Traditional Japanese naming for boys, not followed as widely these days as in the past literally just gives each kid a number ordering them by cardinality. Ichiro = first son, Nichiro = second son, Saburo = third son and so on. I remember watching a TV show or maybe a movie from the black and white rerun era, where a stereotyped Asian father addressed his boys not by name but by number, as first son and second son and so on.
I thought at the time this was some kind of ignorant caricature of the traditional primacy given to the first male child of a family, though not at all exclusive to Asia rather overtly expressed there. I was quite surprised to find out later on that this was a pretty straightforward calque of a genuine custom.
Nice. Anglos have a similar but not so common tradition where kids (usually female children) are named after their birth month (April, May or June are common) or occasionally their birth weekday (eg. Wednesday Addams)
Interestingly Wednesday Adams was named after the nursery rhyme "Monday's Child", rather than the day she was born. The rhyme has the line "Wednesday's child is full of woe". In the Netflix show she's actually born on a Friday 13th.
This is pretty common in Indonesia as well, but they tend to have names that are similar but slightly different to the actual name of the month, like Febriana for the month Februari, Desi for Desember, etc…
According to Wikipedia, Akwasi Kwarteng, the British Chancellor of September to October 2022, was born on Monday 26 May 1975. But according to this “Akwasi” is a Sunday name. I wonder what happened?
> His economist father and barrister mother gave him a traditional Ashanti first name, meaning "born on Sunday", when he was actually born on a Monday. He told the BBC's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast his parents stayed silent on the matter when he jokingly pulled them up on it.
He was born in the UK, which shares the same time zone with Ghana. The local time would have differed by only one hour because of daylight saving time being observed in the UK but not in Ghana.
I had always heard that Roman names like Septimius and Octavia were given based on birth order within the family but this piece suggests it was more likely the number of the month of their birth:
There’s a Balinese tradition similar to this, where they have a few name options for each child in order up to the 4th child. If you have 5 or more children you start again from the first name and append “balik” which basically translates to “return to” or “again”.
In Spain it was common to name the children according to the catholic Saint's day. And because all saints had a day then your birthday was also called the day of your Saint. My mother and her siblings are all named with this system.
Reading about this kind of tradition got me thinking: do anyone name their children with phonetic names? I mean, names that can be read the same in several languages. For example: English-Spanish, French-English, etc. Is there a tradition on that?
I was named Roland because it exists in both Romanian (my mother's family) and Hungarian (dad's family). It's not pronounced exactly the same (the a is different), but it's easy enough for all grandparents. And I even learned both languages, much to the relief of my grandparents.
But I was almost named Julian, because my dad had the idea for Roland only when checking me out from maternity.
Yep, this is something my fiancé and I are actively planning for at the moment.
In her culture and language, having a native-sounding name provides an individual with all the societal advantages as a default. Conversely, possessing a non-native name, regardless of citizenship status, invariably leads to the perception of being a foreigner. This results in assumptions about language proficiency and a constant exceptionality.
So, we are deciding on names for our future children that would resonate as "native" in both English and her mother tongue.
What other content would you expect in an article about Akan names? If there's anything missing I think Wikipedia will let you update the article yourself
this is not a complaint, just asking how this is relevant to HN since the post didn't have any particular context. Clearly, this is a very interesting topic given more context and as the rest of the comments on the post do.
re: context - It is interesting, that is the context.
You can flag a post if it seems “not relevant” or “out of context” like the GO said. IMO that’s only really for posts in New or if you happen to find something off with a post after reading it. In general, I don’t think that should happen much on the front page - if it’s there it’s usually an indication that people found the post interesting!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_names (traditionally exactly one syllable long)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_name (in East Asian tradition, each generation gets the next syllable of a poem)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_naming_conventions (comprised of three parts, not two)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_names (surname is written first, unlike most European names)