Moa (moa1918) wrote in linguaphiles,
Moa
moa1918
linguaphiles

What's in a name?

Personal names are an important part of language, yet names are often considered outside the sphere of language learning, instead belonging to the sphere of culture. In my own language learning experience, usually the teaching of names are limited to a few names that are used in textbooks, and maybe the names of a few important public figures that show up during the course.

What are your experiences with language learning and names? Do you have any resources for learning more about names to share with us?

I'll start with Swedish names, since I'm from Sweden. :)

The site "Svenska namn" is a fun site with lists of the most common names in Sweden. It's written for parents, but don't let that stop you.
http://svenskanamn.alltforforaldrar.se/

As you can see, the most common last names all end in -son. That's because of historical reasons, way back the men were called father's name + son and women were called father's name + dotter, later those names with -son turned into hereditary last names (is that the right expression for that?).

I'll also add a good resource for German last names, that I found recently:
http://www.onomastik.com/haeufige_familiennamen1.php
It's about German last names, and especially the names that denotes jobs, such as Müller (miller in English I guess?).

Lastly, it's very interesting to look through the tag "names" here on the Linguaphiles community. You can waste a lot of time doing that, as I just did. ;)
Tags: links, names
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