babynames | (no subject)

How do you feel about giving your children a name that is not from your own country/culture?

Thing is, I like a lot of English/French names, but I'd feel uncomfortable giving any of my future children one of those names because I'm 100% Dutch and I've got no connection to neither England nor France. The only option I see is to marry a Frenchman and emigrate to another country :D (the latter I am planning on doing anyway).

And just for fun, some of my favourite names. In between the brackets are in which language to pronounce it in ~~now that is one awkward sentence~~. No brackets means it's pronounced in English.

Male
Andrew
Henry
Drake
Joseph
Alexei (Russian)
Frank (both English and Dutch)
Kai
Valentijn (Dutch)
Jean-Baptiste (French)
Luke
Ruben (Dutch)
Abel* (Dutch)
Nicholas

Female
Augustine (French)
Marie (I'm really lucky this name isn't such a popular middle name here.. I know every one US citizen and their mother are named FirstName Marie, but here in the NL it is actually pretty uncommon/old fashioned) (French)
Anna/Annie (Dutch/English)
Betty
Noëlle (French)
Sofie* (Dutch)
Hilde (Dutch)
Vlinder* (Means Butterfly. Really tacky in English, but in Dutch it somehow just works) (Dutch)
Sterre* (Ster means Star. Same as above) (Dutch)
Benthe (Dutch)
Mathilde (Dutch)
Johanna
Madelief* (Dutch)
Mirthe/Myrthe (Dutch)
Claire

* - These names are mostly used by those trendy young moms who bring their kids to school with bakfietsen before they go to their full-time job. Though that could be a Dutch-only phenomenon :p

So. What do you think? :)

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Love, love, LOVE Henry.
It's my top boy's name; it's fabulous.

Henry is an amazing name. It's so masculine and also sweet. One of my favourites.

I like Luke, but I like it the French way - Luc. =] Love Andrew & Anna, but prefer it with one N.

I'm fairly against it. Living in America, a lot of names seem to have lost a lot of their ethnicity, but, well, example: I love Finland, and because I hate so many boys names I would love to find a good Finnish boys name, but I'm not Finnish, I'm like, 100th generation American with German and Ukranian (and other assorted E. European) heritage, who has never lived in Finland, so I feel like if I were to give my kid a Finnish name, it would be inappropriate. I feel the same way about ridiculously white American parents who have never left the country giving their kids names that are Indian, Arabic, Gaelic, etc just because they sound cool and are exotic. No, if you have ties to that culture, if you haven't even lived there, you shouldn't that's specific to that ethnicity.

There are also a lot of great names that have started to defy ethnicities, like Maria, which is originally Latin, and can be seen in just about every culture.

I really like Hebrew names, especially for boys (Sam, Jake, Ben, Noah, Elijah, Asher, etc.) but I'm not even slightly Jewish.

I don't think it matters in most cases and I don't think it'd be a big deal if you named your kids the names you like. I think it would be kind of...weird, I guess, if someone who was Catholic and had no connection to Islam whatsoever named their son Mohammed, or if someone who was totally not religious at all named their kid Jesus or something. But in most cases, I don't think it matters.

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Yeah I basically agree with rynanne. A name is a name no matter what culture or country it comes from and I think it shouldnt matter. though in my own specifics, it has to have a meaning to me. but as for anyone else go ahead and name your child with an indian name or french or whatever name :)

I think there's absolutely no problem with it. The only time it kind of bothers me is when the first and last names are clearly of different origins. Like, if you had Jose O'Riordan or Seamus Fernandez. But even that isn't a HUGE deal.

I really love the name Kai. It almost seems to be universal as either a name or a word (i.e. in Hawaiian and Japanese it means "the sea")

I love Japanese names like Hikari and Tarou. I think I could get away with Kari and maybe Tarou if I changed the spelling to Taro. (Or else somebody could call the kid Tah-ru!) I guess I'll just have to find myself a Japanese husband.

I think you can use names outside of your own culture within reason. For example, I don't care for Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's choice to name their baby girl Suri because it sounds very Persian to me and neither seem to have any connection to the culture. It sounds misplaced, but that's my opinion. Most of the names on your list look adaptable to me, though. The only problem I can think of is if say you wanted Frank pronounced with a long "a" you would be correcting people all the time.

i'm not aginast it at all.
i'm american and i love french, spanish, and latin names as well as english names, too.
my favorites from your list: Andrew, Henry, Drake, Luke, Abel, Noëlle, Sofie, Sterre, and Mathilde

I think it's easy to have no problem with it if you're American because America is mix of different cultures anyway. I think it would be odd for an Italian baby to be named Jean-Baptiste or Atticus Benjamin, or whatever.

When we were naming our children, I certainly wasn't ruling out any names that weren't Latin-based, but I didn't want anything too "out there", to where their names would sound misplaced on them.

i really like henry and nicholas from the boys' list, and noelle and sofie from the girls'. :)

Yeah, I have this problem a lot.

I love Momoko and Yuki (Japanese), Priya (Indian) and Kenya which doesn't really fit my culture.

I know of quite a few Dutch girls named Miriam, which is also fairly common as a French name (and possibly English as well). My paternal grandmother is Dutch, and both she and her mom are named Christine.

Love the bakfietsen, by the way. Lots of people around here haul their kidlest around in stuff like this (http://www.livingincomfort.com/images/indoor-store-baby---kids-stuff-strollers-jogging-strollers-kool-stop-trailers_thumb.jpg).

I knew a Dutch Miriam, too, once. Lots of Miriam/Myriam in Europe in general, I've noticed (I'm one, Canadian, and the only other ones I hear of are French, Dutch, or English. Go figure). Not enough to be trendy, but not so rare that people do a double-take.

Also, how much sense does having the kids in front make? Why do we let our kids hang out in trailers where we can't see them, and they can easily get detached or try to crawl out or something? I ever have kids (god forbid), I'm totally having one of those suckers imported. :P

Ah, Madelief is on my list as well =) (I'm Dutch too). I plan on living somewhere else in the future, so I'd have no problem with giving my kid a foreign name, especially because I like a lot of English names =).
But if you have a very Dutch surname, de Vries for example, I think it sounds pretty lame if you name your kid Gregory or something =P
Of course there are also names that aren't originally Dutch (I'm using Dutch as an example because...well...we are =P) but sound good anyway because we're used to them, such as Isabelle & Kirsten. (French and Scandinavian names).
PS. Lol @ the bakfietsen...makes me think of the series 'Evelien' ;)

For the most part, I don't usually have a problem when people name their kids names that are derived from other cultures.. unless the names are very distinctly from another culture. my sisters family is greek so i know my share of greek names. we met a kid of eastern european descent with the name stavros. that just seemed pretty odd to me.

You must like my name then! I'm Claire Maree

Anna is my favourite girls name and Joseph is my favourite boys name so I think you have fantastic taste :P

I like Sterre and Claire for girls, and for boys my favorites are Ruben and Abel

I have the same 'problem' *sigh*

Luckily, I'm only 21 so I still have a lot of time to think about it :P

Ruben, Sterre & Noëlle are on my list too. Sofie once was, until I met someone that was once a friend but now only irritates me. I always think about her when I hear the name, so it's off the list :P