Sometimes, of course, there is pure racism in the mispronunciation of a name, as in the case of Trump supporters and Kamala Harris or the renaming of someone because their name is "unpronounceable". Suggesting that a name is unsayable is a not too subtle form of belittling people by belittling the culture they come from. Last year's Twitter storm over the University teacher who suggested to Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen that she anglicised her name, because it sounded like an insult in English, comes to mind.
Anyway, although the politics of names might be an interesting post let's get back to where I started.
I was doing one of my online italki sessions this morning, with Miriam, and we got to talking about pets having human type names. From there we drifted to names in general. We talked about how several names have a sort of internationalism behind them. Juan may be the Spanish equivalent of John, just as Vanya and Sion and Johann and Giovanni are in other countries, but there are lots of Spanish names that don't have that same correspondence with British names. For example I'm sure that most British people, living in Spain, know at least one Jesús but I don't think there's an Anglo equivalent. In much the same way Nacho, from Ignacio, might turn up in a PG Wodehouse book as Ignatius (and in the Cate Blanchett book of baby names) but it's not, exactly what you'd call a common name.
Then, of course, we got onto how names have fashions. Teachers see this all the time. A class of five year olds might have several repeat names like Ryan and Brandon or Tiffany and Megan. We all know names that had brief popularity and now give us the approximate age of the particular person. Remember that spate of short "Victorian" names; the Emmas and Janes, Joshuas and Nathans? This didn't use to be the case in Spain because neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Register Office were keen for someone to start calling their children Aleph, Apple, Blanket, Speck Wildhorse or Tu (all names used by "stars" for their offspring). There has always been plenty of choice for Spanish parents anyway because any old saint's name would do (and there are a lot of saints). Most Spaniards didn't want to call their children Alipio, Bonifacio, Nélia or Wulstana though so names like José, Carmen, Antonio, Manuel, María and Josefa became the norm. Those and the myriad of similar names that we bump into all the time.
Back at our chat Miriam told me that nowadays the restraints on names have generally been lifted and, in the new liberal climate, Basque names have become trendy in Spain. I just had a look at some of those web pages that suggest names for your new-born and it's true that there are pages and pages of Basque suggestions some of which I've bumped into - Aitor, Leire, Eloi, Nerea, Ainhoa and Ferran for example. There are lots of other "nationalist" names too, be they Catalan, like Carme or Enric, Galician like Uxía, Noa and Antía, or Valenciano like Bertomeu and Tonica. There are unisex names too but in suggesting names like René, Paz and Yeray as being usable for boys or girls we're straying into the Vivian, Beverly, Carol and Ainsley territory where, whatever the experts say, there is a different perception of the gender of those names at street level.
Now, finally, I get to where this post has been going all along. What are the hip Spanish names of the moment? Well on pure statistics for girls it's Lucía, Sofía, Martina, María, Julia, Paula, Valeria, Emma, Daniela, and Carla whilst for the for boys it's Hugo, Mateo, Martín, Lucas, Leo, Daniel, Alejandro, Manuel, Pablo and Álvaro.
Just to round it off the most common names in the population in general are María Carmen, María, Carmen, Ana María, Josefa, María Pilar and Isabel on one side and Antonio, Manuel, José, Francisco, David, Juan and Javier on the other. Family name wise Garcia, González, Lopez and Sanchez head the list so if you know a María Carmen García or an Antonio Gonzalez you are not alone.
