you at least look middle class). The most hated names are those which start with J in English, as they have to be spelled with a Dzs for phonetic reasons. Names like Dzsesszika and Dzsenifer are generally looked down upon. Tbh I find it sad that kids are judged by their parents’ mistakes, I don’t understand what’s the point of having a list of allowed names when a large part of them are detrimental to the kid’s well-being.
Many people here will have both an Irish and an English version of their name, the usage depends on context and on the person.
It’s more common, in my experience anyway, for someone with an English name like Michael to sometimes be called either Michael or Mícheál, than it is for someone actually named Mícheál to sometimes be called Michael.
Many names (mostly biblical or old names) will have actual equivalents, Michael and Mícheál, Paul and Pól, John and Seán (sometimes Eoin too, due to being borrowed at different times), Mary and Máire.
Some names have long-standing “translations” despite being unrelated, just because they look similar, for example Anne and Áine, Charles and Cathal, David and Dáithí, Grace and Gráinne.
Some are deemed equivalent due to origins, for example Abigail and Gobnait both have connections with beekeeping.
Then you have recently invented names that are just words, Aisling (a vision seen in a dream), Saoirse (freedom), Fiadh (deer), or anglicised based on place names like Clare (from Co. Clare, An Clár), or Clodagh (from a river).
Oh certainly. Historically people would name their kids after relatives (though it’s very rare now) where they’d have a full name, for example Johannes, and then go by a different name in daily life. And one way people in the last few decades would find a way to still conform to the custom yet use trendy names was to use foreign versions of those names.
This mostly started with GenX after naming rules and customs got relaxed in the mid-60s. For them you’ll mostly see French names. For women Jeanne or Jeanette are common if they have the legal name Johanna. Jacqueline for Jacoba or similar. For men John (pronounced zjon/sjon) for Johannes. Then in the ’70s and ’80s you see this expand to a lot more languages as people get more exposure to them. John become Sean/Ian/Ivan. In the ’90s you see short Scandinavian names like Jens, Mats, Niels, Lars become very popular for boys.
William and Noah are the two only names I can think of that are fairly common and for which there is an alternative in French (Guillaume and Noé, which are fairly popular too). Most names in the top 100 most given names these days are French.
John, Sean, Evan, Ivan, Johannes, Johan, Hannes etc. are pretty uncommon.
A lot of English and especially Irish names (Kylian, Kevin, Dylan, Brian, Jason, Shannon, Alison…) had an era of popularity 2-3 decades ago and have become quite stigmatised and associated with low class people, which doesn’t help.
No not really. I mean we do have names that are originated from another language but they are usually “translated”. Andrew is a Greek name, in Hungarian it would be András, or Alexander would be also a Greek name but that’s traditionally Sándor in Hungarian with Alex also being used, or we also have Iván like you said, while János is the traditional form of John.
Names must follow spelling rules and some popular Spanish, Italian, Arabic or English names are rendered in this way but they are basically only used by the Romani. Jessica and Jennifer would be Dzsesszika and Dzsennifer respectively.
Ivan is also the Catalan variant of John, which explains its prevalence in Hispanic countries. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ivan
Austria. We have a generation of “Kevins”, boys born in the early 90ies after the movie “Home Alone”. The name was unknown before. So if you meet a Kevin from Austria, he ist most probably in his early 30ies.
In Wallonia, we have a lot of these. Many French (obviously), Italian and German names or French names of German origins. According to their origins, sometimes the descendants of migrants keep the names of their origins.
But I would say the true diversity comes with surnames. In Wallonia, many surnames are Flemish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Arab, etc or French variants of surnames from other countries.
Example: While not the majority, it is very common to come across people whose surnames are Janssens or start with Van … or De …
Quite rare, but there are some cases in Lithuania. Most notably Dovydas and Deividas are both versions of David, one being local and another foreign adopted version (-as being just a necessary suffix for male names). Even funnier is Morkus and Markas, both are versions of Mark. The evangelist is called Morkus but this sounds too much like “morka” (carrot) so nobody would give this name to a child nowadays. Meanwhile foreign Markas is one of the most popular names.
English names (Liam, Olivia instead of Guillaume, Olive) and Spanish/Italian names (Mateo, Sofia instead of Mathieu, Sophie) are relatively popular variants in France. However most people would say that they are distinct names instead of variants. In some cases they would argue that they are actually Latin, and not from the English-speaking world (e.g. Alba, which would be Aube in French).
There’s a great deal of flexibility for child names in Romania.
Let’s take Ion (Romanian for John). You can encounter:
In Germany you do and you don’t. English names are certainly more popular than let’s say thirty years ago. But often they are pronounced German. That can be weird and confusing sometimes.
In the past these names often received a German spelling eventually as well. Mike became Maik, Madeleine became Madleen etc.
Finland is a bit curious case as on the one hand, many foreign names aren’t at all compatible with Finnish pronunciation, while on the other hand ”international” names are hugely popular at the moment and we do have a long history for Swedish names for Swedish and Finnish speakers alike.
Basically it goes that way that foreign variants or fully foreign names that become popular are ones that are relatively fitting with Finnish pronunciation and spelling, and/or are pronounced in Finnish way.
It used to be relatively popular in certain circles to replace Finnish consonants with foreign ones – most notably S or K into a C – or to add unnecessary suffixes into female names, but it was considered quite lower class though already in the 2000’s, nowadays it is mostly considered lower class AND dated. Like it is often considered classy to give a more ”international” flair by naming a baby Sara or Rosa instead of Saara or Roosa, but poor taste to name them Nico or Marco instead of Niko and Marko or Jadessa or Luminella instead of Jade or Lumi.
I’d say in Germany, for people under 50, the German name Erich is a lot less common than its foreign variants Erik and Eric.
Not really. In Portugal the huge majority has Portuguese names and then there are some with names that take inspiration from 19th-20th century Russian literature like Ivan and Valdemiro. There are also some names that come from French and English literature like Hernani and Vanessa and I’ve met a John once. But it’s extremely rare.
I agree with the Portuguese commenter saying the Russian inspired names in Latin countries – like Spain, for instance – stem from the influence of literature – or are family names, if people have Slavic roots.
That being said, I once had a Spanish speaking South American customer, whose name was Vladimir Ilich Surname1 Surname2. It’s stuck in my head for obvious reasons. And yes, you can definitely tell the cultural influences are a lot more diverse in South America.
Until recently it was forbidden to name a kid with foreign name if there was a Polish equivalent unless parents could provide a valid reason (eg. one of the parents was a foreigner). It was changed some time ago and we had an explosion of “Brians”, “Kevins” and “Jessicas”, esp. around 2006-2012. It calmed down a little now, tho we still got a 54 new Kevins last year.