[QUOTE=TheLoadedDog]
So your kid is going to spend his entire life on Lygon Street talking only to the elderly? Have you ever considered he might find himself outside Melbourne one of these days?
Sydney is traditionally a city of Italian migrants too, but I might not hear an Italian accent for months at a time these days. Most of the Italian migrants are elderly or dead. Their kids speak with Australian accents, and their grandkids tend not to speak Italian at all.
Please don’t give this child this name. The name is for his enjoyment, not for yours. You’re doing it on a whim, and on a high regarding the birth of a new baby. But he will be the one, not only being teased at school, but having a lifetime of repeating himself to clerks, and correcting people at parties. Not fun.
[/QUOTE]
I’m the grandchild of an Italian immigrant in the U.S. I speak four words of Italian and they all have to do with food. My family names their kids Jennifer and Lauren and Daniel and Cassie.
I’m the fourth generation removed from Italian immigrants via Latin America. Strangely enough half of my cousins have Italian names although they sound less foreign when your native language is Portuguese and Brazilians tend to borrow freely with names.
I had a TA in college assume that I must be fresh off the plane because of my name. I spell it out for people all of the time and go by a nickname most of the time.
My wife and I will most likely give our child a name that is more Latin rather than English since to my ear, an English name would sound odd with my last name.
I do like names that aren’t created on the fly, but I think that an unusual name is not all that difficult. With all the immigrants where I live, you run into people with difficult names all the time.
That said Tiano sounds a bit odd to my ear. Christiano doesn’t. I have a cousin with that name although his nickname is something else entirely. I disagree with Mahna Mahna slightly on one thing. While adding the diminutive inho or inha is one way a nickname can come about in Portuguese, there are quite a few more. The name Ze for Jose. I’ve met a few Jose Carlos whose nicknames were Zeca. Ge for Getulio.
