So, I’ve been living in Hungary for 20 years almost (and became a citizen not six months ago). Been here awhile. I’m a university teacher by trade so I see and meet a lot of young adults, and I’ve noticed some naming trends have changed since I got here.
Specifically, a couple of older, “historical” names are popping up again on my roster. For example, I’ve seen more Hunors these days (Hunor is the name of the son of Magog that supposedly is the progenitor of the Huns, and of course, the Huns figure strongly in Hungarian origin stories; weirdly, his brother, Magor, never has anyone named after him). I also have seen some Álmoses and Emeses from time to time (Álmos was the leader of the Hungarians before they made it to the Carpathian Basin; Emese was his mother).
I also see Géza creeping back into usage (Géza being the father of King István I (Stephen I, who became the first king and also Christianized Hungary)). I even saw one kid named Vajk (the birth name of King Stephen, but I’ve never seen it again and I wonder what sort of parents he had). I don’t know WHY these names are back in vogue but I’m starting to see them.
These are all, by the way, names from somewhere between 800s-1000s.
Any really old names making a comeback?
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Here in Italy there has been a resurgence of roman and ancient Greek names recently. I have seen kids with names like Enea, Atena, Elettra, Diana.
Until a few years ago aside some classics like Cesare o Giulia, people avoided names that sounded too Roman because it was seen as a far right thing.
In Sweden we are back to Viking names but that isnt that weird, when most countries had surge of nationalism in 1900 , a lot of old names came back. Now people are naming their kids after great-grandparents who had those names.
From personal observation, in Greece it has become the fashion to choose ancient names for children. It was always the case that you would hear ancient names like Helen, Alexander, Odysseus, Penelope, etc., but now it seems that more and more people are consciously making a choice to go with such names (from an expanded repertoire – for example, Danae, Chryseis, etc.) rather than naming their children after their grandparents, as had been the tradition, or choosing names that are more closely identified with the church.
All of them. All Greek ancient names have made a comeback. From the most common like Leonidas and Danae to the most obscure thirteenth nymph daughter of some god who got knocked up by another dog and married the king of a random city whatever.
New names pop up all the time. I work with kids and I’ve studied Ancient Greek and every time I come across names that I’ve literally never heard of.
Irish language names go through phases of becoming popular. Although they often then get mangled a bit when people try to anglisize the name later on (please don’t).
Traian (Trajan), Ovidiu (Ovid), Aurel (Aurelius), Cornel (Cornelius), Liviu (Livius), Claudiu, Marius, Marian, Adrian, Octavian, Cezar, Iulian, Florin/Florian, Valeriu/Valerian, Flavius, Ciprian, Silviu, Tiberiu, Anton, Sebastian, Laurentiu, Valentin are all pretty common first names in Romania and of Roman/Latin origin.
Some common female names of the same origin: Octavia, Flavia, Claudia, Cornelia, Iulia, Valeria, Valentina, Florina, Camelia, Laura, Livia, Lavinia, Victoria, Alina, Florentina, Adriana, Silvia, etc.
We also have a lot of names of Greek origin.
They were always used and still are, some more than others.
Personally, I haven’t noticed. Nowadays, many 19th-century names seem to be dying out (“noble” and “bourgeois” names, literally imported from France at certain times, fit here), as do mNy German names in the border regions.
Old Slavic names have remained relatively popular since the Romantic Revival, with some more so than others – they don’t really come as a surprise, although some of them are indeed unusual.
A few old fashioned Catalan boys names seem to have made a comeback over the last 20 years: Arnau, Blai, Cosme, Oriol etc
Some of them, e.g. Živana, Krasava, Radana, Svatopluk. Don’t know about Hungarian, but magor means an idiot in Slovak/Czech.
I feel like Nordic and specifically Swedish names are becoming more popular in Germany. I’ve seen a couple of kids named Jonte, Henja, Imke, Milla, Ilva/Ylva, etc.
Other than that, old-timey names like Peter are back, which I associate more with the generation of my grand- and great-grandparents. I guess those could fall under “ancient”, since they’re biblical, but they never fully went away either. I don’t think I’ve seen any genuinely ancient names.
Quite a few old school named are popular now : Marius, Jules, Louis, Gabin, Gaston…
But not all of them. Some remain very outdated.
The names of Croatian medieval nobility were revived in the 19th century and never went out of fashion. Tomislav, Zvonimir, Mislav, Branimir, Domagoj, Borna, Krešimir being the most common ones. Others like Višeslav, Zdeslav or Trpimir are a bit rarer, but still completely normal. Some are absolutely fucking weird and never used though, like Svetislav, Držislav, stuff like that.
