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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

Ah, like how in my home country, it’s a ‘well known fact’ that people lower on the economic ladder like to give their children foreign sounding names, whereas people that are well off give their children traditional, and even double traditional names.

Guess the country :)

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That's common but sometimes the cause is not what you would think.

In Spain there are many people with foreign or uncommon names... that are also biblical names. Abraham, Sarah, Aaron, Jonathan or Josuah (Josué) were unheard half a century ago. Now they're usual.

Why? In part, because Evangelical missionaries were more successful in poor quarters, specially among gypsies.

Also there's the famous actors thing. But now Vanessa also sounds natural enough.

Probably these names were actually prohibited half a century ago, when only the (Castilian Spanish) names of Catholic saints were allowed

Biblical names forbidden? I don't think so.

Actually not even foreign names. IIRC only names that were insulting or prone to be laughed at were forbidden.

During that time the civil servants working at the registry had ample provision to decide what names would or wouldn't fly, and many made up their own rules. This led to quite different rules in different parts of Spain.

That being said, these were civil servants under a fascist catholic dictatorship, so you can imagine that the range went from "only catholic saint names in spanish" to "if it sounds spanish-enough to me I'll allow it". Foreign names (John) were not allowed in most cases, just like they didn't allow names in any of the other languages of spain such as Joan (catalan), Jon (vasque), Xoán (galician).

Thailand

I guess it’s more common than I thought xD

Italy?

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