Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

mixedname.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 261 posts

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#221

Post by nopcode »

throw0101a wrote: post #28
mc32 wrote: post #17

I prefer the ones that have translations like: John. Ian, Ivan, Jan, Johan, Aidan, Juan, Joao, etc. Charles, Matthew, Katherine, Ann, and so on so you have an actual name with a standard accepted translation in many languages. French seems like the language which has quite a bit of names either translated or transliterated into other languages -perhaps due to proximity as well as influence.

> French seems like the language which has quite a bit of names either translates or transliterated into other languages -perhaps due to proximity as well as influence. Any name of a (Catholic) saint would probably have mappings to other languages. (The Jesuits got around. :)

I used the bible to translate my dutch name “Joris” to “George” for when I’m in the USA.

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#223

Post by prerok »

zhte415 wrote: post #217

Names are hard. Sitting with a Polish colleague with a very biblical name he commented "Your name, in Poland.. you would be instantly labelled a psycho. You just can't have a name like yours." Was named from the traditional family book in Scotland. Korva.

I know we are talking about people's names here and it's a bit off-topic but it used to be that companies did exhaustive research into naming their products as well. Lately, it seems they aren't doing a good job anymore.

As an example, Ford Kuga seems to be a decent car but I would never buy it. "Kuga" means plague in my native language.

That said, there are plenty of them on the roads here, so I guess people don't really mind.

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#224

Post by MaxBarraclough »

nextaccountic wrote: post #214
lb1lf wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Norwegian bureau of statistics used to have a brilliant bank of historical name trends, where you could input any name and see how popular it had been throughout the years. One of my favourites were Vidkun, which fell off a cliff in the mid-forties. (Vidkun being the first name of our head collaborationist honcho during the Nazi occupation - his last name may be known to you. Quisling. Yup, he coined the phrase '…

Names that went unpopular also include Katrina, Isis and.. Adolf https://www.huffpostbrasil.com/entry/unpopular-baby-names_n_... It's a shame that Isis (the Egyptian goddess) is now associated to the Islamic State. It's a beautiful name.

The Archer TV show had a similar problem. (Minor spoilers ahead.) The show pre-dates Islamic State, and the heroes' spy organisation was named ISIS. I was a little disappointed by the way they escaped it, they just did away with the spy organisation as they mixed up the later seasons of the show. It would have been a bold move, but it could have been played for laughs.

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#225

Post by poutrathor »

macro-b wrote: post #119

I tried English and Italian and I was a bit surprised... my son’s name which is Leo and valid in both languages wasn’t there... while there were at least dozens of names so archaic most people would never hear them in reality! Not sure where you got your sources

I checked French & Italian and the data source is rather bad : Bonny ? Blondene ?

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#226

Post by DonaldFisk »

KMag wrote: post #182
sk0g wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now it sounds like an Chinese/Japanese person saying bellend. Hope they stay away from the UK!

Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese (and presumably most/all other dialects) distinguish r from l. You're thinking of some Japanese/Koreans having trouble due to those languages using a single phoneme that's somewhat between r/l. Also, it's a bit racist to not point out that it's only some Japanese and Koreans that have trouble pronouncing r and l.

Cantonese doesn't have an r phoneme, just l, and only initially. In casual speech, initial n and l are pronounced the same.

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#227

Post by DonaldFisk »

petters wrote: post #39

Does not work perfectly though: "Fisk" would be a very strange name in Swedish (means "fish") and I've never heard it in English, I think.

It's quite a common surname in Suffolk, England, and is from Old Norse. It would be odd as a first name, though.

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#228

Post by bemmu »

sjf wrote: post #111
patrickdavey wrote: post #16

I'm Irish, my partner is Dutch. We considered calling our daughter Eimear. In her dialect it would have been like calling her "bucket". We opted for a different name ;)

The Irish name selection on this site is totally bogus. Apparently Cody, Jacqui, and Kelsi are Engish & Irish feminine names. Those are not even Hiberno-English names. https://mixedname.com/english_irish_feminine_names

My approach was to Google things like “Irish names” and add names coming up on such lists. Do you know of a good source I should use instead?

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#229

Post by rsynnott »

School-Cotton wrote: post #105
throw0101a wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> French seems like the language which has quite a bit of names either translates or transliterated into other languages -perhaps due to proximity as well as influence. Any name of a (Catholic) saint would probably have mappings to other languages. (The Jesuits got around. :)

That’s true, but they won’t all be commonly used as names everywhere. Jesús is a common Spanish name, but totally nonexistent in English and French as far as I’m aware. María too is way more common than “Mary” in English (that is a real English name, but AFAICT it’s pretty rare in the last few generations).

Mary used to be an _incredibly_ popular name in Catholic European countries. Notably, two consecutive presidents of Ireland were called Mary! Definitely less common now, but weirdly universal in the 50s.

Re: MixedName – Bilingual baby name finder

#230

Post by GFischer »

boyter wrote: post #48

Hah only two? My wife is Chinese/Panamanian. We had to try and find names that worked in English Spanish and Chinese. Appeal to everyone. That was not an easy task. In the end it was more about picking names that aren’t something weird or offensive in the other ones but sound good in English. My moment was using Hector. The old Greek name appeals to my love of history and yet the family thinks it’s Spanish.

My nephew had the same issue, had to work in English, Spanish and German.

Fortunately there are several names that work in all three, they ended up choosing Max.

Post reply on HN