For only the obvious reasons I've been thinking about names in Serbian/Croatian. What kind of name can you give to a baby girl with a mixed heritage? Amidst all the Jelenas, Tanjas, Mirjanas, Tijanas & Bojanas, there are some real gems. Some beautiful, and some, well, even if they are not ugly, they are, well, difficult.
I think that SerboCroatian produced some of the funniest names in history. For example, quaint, charming, and out-of-the-question for us is Traktorka, probably given to many peasant farmers' daughters in the newly industrialised Yugoslavia as a tribute to the biggest equipment purchase of his life. It would be like an American calling his daughter Fixedtermilina or something. Right up there with Hitlerina is Staljinka, derived from the short-lived friendship with the Soviet Union. Equally frightening is Mašinka , which I read is a direct tribute not (as you might think from the sound) to machine, but to a Tommy Gun (machine gun). It does, however, have a cute diminuitve: Maša which you might never associated with an implement of war. Admittedly these are all names G's grandmother's generation, and I doubt many people kept them to the present day.
Elsewhere there are relatively common names that would stymie easy friendships with the English speaking world only owing to unpronouncability. For example, Ksena and Tihana both require you essentially to gob while saying them. Other names look like somebody forgot a letter, like Smiljka which I have simply never been able to say correctly quickly, or the male name Grgur (Gregory or Gregor) that would at least require some coaching for the non-Serbian family members to pronounce. To this day my family members have to do a little jump when they pronounce the island Krk and even then they don't say it right.
I think, on balance, we can't be too creative here. Two syllables max, and no messing about with R-as-a-vowel, or sounds that hurt the mouth of a non-native speaker. Ana, Marija, Mila, Ema?
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4 comments:
I've always been a fan of Neda and Nevena. I think they sound beautiful, are culturally flexible, and are not as common as some of the other names.
Here you go:
http://www.behindthename.com/nmc/ser.php
Btw, I think short names are cute, but you can't make a nickname from a short name, like Nicholas -> Nick. So, kids will get nicknames by their appearance, skill (or no skill), etc.. Think of that, if you want to name your baby :)
I've actually never heard of anybody named Staljinka or Mašinka in real life... Maybe I'm not old enough. I've heard of mostly Roma (gypsy) kids named Tarzan and Brusli (Bruce Lee), or girl names Kasandra and Marisol (from Spanish language soap operas).
As far as baby girl names, I would go for Ana (or Anna), or perhaps Ema (Emma). They're both international names, short and elegant, easy to pronounce and very feminine. With classic names like that you can't go wrong, because they never go out of fashion. If you want a more original name, well, Mila (Milla) is the quintessential Serbian name and also English language friendly. Also Lana (which could be short for Svetlana or a name in itself), Mina or Marina. It depends on what goes best with the last name.
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