Not much, I thought. Since arriving in Sudan about 10 days ago, I've met with 7 people called Ahmed. Most of them happen to be Egyptian. Not like I have enough to juggle in my mind, now I have to figure out which Ahmed is Ahmed. Particularly challenging because I work with 4 of them.
Now I realize why people have 3 (sometimes 4) names. It's to tell appart one Ahmed from another. To make things worse, two of the Ahmeds share the second name too! Talk about naming strategies.
The most popular name in the world was determined to be Mohammed. There are more Mohammeds in the world than any Tom, Dick and Harry. I found that to be true in Saudi, or the Gulf countries in general. So if the Gulf stands for Mohammed, Egypt stands for Ahmed, Potugal stands for Ana, I think I see a trend going here. In another couple of generations we would be able to determine someone's nationality by their first name, their city by their second name, their neighbourhood by their third name, and their family by their family name.
That's why they call it the family name!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I found another Wissam Kazzaz in UAE, remember? He was actually from Lebanon as well, so I guess it all makes sense...
Next Ana you'll meet will not be from Portugal though, but from Spain :), you'll see!
As for Rock, there is no other :), right?
Beijinhos
75% of portuguese men are Manuel or Joaquim, or even Manuel Joaquim. 15% of them are Rui and 9% are Nuno. It's impossible to visit Portugal without knowing someone who has one of the 4 names mentioned above. The last 1% is composed of other names.
Which reminds me of Ahmad Azizi in Monrovia, Liberia, remember him? His little sister's name is Rania, and they used to come play tennis in the courts next to our house and our parents knew their parents. He was like a tennis pro or something, and guess where he's from? Yeap, Egypt!
Birra.
Well, the anonymous who wrote the percentages about Portuguese male names forgot the famous, beautiful but NOT so uncommon, ANTONIO!!
Maybe that's why my parents tried to be original and gave me this piglet name (which is the meaning of Leitao in Portuguese!!). Lucky me, eh??
Beijos, Antonio L.
Cool, keep the statistics coming in! I'm impressed at your knowlege of global nomenclature.
Post a Comment