Saturday, March 2, 2013

The name game

In chile people have at least three names. Most commonly they have four. For example, Lori would officially be, Lori Lee McLaren McLeod (makes me want to call her Lori Mac-Mac; also makes me want to call her dad Big Mac and her mom little Mac). The extra last name is carried around to help differentiate people, making it seem that there is either a scarcity of popular Chilean names or that there are way too many children!
In any case, in an attempt (I think) to bring in more names to the Spanish culture children are now being called English names. My cousin has a friend "John". But there is also a Jonathan, spelled "Yonaton" or a Brian spelled "Braiyan" or, possibly the best, a combo name "Brai-naton" (I put the hyphen for reading purposes otherwise it would read like Brain-aton).

As you can probably imagine, Justin has also become a popular name. But since "j" makes an "h" sound in Spanish, the spelling has to be modified. So, Justin becomes either Yastin or even better, Llastin, where the double "l" makes a similar to "j" sound in english. Imagine if that boy moved to an English speaking country!

So, this leads me to what my potential children would be named. Do I go English name and Spanish last name? That leaves him with a weird double cultural name, like Steven Perez or Lars Perez. Maybe I use a transitioning middle name, a name common to both languages like, Frank Benjamin Perez. Or maybe I just go all out and celebrate the double culture name with something like Wayne Lu Arquimides Perez.

Maybe it doesn't matter what I think because Lori would decide.

PS. My passport only has one last name

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