I once worked with a guy with the surname of “Obie.” When asked what his surname was on the phone once, he replied that it was, “Obie. O, B, I, E.”, thereby adding the spelling in an attempt to be helpful.
He later received something in the mail addressed to [Firstname] Obobie. We called him “Ob-Obie” the rest of the time he worked there.
Speaking of names, this very same co-worker had a son named Sam. He very nearly named his daughter “Ella” before realizing that it maybe wouldn’t sound great to have two children named “Sam and Ella.”
Because it sounds very similar to “salmonella,” of course.
It’s an anglicized version of Irish Caomhín, a diminutive of the Irish adjective caomh “dear, pleasant,” from Old Irish cáem (or cóem) “dear, precious.” The Breton cognate is kuñv: adding a Breton diminutive would get you Kuñvig, which is not in use as a name and doesn’t sound much like Kevin.
(-kuñv in Breton is equivalent to great-grand- in English for relationship titles: mamm-kuñv, “great-grandmother.” The equivalent suffix in Welsh (cu, mutates to -gu) is just grand-: mamgu, “grandmother.”)
My point is that the affiliation isn’t there—Breton has more than its share of Ks and Vs and is related to Irish, but there’s no particular reason for Bretons or French people to go for anglicized Irish names in general. The fact that Breton and Irish are both Celtic is well known, but they’re not as close as, say, French and Italian are, and people wouldn’t perceive the connection.
It’s pretty clearly something French picked up from English, Celticity incidental. French Wikipedia says Kevin was unknown as a given name before the 80s, and mentions Kevin Costner and a few other mass-media culture Kevins as the origin; the information on Patrick is less detailed, but suggests it peaked about a generation earlier, with fewer French Patricks overall. Eric is also pretty popular, and I had thought that was a Celtic derivative (because it is a Breton name), but apparently the French Erics are largely using the Germanic name of St Eric of Sweden.
Unknown, or exclusive? My Uncle Kevin was Greatest Generation and my bro Kevin is a late-born Boomer. My family has a large number of anglicized Irish names, including my own.
Unknown in France, I meant. Lots of Kevins in the anglosphere. Unless you’re French, in which case I’m just wrong—following Wikipedia isn’t always the safest course!
My great grandfather was Gaetano, but he legally changed his name to Thomas G. because he wanted to sound more American. The first time my grandfather visited relatives in Brooklyn, he heard his father talking Italian to his great grandfather. In surprise, he asked his brother, “I didn’t know dad could talk Italian!” His brother replied, “Our parents never speak it because they don’t want us to have any hint of an Italian accent.”
Every time I see or hear the name Gaetano, I think of that story.
Other people have discussed restrictions in other countries, but not the US. California (and I expect other states) require names to be all alphabetic letters. No digits or non-alphanumerics. I only know this because Elon Musk tried to name a son with a “12” embedded within it and they refused to accept it. So the “12” got changed to “XII”. Also, I think they changed the Æ to AE for the same reason.
My landlord’s name is Boy. He’s east Asian, although I don’t know what nationality/ethnicity. He goes by Bob usually and that’s what I thought his name was. I would occasionally get some junk mail to Boy [his last name], which I thought was a typo in their database. Eventually I found out it actually was his name.
A woman I know has a daughter named Hazel who’s a college freshman, but the girl goes by Haley, which is a common enough first name that everyone just assumes it’s her “real” name.
I’ve heard that Russian names tend to have a lot of nicknames, and that it’s usual for the same person to have different nicknames from different people. A Russian classmate told me that it always seemed odd to her that everyone in America called her the same thing, just because that’s the version of her name she happened to introduce herself as.
Meanwhile, I only just learned a few days ago, from a Women’s History Month poster at my school, that “Sonia” can be a nickname for “Sophia”.
