What name is common in your country but not found anywhere else?
July 7, 2025
What name is common in your country but not found anywhere else?
15 comments
We have our local versions of names like Joris/Sjors (George) and Michiel (Michael).
But I’d say the only uniquely Dutch name is Marnix. Philip of Marnix, Lord of St. Aldegonde was a poet and diplomat during the 80 Years War, but mostly remembered as the author of what is now the national anthem, Het Wilhelmus. His credit is usually given as “Marnix van St. Aldegonde”, which made people think Marnix was actually his first name, and they started using it as such in the 1930s.
We have lots of Finnish names. Only few are found in any other language. “Timo” for instance is seen in Germany, “Jari” in the Netherlands. Even biblical and Latin names are Finlandized.
This are only tue top names currently popular. But I don’t know what kind of names every language of the world has. I didn’t include Slovenian names that are very obviously versions of Germanic, Latin or something else names, even though some are, like Neža (Agnes), Zala (Rosa), Špela (Elizabeth)…
Hardly anyone I think… most common names here would most likely be found in Sweden in swedish version. Though surely you would find rare names that are only found here, but they are not common, rather specific for a certain part of the country.
Currently used: Wojciech, Sławomir, Kazimierz, Mirosław, Miłosz, Zdzisław, Maja (some of the male names have/had female versions). Many more in the past: Mieszko, Jurand, Bolesław. Plus a lot of Jewish names
Not so common anymore but still used are names ending at slav. Vratislav, Jaroslav, Miroslav. There are other still used name but I don’t remember which were taken from other languages and converted to czech and which are genuinely czech.
Despite providing a lot of names that have become common in the world, the ancient Romans left some names here that didn’t become popular in other countries, especially in non neolatin speaking countries.
Flavi/o, Lavinia, Lucrezia, Loredana, Fabio.
I think uniquely Polish name is Lech, which is also a name of a legendary founder of our state and somehow associates as a synonym for a Pole in some languages, e.g. Lehistan.
It’s decently popular amongst men in their 60s and older, we had two presidents with it.
Another is Grażyna, a name that our national poet Adam Mickiewicz came up with.
There’s also a huge variety of Slavic names, but these can also be used in other Slavic countries in similar form.
I’m just going to list all of the originally Finnish names that are in the top 10 most popular names in Finland.
For men:
-Kalevi (Also present in Estonia as Kalev)
-Tapio (The name of the god of the forest in ancient Finnish mytholgy)
-Ilmari (A variation of the name Ilmarinen, who was a smith and the god of the heaven in Finnish mythology)
For Women:
The most popular originally Finnish women’s name is Annikki, which is the name of the daughter of the previously mentionefd forest God.
Thanos. It’s short for Athanasios which means “immortal”.
Now, before you go out and start making tatoo this thing, please understand that it the name is so common than I mostly imagine middle aged bald men with a slight belly when I hear it.
Almost all of them? We “polishify” foreign names so John is Jan, Sophie is Zofia, even modern baby names that came recently from the west like Brian must be written in polish way so it became Brajan, it’s just the law. Jessica became Dżesika. On top of that we have lots of Slavic names like Stanisław, Mirosław, Wojciech
I want to say *Duarte* as it’s of Portuguese origin and I believe is most common in Portugal but also found in other Portuguese-speaking countries. As a surname it’s more common to find it in other countries. It’s an alternative Portuguese version of the name *Edward* with *Eduardo* being more common (or at least it used to be).
Pretty sure *Fernão* is rare to find anywhere else outside of Portugal but even here it’s not exactly common these days. Like *Duarte* it’s an alternative version of another name, in this case *Fernando* which is so much more common. *Fernão* is pretty archaic all things considered.
The Rumantsch speakers have their own versions of common Names and a few unique ones.
We have a lot of Lithuanianized names which are common elsewhere, but I’m guessing that those don’t count. Like Jurgis, which is equivalent to George, Giorgi, Jurgen, etc. in other countries.
We do have a lot of unique names, which are nouns, like Saulė (the Sun), Deimantas (diamond), Rytis (eastern wind), Vakaris (western wind), Ieva (Mayday tree, but also Lithuanian version of the biblical Eve), Ąžuolas (oak tree), Eglė (spruce), Audra (storm), Aušrinė (sunrise) and many others.
There are hundreds of these unique Lithuanian names, they’re generally popular.
Latvia uses many names of foreign origin but still plenty with Baltic roots, those generally won’t exist anywhere else except some that have Lithuanian equivalents.
Male names like Visvaldis, Imants, Dzintars, Ritvars. Female names like Laimdota, Skaidrīte, Ausma, Laima, Teika. There are also names of foreign origin that have changed so much they’re hard to recognize, like the popular name Gatis originates from Gotthard, or the very Latvian Ilze is a derivation of Elizabeth originally.
15 comments
We have our local versions of names like Joris/Sjors (George) and Michiel (Michael).
