Ciara (KeeAHrah) is the Italian, that is, original, for Clare. OTOH, naming people after geography sounds real strange to me except when it’s associated with religion (Lourdes).
Esmeralda is the name of Quasimodo’s love interest in The Hunchback of Notre Dame; it’s also one of those names that were relatively popular in the Middle Ages but which later fell out of use.
Lucía is very common in Hispanic, Portuguese, Italian tradition, with or without the tilde. If it’s Italian, the c is CH; if Spanish, z (or s). I was >< this far from being a Lucía A lot of my relatives on my mother’s heavily-female side are Eulalia (often Lali), Dolores (often Lola or Lolita), Laura and Lucía; makes for some very intelesting family meetings, when everybody is talking real loud and calling so-similar names…
Mercedes is one of those names that for Hispanics are more common for a girl (in which case they’re often María de…) than for a boy but which can actually be both. But the Mercedes who gave her name to the cars was German. Mercedes means Gifts, Graces, Mercy. An old Spanish form for “Your Grace” was “Vuesas Mercedes” or a more modern “Vuestras Mercedes”.
Ciara is (supposed to be) the Irish feminine version of Ciaran, meaning dark haired. It’s a fairly common girls name. In Ireland Ciara is pronounced KEER-ah (like Keira Knightley), and Ciaran is pronounce keer-AWN (Keiran).
At least in Ireland the people who want to call their children Caoimhe, Sorcha or Proinsias generally know how to pronounce the name correctly.*
I’ve said it before- I went to school with a Binky and a Diva and my sister knew a La’Sagna. Not nicknames.
Keeva, Zorucca and Pronshas**
**which is the Irish version of the male name Francis, not “princess”.
I used to have a Philipino co-worker with a first name of Bong.
And my 7th grade P.E. coach had a last name of Hiscock. We used to joke, “Coach Hiscock? Coach his cock into what? To jump through rings of fire?” or some variation there of.
Several years ago, there was a vehicular accident locally in which one casualty was a woman with the first name “Velveeta.” A quick look at the Social Security Death Index, does indeed show her name as well as three other deceased “Velveetas.”
I guess I should clarify, these first names are often given in conjunction with (often hyphenated with) obscure middle names which seemed to me a bit too precious. Also, parents who give those names to their babies tend to wish for their babies to have creative or artistic endeavors in the future. At least that’s what I got from conversing with them.
It’s fun to see new parents go through the process of naming their little ones, we used to have a collection of baby name books in the nursery for the parents to peruse. Interestingly, sudden decisions to replace planned names happen more often than people think.
I’ve seen some interesting ones at work. A family with three children named Paris, London and Sydney. I have also seen Unique and Latrina.
What stands out most in my mind was an application a coworker showed me - there were four boys, all with the same first and last name and the suffixes Jr., II and III for the younger three. So the oldest boy was Firstname Lastname, the next oldest was (same) Firstname Lastname Jr., and so on. Our minds boggled at how many layers of wrong that was.
My junior year of high school was their fiftieth anniversary. So my yearbook from that year was a special golden anniversary issue with lots of historical oddities and photos from the school and neighborhood. They showed excerts from the first yearbook in 1924, and a prominent student of the time was Onward Cochran. In a way it’s not such a bad name, but still rather odd. I wonder if he had a younger brother named Christian.
I knew a Loren at work (female) and then my health club hired a Loren (male) as a front desk person / trainer. I wonder if his parents meant to name him “Lorne” but didn’t know how how to spell it. It seemed a bit feminine for him too.
Only, Dick doesn’t mean “dick” in Spanish and I assume neither in Arabic… The combination of Yamal (or Jamal) and an el-something name is about as arabic as Mecca.
The Spanish article comes from the Arabic one, actually.
In Spanish Loren is short for Lorenzo/Lorenza (Laurence/Lauren). I know a single female Loren but half a dozen male ones.
I had to schedule a Pornphan one day. My soon-to-be-born niece will have people singing* at her. I have another niece whose initials equal EEC. Mynephew is named for my father**. Now more children are sharing the name. Which is odd, because it was uncommon prior to this century. It was mostly a nickname.
I saw a Sunday Morning religious program this past weekend. One gospel group featured two blonde daughters named Shekinah and Cherith, both words (but not personal names) from the Old Testament. (The also had an infant, similarly named for a place name from the OT.)
But I’m just going to bet that anyone seeing the name “Shekina” would not be expecting a blonde.
Or, Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, which had an Esme Bland as a character.
Talk about unexpected names. There’s an Ony Okoro in my office, who I expected to be Japanese. She’s black. There’s also a Dinetah Sims who I expected to be black. She’s white.
Oh well.
And the 20-something Rohan in my gym from Barabados will be glad to know he’s not from middle earth.
A lot of my relatives on my mother’s heavily-female side are Eulalia (often Lali), Dolores (often Lola or Lolita), Laura and Lucía; makes for some very intelesting family meetings, when everybody is talking real loud and calling so-similar names…