Many traditional Catholic names lost a lot of popularity in the last century. Idk if they are making a comeback. Even some previously VERY common Catholic names became less common among gen Alpha; Marija, for instance.
No, unfortunately, traditional Slavic names are extremely rarely used for newborns in Croatia. Especially for girls, if you look at the Top 50 most popular names, I think Mila is the only Slavic name on that list, and most other names are just basic 3 or 4 letter trendy names such as Ema, Lana, Nika, etc. I can’t imagine a newborn Slavko or Zorica.
Jimena for girls and Mateo for boys are old names that have gotten very popular in recent years.
Géza and Emese came back to popular use in the 1800’s, I think everyone who was born in the 1980’s or 1990’s knows a few Géza bácsis. And one of my childhood friends was named Álmos 34 years ago.
Totally right about Hunor and Vajk tho. It is strange that there is no Magor.
Yes in Ireland the names Fionn, Clíona, Aoife, and Oisín have been very popular for the past 40 /50 years or so. These are all from ancient Irish legends.
I’ve never met an elderly person with these names though.
However it is becoming fashionable now to give kids old-fashioned names. A lot of these are diminutives. Like Maisie, Sadie, Nell etc.
Yes, while the most common names are still the same (with Sofija and Mark being the hugely popular newcomers), there are some older names making a comeback:
older girls’ names from the top 20:
older boys’ names from the top 20:
There are a few more names that are less popular but have had meteoric growth like Miron and Miroslava. Girls’ names on the list are all Western sounding, so they don’t count, but the boys’ names sound like the list of peasants from a classic Russian novel:
Quite archaic Irish language names are coming back into vogue at the minute.
I’ve meet babies called Gormfhlaith, Bradán, Dallán, Laoghaire, Scáthach, Cobhlaith, Caoimhseach in the last few years.
(although full disclosure, I speak Irish, all of the parents of these children speak Irish and all are quite invested in the language, so probably not a very fair sampling of the country as a whole)
Not really in the 20th/21st Centuries, but in the 18th and 19th Centuries pre-Conquest names like Edgar, Edwin, Alfred, Harold, Mildred, and even Bede, Wulfstan, Athelstan, and Thurstan and so on were revived. Most commonly, it was an Anglican priest giving his children the names of old English saints.
Ancient Greek names are common in Greece and they were always common at least in the 200 years of the modern Greek state. I mean names like Achilles, Pericles, Alexander, Odysseus were always common.
We’re at a time in Poland where someone named Stanisław could be or 80 or 8. Same for Antonina, Tymon, Adam and Franciszek.
I hope Portugal doesn’t come back with Urraca. Pretty common in the XIV century. What a terrible sounding name.
None.
All the ancient names we use have been in continued use since ‘ancient times’.
If anything, we’re losing them. Nobody really calls their son Ørnulf(Eagle-Wolf, seriously lol) or Torbjørn(Thor-Bear, see above) anymore. I’ve met people with those names but they’ve exclusively been in their 50s and above.
What a fucking shame.
I don’t have children yet, but my favourite boys’ names are Sámuel, Hunor and Gellért, all of which have a connection to pre-12th century Hungarian history (Aba Sámuel, Hunor/Magor myth, Saint Gellért). You may be onto something.
You’re way off on some of these. Géza, Hunor and Emese especially have been around since forever and are not “making a comeback”.
Since the 1990s, medieval/royal names became very common in Portugal: Afonso, Martim, Leonor, Beatriz, Rodrigo, Constança, Dinis, Duarte, Vicente, Sebastião, Mateus, Gonçalo, Catarina, Joana, Mafalda, Lourenço, Simão etc. Previously, most of these were used in the upper classes.
I think this was a bakclash because in the 1970s and 1980s people, especially from the working class, started using a lot of new foreign names from Brazil and Russia, like Vanessa, Rúben, Tânia, Natacha, Nelson, Cátia, Andreia, Etc. that are now super dated.
Nowadays, the trend seems to be granny names that were popular 100 years ago, especially for girls: Emília, Alice, Clara, Amélia, Pilar, Aurora, Nicolau, Jaime.
Hunor, Emese and Geza are pretty common in the hungarian minority from Romania. Never knew they’re that uncommon across the border. I thought Zsombor, sure as I’ve met only a couple in my life, but Hunor or Geza?! I know more Emese’s than Erzsebet’s and Zsuzsanna’s combined.
The only ones that come to mind are Mafalda for girls and Mateus for boys. Maybe Vicente and Dinis for boys as well. There are other names that are popular at the moment and have a long history but they were never what I would call rare. You can look at names used in the Medieval period which are still pretty common today (Beatriz, Diogo, Inês, Fernando, etc…).
