I’m a baseball fan, and in recent years I’ve noticed a spate of first names among Latin players I’ve never heard before. Yangervis, Rougned, Yasiel, Yonauris, Yoncarlos, and so on. Many seem to start with a Y, or so I think I’ve noticed. What’s the story here? Are these “dialect” names from different versions of Spanish? Influenced by the local aboriginal language, reclaiming a pre-conquista heritage? Neologisms? Or maybe these names have always been around but in the past, when coming up though the system, they were told/they decided that Jose or Miguel are easier for Norteamericanos to spell?
Yoncarlos looks to my eye like a variation on Juan Carlos, so maybe these are regionalisms. What’s the Straight Dope?
Venezuelan, Venezuelan, Cuban (two of them), Dominican, ?, and Venezuelan, respectively from your list FYI. Odds are the ones with the weird names are Venezuelan, but baseball players aren’t necessarily a representative group of typical names.
MMA has some weird names among the Brazilian players, but I can’t tell if that’s a Brazilian thing or quirk of some of these “MMA royalty” families.
Mostly Caribbean and Venezuelan people have those names. Some of them evoke Taino and Carib names… a lot of Dominicans and Venezuelans have phonetically spelled English names…(i.e. Yon- or Yoni- for John or Johnnie, Y in some dialects has a strong sound approaching an English J). Just straight English nicknames like Eddie or Freddie are also fairly common.
Mexico and Colombia tend to be more conservative with names, though for some middle to upper class people it has become common to give girls English sounding names, sometimes with phonetic spellings such as Yaneth (Janet) or Jennifer/Yenifer.