Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Common Names in Your Country

What are at least two common names for men and women of people your age? Of course, popular names change from year to year, but having an idea about names from specific countries can help familiarize ourselves with the culture and people. Please tell us where you are from and at least two popular names for men and women and share any interesting cultural information or meaning behind these names.

Current, some popular boy's names are Jacob, Michael, and Joshua, and popular girl's names are Emily, Madison, and Ashley. However, in the year I was born (in the early 1960s), popular names included Michael, David, John, and Robert for boys, and Lisa, Mary, Susan, and Karen for girls. My name, Randall, was most popular in the 1950s and 60s, but isn't very popular any more. It is German in origin and traditionally meant "wolf shield", but I'm sure my parents didn't have any of that in mind when they named me. Here is a link on name popularity:

http://www.behindthename.com/top/

Best,

Randall

15 comments:

  1. If you ever come to Brazil, you'll notice that lots of Brazilians are named after famous American actors or some other important historical characters. However, the spelling sometimes is tottaly different from the original ones. What happens is that we write these names the way they sound -- according to our phonetic system, of course. ;-)
    William, for example, can sometimes be found spelled the following way: Uiliam. Michael, Maicon; Washington, Uochinton -- just to name a few.

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  2. In Korea, a few years ago online-novels caught on. Teenagers like reading that novels. (about friendships and love happened at school) The name of characters caught on too, like Chaerin, Eunsu, Eunchae for gils and Suck, Huck, Wook for boys. Many people like that names.

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  3. Along México´s history (according to the Institute of Statistics in México), Juan or José for boys and María for girls are the more common names. I don’t know the exactly reason behind this, but I think it can be because a religious culture.
    In México exists an ID unique to each Mexican. This ID is formed (between other datas) from the name of the person, however, in the case of José and María there is exceptions to the rules because of the great amount of people called with this names.
    Nowadays, the most common name for girls is Mía, and I am sure this is due of the influence of a popular and juvenile soap opera called “Rebelde” or “RBD” where the protagonist is named Mía.

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  4. the most common name in scotland is james for boys and janet for girls but nowadays some people have rather strange names like tinkerbell for example.

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  5. The most common name in Japan is Suzuki. It's one of family names. Sato is also common.
    Girls' names often includes Ko at the end of the name. I'm not sure about boy's common names, but there is some common Kanji included in names.

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  6. In Japan, however in the old days, many parents used to name their son Ichiro and Saburo,nowadays, Yuto, Yuki, and Koki are more popular for boys.
    For girl's name, Yui, Haruka, and Miyu are the common name and girl's names are often ended with Ko. Nowadays, names with only hiragana are also popular for girl.

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  7. almost names in Vietnam use Han_Viet vocabulary( Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary), that is a portion of Vietnamese vocabulary that is of Chinese origin. In the past, China ruled Vietnam, Vietnamese people wrote Chinese but spelled Sino- Vietnamese before Latin was used in Vietnamese. And now, Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary is limited but the name still uses Sino_Vietnamese vocabulary. The name's boys: Hung(brave), Nam(male),Long(dragon), Hai(sea)...The name for girls: Nhi(small), Hoa(flower), Thao(grass)....My name is Nguyen Vu Van Nhi means a little bit a clound and rain (lovely!), Nguyen is family name and Nhi is my sir name.

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  8. The most common names in India are lakshmi,srinivas,ram. i think it's due to religious culture.But, now a days people are come up with modern names for their children's by making short of the above mentioned names.

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  9. In Japan, girl's common name is "Sakura". It means cherry blossoms and Japanese like the flower.
    Boy's names sometimes include "shou", a kanji which means "fly".

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  10. This is Rena,from Iran.In Iran common names for boys are Ali,Mohammad,Amir.Even if parents wants to nominate their sond another name mix with these names.for example;Amir Mahdi,Ali Reza,Mohammad Pouya,...And for girls common names are Zahra,Fatemeh,Sara,Maryam.
    Nowadays some people like some strange names that you've never heard them before and very difficalt to remember and prounance.When ask them the meaning of those names they reply ,for ex.this is the name of a wild flower in a jungle in the world!!!

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  11. in my religion and in my country the name Mohammed is very common because muslims belive that mohammed was the prophet of allah so almost every muslim person's first name is usually Mohammed, and its the most common name in the world.

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  12. the most common last name in pakistan is Khan and i also have this last name in my name and my name is Shahzada Muhammad Aniq khan. And this last name of khan has been come from the mughals and mughals are the royalist dynasty who ruled the whole india and the whole middle east and they ruled india and mioddle east for 150 years and there dynasty was fallen by The great britian

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  13. If you ever come to China before. you will see every differen age have different common name. Like my age, the most common name in china, the girl is "Lin""Mei" is mean's you are beatuful. the boy's is like"Qiang" is means strong."Dong" is repersent China. Some name can used both of girl and boy. Like "Tian" means sky it is also common name in China. There have lots common names in China.

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  14. in france the common names are Julie, Emilie, Camille, Sarah but nowadays the japanese animation has influences many parents'choice so i don't really know what is the famous ones..
    As far as I a concerned, i got a lot of young children relatives named Mai Li or Mai Ling

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  15. My name is Randall, I'm a girl and I absolutely love my name, its so uncommon expecially amoung women!

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Thanks for posting a comment. I appreciate your interesting in sharing your ideas.

Best,

Randall

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