UniLang

linguoboy wrote:

Shiba wrote:Why do you say that? I'd seriously like to know, I'm not looking for an argument.

They don't give any citations, so there's no telling where they're getting their information from. I've been interested in name etymologies for ages, I've read a lot of scholarly works on the subject, and I've seen a lot of inaccuracies in BTN's etymologies. With a little work, I could find some concrete examples.

Ah, that sucks. It's the only source of names and surnames with a reasonably large database that I've found so far, I'll just take their etymologies with a pinch of salt now. At least they do often provide more than one possible meaning, so you can kinda decide which one you like best.

linguoboy wrote:

Shiba wrote:Also, there doesn't seem to be anything impossible about their etymology of the name "Amelia".

That's not saying much, is it? It's not impossible that I could be a native-speaker of Hmong. But as it happens I'm not, and if I claimed I was, it would be reasonable for you to ask to see proof.

Haha, yeah, but what I mean is that it seems to make sense. At least, Amala -> Amalia makes sense; Amalia -> Amelia is perhaps a bit harder to explain. That is to say, it's easy enough to come up with an ad hoc explanation, but there doesn't seem to be a reason for that a to change to an e.

Male Names
Fehim (Turkish-Tatar)
Emile (French)
Zlatan (Serbo-Croatian)
Antoine (French)
George (English)
Heiko (German)

Female Names
Melanie (English)
Fearne (English)
Georgia (English)
Emily (English)
Paige (English)
Rosie (English)
Julie (English)
Rachel (English)
Kirstie (English)
Lauren (English)
Kirsten (English)
Amy (English)
Elizabeth (English)
Denise (English)
Florence (English)
Katy (English)
Katherine (English)
Ellie (English)
Karen (English)
Bonnie (English)
Katie (English)
Millie (English)
Naomi (English-Hebrew)
Diane (English)
Máire (Irish)
Eibhlín (Irish)
Aoife (Irish)
Caoimhe (Irish)
Siobhán (Irish)
Saoirse (Irish)
Niamh (Irish)
Georgina (English)
Aimee (English)
Hollie (English)
Justine (English)
Holly (English)
Francine (English)
Mollie (English)
Molly (English)
Charlotte (English)
Natalie (English)
Erin (English)
Chloe (English)
Emma (English)
Leanne (English)

Unisex Names (both male and female)
Meredith (English), which is of Welsh origin.
Laurie (English)

Eibhlín wrote:Siobhan (Irish)

Siobhán (unless you're from Ulster).

Some of my favourite names are below:

MALE
Andrew
Ayrton
Brendan
Daniel
Harun (Persian, Arabic)
Hasan (Arabic, Turkish)
Jacob
Jahon (Uzbek form of the Persian Jahan)
James
Kieran (anglicised form of the Irish Ciaran)
Matthew
Rowan

FEMALE
Adele
Amira (Arabic)
Andrea
Charlotte
Nadia (Arabic)
Rose
Sahar (Arabic, Persian)
Sienna
Sofia (Italian)
Vienna
Yasmin/Yasmine (Arabic, Persian)
Yolande (French form of the Spanish Yolanda)
Zahra (Arabic, Persian)

Okay, I'm gonna try list some given names I like:

Josef/Joseph (German/English)
Reinhard (German)
Siegfried (German)
Wolfgang (German)
Luuk (Dutch)
Donatello (Italian)
Park (Korean)
Naoko (Japanese)
Sakura (Japanese)
Kyoko (Japanese)
Rei (Japanese)
Catherine (English)
Caroline (English)
Thorsten (Scandinavian)
Sven (Scandinavian)
Raquel (Portuguese)
João (Portuguese)

Oh, haha, I just learned what the Finnish nickname for the given name Muhammed is: Muhis.

(Of course there must be others, I just haven't heard them. I'm out of the loop.)

from the ones present in arabic, i'll put the meaning in parenthesis
Jenna (garden/paradise)
Jasmine (jasmine)
Lina (young palm tree)
Nora (light)
Sarah (princess, also: wife of Abraham/Ibrahim)
Adam (adam)
Amal (hope)
Younes (jonah)
Yassine*
Amin (faithful/trustworthy)
Aminah (feminine form of Amin)

not present in arabic as far as i know
from japanese
Sakura (cherry blossom)

from dutch
Roos (rose)
Bloem (flower)
Madelief (daisy)
Lieve (short for Godelieve which i think means God-loving, but i'm not sure)

from english
Daisy


not sure wherefrom:
Emma*


* no idea what it means

Emma is Germanic and seems like it means "whole".

languagepotato wrote:Yassine*
* no idea what it means

After looking around a little, I think maybe it comes from this.

I like Danica (common in the US and in Croatia).

I like David very much.

I'm not sure where it comes from, but I like "Xenaxis".

I like these names(in Japanese).
亜里沙(arisa)　
瑠璃(ruri)　
紅葉(kureha)　
真冬(mafuyu)　
初夏(hatsuka)　
雪乃(yukino)　
鈴音(suzune)
苺(ichigo)　
詩織(shiori)　
胡桃(kurumi)
I think they are beautiful

They sound like spices.

TeneReef wrote:They sound like spices.

Kurumi and Ichigo are fairly common names in Japan... or well, in anime, at least.

It's not entirely the right topic for this, but...

I overheard (overread) a discussion on social media about a Finnish-American couple where the USian husband had one of those strange heritage names, let's say he was John Smith IV. The woman had taken his surname at marriage and was called Smith. But the weird thing was, his official last name in his Finnish passport was apparently 'Smith IV'. I mean, what the heck...?!

Anyway, I'm curious to know if in the USA the ordinal number would be considered an official part of the surname or was this some strange solution on the part of the Finnish officials to handle his name.

Most official forms here provide a separate box after the surname proper to indicate "Sr", "Jr", or an ordinal. It seems odd to me to treat it as a part of the surname but that may be the only way to record it in some databases.

Probably. I can't think of any way that could be recorded here, in databases, on forms,... other than treating it as part of the surname.
I didn't realise that number, Sr, or Jr was an actual part of the name; if I ever thought about it, I thought it was just something people added for convenience's sake, rather than an official part of the name.

Varislintu wrote:It's not entirely the right topic for this, but...

I overheard (overread) a discussion on social media about a Finnish-American couple where the USian husband had one of those strange heritage names, let's say he was John Smith IV. The woman had taken his surname at marriage and was called Smith. But the weird thing was, his official last name in his Finnish passport was apparently 'Smith IV'. I mean, what the heck...?!

He must come from the famous Smith IV family.

Aurinĭa wrote:Probably. I can't think of any way that could be recorded here, in databases, on forms,... other than treating it as part of the surname.
I didn't realise that number, Sr, or Jr was an actual part of the name; if I ever thought about it, I thought it was just something people added for convenience's sake, rather than an official part of the name.

Same here, I think. It certainly isn't part of the given name, so where else should it go?
Yep, I didn't know that either.