Do people in Germany or Italy still name their kids Adolf or Benito?
Why would they not?
Ezstrete: 'Cause of Hitler and Mussolini? I think that German names have to pass through a naming board of some kind (or so some people born in Germany said), and I can understand the German government being squeamish about someone named Adolf running for a political office in Germany.
As far as Mussolini namesakes, the homage would have to be deliberate. The Italian for Benjamin is Beniamino. Il Duce was named after the president of Mexico, Benito Juarez.
Well, Hispanic parents still give their kids the name “Benito” on a regular basis. It is a Spanish name, after all, not an Italian name. A Mexican family can give a child the name “Benito” and nobody will think it’s a tribute to Mussolini. More likely, people will think of Benito Juarez.
But in Italy, anyone who gave a kid the Spanish name Benito would be suspected of fascist sympathies, and would be looked down on.
Some few German boys are christened Adolf, but it’s not a fashionable name (BTW last year’s top ten were: Alexander, Maximilian, Paul, Leon, Lukas, Jonas, Niklas, Tim, David, Luca). I have known some few Adolfs and Adolphs born after 1945 - perhaps the name has been one of the first few hundreds overall. The association with Nazism is perhaps weaker than it seems to be in the English-speaking world because a) the debate on Nazism has not tended to regard Nazism as Hitler’s personal show and b) people are aware of other historical Adolfs.
Parents willing to register Adolf as their child’s name certaily wouldn’t be denied by a German municipial registry office. The criteria used by the courts when a registry office has refused to register a name and the parents have sued are essentially: the name must be used as a first name in some culture (i.e. not be made up), it must not expose the child to ridicule and it must not mislead as to gender (names which are a bit gender-ambiguous, like Andrea, apparently are OK).
SO!
If hitler and Mussolini are cause to banish the names Benito[Spanish] and Adolf[universal]:
Should we then but the ban on George?
Another name you don’t see very much of is Judas. Unless you count that priest.
Better, I think, to “but the ban” on EZ…
Ol’ EZ has been banned in better joints than this
George is a common enough name so it isn’t associated with anyone in specific. I don’t know how common Adolf and Benito were, but in English-speaking nations, George is extremely common.