I would be surprised if names like Fernão and Sancha made a comeback though.
Nope. And I can’t ever see them comming back either. Theres’a few that are popular or could be more popular. Like Bor, Črt, Deja, Gaber, Jara, Mila, Samo, Tal, Tisa, Val, Vid, Vit, Vitan, Vito, Zarja, Zala, Živa. There’s a few more that are still common and normal but only found on older people. Pre-christian names are either wild or terrible.
Some old Polish names associated with slavic culture – Mieszko, Ziemowit, Świętosława etc.
I also see more and more people naming their kids names that used to be percieved as a little old fashioned before (at least where I live) – like Aniela, Władysław, Ignacy, Tadeusz, Kazimierz – I like that they are getting popular again because I find them pretty charming.
As s/one born in ’90 amd grown up in Hungary, I know a fair few Álmoses and Emeses in my generation, although definitely more Emeses than Álmoses.
Géza sounds somewhat oldtimey to me, when I think of a Géza, I think of a guy in his 50’s/60’s.
Hunor is kind of a timeless name in my experience, there are younger and older people with that name, but can’t really fix it as a popular name (although admittedly I haven’t really talen a good look at the Zoomers).
Names that seem to have been popular in my generation to give to their kids are Zalán and Zsombor. No idea why.
In Portugal I think you see more royal or what may be considered “old upper class” names, for example:
For girls – Constança, Leonor, Matilde, Carminho, Beatriz;
For boys – Dinis, Afonso, Martim, Lucas, Guilherme, Henrique.
/u/inostranetsember
Currently, no. There is always a natural fluctuation of names and some can be out of fashion for a few decades and then come back. Eg Like 20 years ago a Rosa or a Marie would probably have been an older lady but in the last 10 years I have seen quite a few little girls with those names again.
The last ones to intentionally bring back really old/archaic names were the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. They tried to popularize old Germanic names from medieval literature or historic people. Examples might be Chlodwig, Siegfried, Hagen, Brunhilde, Gertrude, Elfriede, Freya, and more.
Since the Nazis only ruled for a short time there aren’t/weren’t too many people with such names but when you came across one it was kind of a hint towards their parents’ ideological leaning.
Today, only a very convicted far-right winger would brand their child with such a name but they exist. A politician of Austria’s far right party is married to another political activist whose own small political parties have been banned for being too extreme before. Together, they have 10 children – all with super-Germanic names. (Hedda, Wolf, Mechthild, Alwine, Arne, Hildrun, Sonnhild, Ute, Volker, Horst) Let’s put it like this: In 1930s Germany you would have won some sort of propaganda award with such a family. 😉
Some of those Hungarian names first came back after centuries of dormancy in the 2nd half of the 19th century. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the millennium celebrations of 1896, both high points of an era characterised by renewed interest in history and national identity, seem to have caused a whole slew of old names coming back into fashion. Some names, like Árpád, remained popular. Csaba and Attila fell out of fashion quite fast, then came back in the 1970s. (A novel, published in 1920 and set in pre-WWI times, had a male lead named Csaba, changed to János in the 1934 movie version, possibly because Csaba was already dated.) Géza, Béla, Gyula, Imre stayed popular for decades, then became old guy names by the end of the 20th century. If you meet any young Gézas now, it’s likely a result of a worldwide trend of grandpa names becoming popular again. (Sadly it’s unlikely to happen with Béla, as it’s a stereotypical “boomer joke” name now.)
The 1990s brought a new wave of “old names”. With the end of Communism, nationalism was on the rise again. In 1996 (aka the year when the whole country struggled to spell “millecentenarium”) we celebrated the 1100th anniversary of Hungarians arriving in present-day Hungary, a few years later it was followed by the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the kingdom, again renewing an interest in history. Names like Hunor, Nimród, Botond, Zente, Zétény became popular then. A huge difference is that the previous bunch of names were from actual history (even though Gyula was originally a title), with the exception of Csaba, which was mythological. Most of the new “old” names weren’t actually in use in medieval times, or were extremely rare. (Also, Nimród is from the Bible and Zente is of Christian origin, a cognate of “saint”, but these names are usually popular with people whose identity is a weird mix of Christianity and old pagan Hungarian traditions, so it’s no problem for them.)
Since old Hungarian female names are rare in historical documents, the 19th century name revival had to find different sources for naming girls. It brought popularity to some names which were of foreign origin but important in our history (Gizella, Sarolta, Margit) and to names created by writers (Etelka, Aranka). These are mostly dated now. Some mythological names (Emese, Réka) became fashionable in the 1970s-80s, then names of poetic or uncertain origin became widespread in the 1990s (Csenge, Kincső, Zselyke).