View Message

Some Italian names
Lately I'm in love with Italian names. I love so many of them. What do you think? And which ones are your favorites? Oh and if you happen to live/have lived in Italy could you tell me how the names are perceived there? (dated, modern, trendy, trashy, classic, young etc).The names aren't necessary of Italian origin but used in Italy, I suppose:Giada (I think this is so pretty but I find Jade tacky so I wonder if it is perceived similarly in Italy)
Aurora (love the Italian pronunciation)
Raffaella (this make me think of angels, it's so cute)
Liliana
Alessia
Daniela or Daniella (which spelling would be used in Italy?)
Arianna
Alessandra
Francesca (would this be dated?)Oh and do you know whether I can find the Italian top 100 (any year) somewhere? Girls only.
Archived Thread - replies disabled
vote up1

Replies

I'm Italian born and bred, so I'm a bit biased towards the category. If I ever have kids they'll have Italian names or in an Italian form. For the ones you mention:Giada this is indeed slightly tacky but not terrible either. Definitely a "young" name, and not very common.
Aurora not very common for any age.
Raffaella this is a classic, but not super-common either. Can be found in any age (I think a lot of names don't die out for the practice of naming children after grandparents).
Liliana not very common, maybe more widespread for middle-aged women-
Alessia common-ish for women under 30, uncommon for older women.
Daniela or Daniella (which spelling would be used in Italy?)Daniela is the preferred form. It's common-ish for women in their 20s and 30s, not so much older ones.
Arianna Also common-ish for women in their early 30s and 20s, pratically unheard of for older women.
Alessandra common for under 30s or so as well and not so much for older women.
Francesca (would this be dated?)this is my name, and it's really, really popular. It was relatively rare before the late 1970s (ironically, that's why my parents picked it). You'd imagine it would be considered dated by now, but bafflingly it's still used quite a lot on baby girls.Except Aurora,Giada, Liliana and partly Raffaella, these feel like quite typical names of my generation (I'm 30).Frustratingly, I've never been able to find Italian popularity lists. The closest I could get to is this: http://www.nomix.it/classifiche.php No idea how reliable it is.

This message was edited 1/28/2010, 6:04 AM

vote up1
I've never lived in (or been to) Italy, so I can't help you there. The only female Italians I know are named Dalila and Alessandra.
From your list, my favourites are Alessandra and Francesca. Raffaella has been growing on me, but I do prefer Rafaela (I like Rafael for a boy).
Daniela, I think, is the form that'd be used in Italy, but I could be wrong. All the Italian Danielas I've heard of have spelled their name with one L. It's a nice name, but not one I've ever been particularly attracted to.
Aurora & Liliana are okay... I do prefer Aurelia, though.
Giada, Alessia and Arianna aren't ones I really like, sorry.ETA: I found a list of the 30 most common names for 2007 (I think that's what it says. I don't understand much Italian)-
http://demo.istat.it/altridati/IscrittiNascita/2007/T3.3.pdf

This message was edited 1/28/2010, 5:17 AM

vote up1