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boys' names that sound good both in English and Italian
I'm originally from Italy but I've been living abroad for a few years and I'm not planning to move back. I'm quite focussed on my studies carreer right now and don't plan to have children any time soon, but still sometimes I like to fantasize about what I would name my future kids. I'd want them to have names that sound good both in English and Italian so they would feel at ease no matter where they are. For girls it's relatively easy, basically most names ending in -a would work just fine and I have a few ideas (Rowena, Zipporah, Elena, Anna). For boys it's a bit more complicated, especially as some Anglo-Saxon names, especially the trendier and newer ones, can sound very tacky in Italian as sometimes people pick them from American TV shows. One solution would be for the kid to have a name with close equivalents such as Sebastiano/Sebastian, or an Italian name with an English nn, eg he could be named Michele and go by Mike. To complicate matters further, I've suffered from having a very popular name and wouldn't want to inflict that on my kids, yet I intensely dislike yooniq names as well, so names that are trendy/surnamey/ words are more or less out of the pictures. The names I prefer fall in the "traditional yet unusual" category. I also like Hebrew names. Does anyone have any ideas? Sorry if this is a bit long and complicated...
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I have a friend who is Italian, but lives in the US. Her name is Antonia and she goes by Toni. Her 4 sons are Michael, Benito, Francesco and Joseph. Benito and Francesco go by Ben and Frankie, so they're easy to pronounce.
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Luca, Matteo, Alessandro, and Lorenzo all pop to mind. I like the idea of an Italian name with an English nickname, too.
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Hmmm. An interesting task. Here in the U.S., names are getting pretty international (a good thing) so I can see some Italian names blending right in. How about:Alessandro (nn Sandro)
Vincenzo (nn Vince)
Samuele (nn Sam)
Roberto (nn Rob, Bertie, Robin)
Tomaso (nn Tom)
Marco (I've always loved this and thought it would make such a dashing name for a man anywhere in the world)
Nicolo (nn Nick)
Leonardo (nn Leo)
Marius (does ancient Rome count?)
Armando
Matteo
Carlo
Bernardo [nn Bear? ;-)]Have you ever considered Marco?
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I have a similar predicament. I need a name which sounds good in both Portuguese and English. Added to this my grandparents are Ukrainian speakers. At the moment we've agreed on with Ivan, Alexei, Claudia and Nadine/ Nadia.I completely agree that is harder for boys than girls!Some suggestions:Alessandro nn Sandro- I really love this and don't think it is too hard for English speakers.
Andrea
Antony/ Antonio
Adriano
Benedetto or Beniamino nn Ben
Carlo
Cristiano nn Cris
Frediano nn Freddie
Luca
Paolo
Leonardo nn Leo
Lorenzo nn Laurie
Ludovico nn Ludo
Massimo/ Massimiliano
Matteo
Nicolo
Salvatore nn Sal
Teodoro/ Teodosio nn Teo
Tommaso nn Tom
Vincenzo nn Vin or VincePerhaps you'll like one of these. I think the important thing is to get together a list of names you really like. Then you can start to take into account the complications and which you'd really use. I hope this helped somehwat.
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When we named our children, we had to be careful not to use any with a "th" sound, which is so difficult in French. No Meridth. No Judith. No Ruth.
Our last name sounds like a handfull of pins, all w's and i's, but at least anyone can say it.
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I agree that one should look out for problem sounds, you don't want people to be tripping over the name of your child all the time. I'm sure it wouldn't make the kid feel to great either.You're lucky with the ln being workable for everyone. L.'s ln has the Portuguese "yo" sound spelt ho. English people sometimes say it like hoe and L. refuses to correct them because he says he isn't English and he gets loads of English sounds wrong. I do have to have a quick giggle when people do it though, it reminds me of Father Christmas saying "Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!".
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thanks everyone! that was quite insightful ...... and btw, Marco would be a good option, but I think it's overused in Italy these days...

This message was edited 7/1/2007, 2:17 PM

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