But I’d say the only uniquely Dutch name is Marnix. Philip of Marnix, Lord of St. Aldegonde was a poet and diplomat during the 80 Years War, but mostly remembered as the author of what is now the national anthem, Het Wilhelmus. His credit is usually given as “Marnix van St. Aldegonde”, which made people think Marnix was actually his first name, and they started using it as such in the 1930s.
We have lots of Finnish names. Only few are found in any other language. “Timo” for instance is seen in Germany, “Jari” in the Netherlands. Even biblical and Latin names are Finlandized.
Lovro, Lan, Bine, Maj, Žan, Gal, Nace, Brin, Val, Bor, Nejc, Anže, Tine, Anej, Tian, Svit, Matic, Gaber…
Zala, Ajda, Zarja, Neža, Pika, Ota, Ula, Živa, Neja, Inja, Manca, Taja, Meta, Ina, Špela…
This are only tue top names currently popular. But I don’t know what kind of names every language of the world has. I didn’t include Slovenian names that are very obviously versions of Germanic, Latin or something else names, even though some are, like Neža (Agnes), Zala (Rosa), Špela (Elizabeth)…
Hardly anyone I think… most common names here would most likely be found in Sweden in swedish version. Though surely you would find rare names that are only found here, but they are not common, rather specific for a certain part of the country.
Currently used: Wojciech, Sławomir, Kazimierz, Mirosław, Miłosz, Zdzisław, Maja (some of the male names have/had female versions). Many more in the past: Mieszko, Jurand, Bolesław. Plus a lot of Jewish names
Not so common anymore but still used are names ending at slav. Vratislav, Jaroslav, Miroslav. There are other still used name but I don’t remember which were taken from other languages and converted to czech and which are genuinely czech.
Despite providing a lot of names that have become common in the world, the ancient Romans left some names here that didn’t become popular in other countries, especially in non neolatin speaking countries.
Flavi/o, Lavinia, Lucrezia, Loredana, Fabio.
I think uniquely Polish name is Lech, which is also a name of a legendary founder of our state and somehow associates as a synonym for a Pole in some languages, e.g. Lehistan.
It’s decently popular amongst men in their 60s and older, we had two presidents with it.
Another is Grażyna, a name that our national poet Adam Mickiewicz came up with.
There’s also a huge variety of Slavic names, but these can also be used in other Slavic countries in similar form.
I’m just going to list all of the originally Finnish names that are in the top 10 most popular names in Finland.
For men:
-Kalevi (Also present in Estonia as Kalev)
-Tapio (The name of the god of the forest in ancient Finnish mytholgy)
-Ilmari (A variation of the name Ilmarinen, who was a smith and the god of the heaven in Finnish mythology)
For Women:
The most popular originally Finnish women’s name is Annikki, which is the name of the daughter of the previously mentionefd forest God.
Thanos. It’s short for Athanasios which means “immortal”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_(given_name)
Now, before you go out and start making tatoo this thing, please understand that it the name is so common than I mostly imagine middle aged bald men with a slight belly when I hear it.
Almost all of them? We “polishify” foreign names so John is Jan, Sophie is Zofia, even modern baby names that came recently from the west like Brian must be written in polish way so it became Brajan, it’s just the law. Jessica became Dżesika. On top of that we have lots of Slavic names like Stanisław, Mirosław, Wojciech
I want to say *Duarte* as it’s of Portuguese origin and I believe is most common in Portugal but also found in other Portuguese-speaking countries. As a surname it’s more common to find it in other countries. It’s an alternative Portuguese version of the name *Edward* with *Eduardo* being more common (or at least it used to be).
Pretty sure *Fernão* is rare to find anywhere else outside of Portugal but even here it’s not exactly common these days. Like *Duarte* it’s an alternative version of another name, in this case *Fernando* which is so much more common. *Fernão* is pretty archaic all things considered.
The Rumantsch speakers have their own versions of common Names and a few unique ones.
Some male; Duri, Reto, Men, Cla, Iso, Giachen, Göri, Riet, Gudench.
Some female: Neisa, Bignia, Barbla
We have a lot of Lithuanianized names which are common elsewhere, but I’m guessing that those don’t count. Like Jurgis, which is equivalent to George, Giorgi, Jurgen, etc. in other countries.
We do have a lot of unique names, which are nouns, like Saulė (the Sun), Deimantas (diamond), Rytis (eastern wind), Vakaris (western wind), Ieva (Mayday tree, but also Lithuanian version of the biblical Eve), Ąžuolas (oak tree), Eglė (spruce), Audra (storm), Aušrinė (sunrise) and many others.
There are hundreds of these unique Lithuanian names, they’re generally popular.
Latvia uses many names of foreign origin but still plenty with Baltic roots, those generally won’t exist anywhere else except some that have Lithuanian equivalents.
Male names like Visvaldis, Imants, Dzintars, Ritvars. Female names like Laimdota, Skaidrīte, Ausma, Laima, Teika. There are also names of foreign origin that have changed so much they’re hard to recognize, like the popular name Gatis originates from Gotthard, or the very Latvian Ilze is a derivation of Elizabeth originally.