All of those who have a father by the name of Guðmundur do - the rest of us, not so much.
“John Smith” would probably be “Jón Jónsson” (aprox. John Johnson), Jón being a very common name running through the generations.
I do go out, quite a lot, and in all those times I’ve gone out I’ve never encountered a “Hymie”.
(And yes, it was at least partially a joke. Oviously I’ve encountered the name Hymie before - mainly as a derogative - but the fact that someone thought it could even exist in Israel, let alone be common, was so absurd I felt compelled to respond in kind).
Or in other regions of Spain, that’s why I put the smiley.
Some of the names given for Spanish in the “John Doe” list have connotations that Juan Pérez or el señor García wouldn’t have. The “Fulano” family often has a despective tinge, same for Rita la Pollera. Asking “and who told you that, Rita the Chicken Seller?” is the old fashioned equivalent of “oh, I see, they said it on TV so it must be true :rolleyes:”
If you walk out to any North Cameroonian street and yell “Hey, Amadou!” I promise that half the male population will turn around. If “Amadou” has a second name, it’s probably “Bouba.”
“Aissatou” seemed to be the generic girls name, though girls had a lot more variation.
When example names are given on forms and applications in Japan, the typical male and female names are Taro and Hanako, respectively. The last names used are most often a play on the company or city name, but when real ones are used its usually Suzuki or Yamada.
If you’re looking for the real names that are most common, then probably Daisuke for men and Mari for women, at least among 20- and 30-somethings (based on the weddings I’ve been at over the past few years). The classic -ko names for women are currently a lot less common than they used to be.
I do believe you’re thinking of Head of the Class so the teacher would have been either Howard Hessman or Billy Connolly.
I was in an area of Africa where people were just beginning to acquire last names. It was fascinating to watch how close it all was to what clearly happened in our own culture- “Sali Moto” might have a motorcycle, “Nawissa Banki” might work at the bank. “Aissatou Maroua” lived in Maroua. “Bouba Noir” was dark skinned. " Rashidatou Souley" would be Souley’s daugher.
Mostly these were names used by other people to talk about which particular “Amadou” they meant. But the names would stick and were strating to get pased down (Sali Moto’s daughter mght be “Fadimatou Sali Moto”)
Now and then someone would introduce themselves with a name like “Hamadou Woila Voyage” (Woila Voyage being the name of a local bus company) and I’d just pray to god that one didn’t stick through the generations.
There are families in India (often Parsi) with names like “Shipchandler,” “Pilot,” and “Treasurywallah.”
What he said. For India (and South Asia in general) you have to rephrase the question by state or ethnicity.
Sikh names are pretty easy- something-tinder Singh. (Jatinder, Mohinder, etc.)
Marathi names often end in -kar, meaning “from the village of [first part of name]”. Beyond that I can’t think of any particular common ones.
You know, really, this comes pretty close to an ethnic slur. It wouldn’t hurt for you to be a little more considerate about that kind of thing. And for whatever it’s worth, Hymie Goldbeg is much more of a New York-Jewish sounding name.
Nah, I doubt Ferrer (or Herrera, or Herrero, or anything close) comes close to the last names González, Rodríguez or Pérez (the patronimics that Nava mentioned earlier) in commonness in Puerto Rico (and probably at least others in the Caribbean).
As mentioned in the wiki article, for “John Doe” you use commonly Fulano (a), Zutano (a), Mengano (a), or Perencejo (a). With the last names de Tal or más Cual. And those names bring memories of elementary school and my mean mean strict (but still superb) Spanish teacher. Shudders
A Juan or José González (or Pérez or Rodríguez) would be a common name. Interestingly enough, I have not personally met many with those combos.
Says someone whose names are rare enough that her lineage can be identified and known on the island. Yikes!
On a tangentially related note, it was common in the US and probably the west in general to use the suffix “-ski” to indicate an association with Russia. e.g. when the Russians developed a similar missile to the Tomahawk it was often called the “Tomahawk-ski” in the press (Sorry, it’s early and that’s the first thing that came to mind).
I had been informed that in fact, “Ski” is not a common name ending in Russia. The most common Russian names end in “-ov” or “-vich”. “Ski” would be a popular name ending in Poland, e.g. the famous Russian general of Polish descent Konstantine Rokossovsky(i), but not in Russia.
In classical Jewish legal writings, the equivalent of ‘John Doe’ is ‘Ploni Almoni,’ taken from Ruth 4:1. Both of my Hebrew-English versions of Ruth translate it as ‘so-and-so,’ but it’s essentially a nonsense name (you’d never name your kid Ploni, like you might name him John) used as a placeholder.
It’s still used today - especially almoni, which is the standard modern Hebrew adjective/noun for an unknown or anonymous person (“the unknown soldier”, for instance, is “hachayal ha’almoni”). I’m pretty sure the legal system usesn it in much the same manner they would use “John Doe” in the U.S.
My grandparents came from Basque country, (Leketio) and the last name is Sabala. I was told this is the “Smith” of Basque last names.
I also had a Basque roommate/co worker from Donostia who told me the same thing, (his last name was Durandegui).
I thought it was odd cause it never sounded like those crazy “very” Basque sounding names like you mentioned.
Great grandpa was named Antxón!
Yeah, in Bulgarian it would be Ivan Ivanov Ivanov. One of my students was Ivana Ivanova Ivanova. That’s about as generic as it gets.
ETA: BTW, if you think that’s bad, some of the Roma kids at my school had the same first and last names. Like Yussein Yussein or Idet Idet. I don’t know what was going on there.
Never mind.
I also mentioned Ochoa and Arregui, as two very common, real ones; the longass one I listed, I got out of my left elbow but by a method that has given rise to some of the longest Basque lastnames and which is often used by for example stand-up comics or people giving business presentations to generate a “Basque sounding name which probably nobody has”: take two long lastnames, stick them together (1). The majority of Basque names aren’t much longer than, say, Martínez - but the ones that stick in the memories of visitors are. It’s also the area of Spain (Navarra, Euskadi, La Rioja, Burgos) where it’s most common to find multi-word lastnames, adding to the “outsider” impression of “ohmyGawd, those Basque, they have such long names!”
Other Basque lastnames similar to yours and very common are Zabala and Zabalza (Zabala and Sabala are not the same one).
(1) Iturriaga and Goitía are both real Basque lastnames. There was a Councilor for Industry in Navarra called Nuria Iturriagagoitía - most people, upon hearing her lastname, would say something like “with that name, you must be Andalusian!” (ironic, that lastname is about as andalusian as the mermaid statue in Copenhagen) “yes, Andalusian from Pamplona, how did you know?” Whenever she was on national news, you could see the newscasters preparing to read the lastname like one would prepare to plunge into freezing water… and sometimes still manage to get the stresses wrong.
Ah. I’d wondered about that. I sold a futon to a gentleman at work whose last name was “Furniturewalla”. Although I’m very bad at remembering names I had no problem in this instance.
Does that mean “Ivana, daughter of Ivan, son of Ivan”, or “Ivana, daughter of Ivana, daughter of Ivan”, or what?