Romancing the Name: Melissa to Melisande

ROMANCING THE NAME: MELISSA TO MELISANDE – Baby Name Blog – Nameberry…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 am and is filed under French baby names, Italian baby names, Spanish baby names, Uncategorized, boys’ names, ethnic baby names, exotic baby names, family names, girls’ names, ……

Brilliant post!

Lovely list of names! My favorites are Engracia and Sansone.

Love this list!

Esteban was a contender for our son’s middle name, after an uncle Steve. (Stephen was out because the first name HAD to be Alexander and our last name starts with S.) But my husband boycotted it. Too bad, because I’ve never totally loved our son’s middle name.

And Matteo is another fave, but my little sister has threatened me with bodily harm if I steal it.

There are tons of great Leo- names. My favorite for a girl is Leocadia, after the saint. And for a boy, Leonidas – though I suppose the movie 300 has made that one less obscure.

I thought the translation of James is Santiago – Diego is David.

I think you’ll find that Diego is the Spanish form of James and Santiago means St. James–a melding of the words for saint and James.
According to my Spanish name reference, David is used as such.

None of the original names on this list seemed very plain or awful to me. I would have liked to see transformations of some names that are more stodgy like Jane/Joan/Jean, Marlene or Betty.

There are some really great suggestions on this list. I love Paolo and Matteo.

Adriana is starting to become so popular that Adrienne is beginning to look fresh to me.

I greatly enjoyed this post, although I have to say that I’ve met far more Biancas in my life than Blanches.

2 of my friends have daughters named Leonie (both pronounced wrong) because I told them that I waned to name my future daughter that! KEEP YOUR NAMES TO YOURSELF LADIES!

Nice list. I sort of get what the commenter who asked about plain Jane names us saying. Most of these are not romanticizing or latinizing Anglo names, but taking one Romance language name and finding its equivalent in another Romance language. Victoria, Lousia, Genevieve ets are all ALREADY “foreign”, in that sense. Interesting because it shows how over time, we bring names into the name pool and no longer see them as being foreign.

The problem with several of these is that they sound awful in an english accent.
I am currently trying to find names that sound nice in both english and spanish because we divide our time pretty evenly between north and south america and am coming up blank because of just this problem. There are very traditional names like Julian, sara, david, etc that can be pronounced nicely in both languages but the problem is that everyone I know who lives a life immeresed in both Spanish/English has already named their children these names…

Some sound nice in English–even to a spanish speaker’s ears–but really Flor? how will this sound different than floor? And also remember that regardless of how good your french italian or spanish is many of the people your child will know will call (tadeo): “tah day oh” (the soft e is difficult for english speakers and the “o” will sound like the “oh” of “oh no!”) Graziella likewise sounds ghastly in english as the ella part would most likely pronounced like the ella in ella fitzgerald–which sounds lovely alone but not so nice connected to what may end up sounding like Grassy….

My parents were kind enough to give me a bilingually appropriate name. My brother was not so lucky… What two people that had lived most of their lives in spanish speaking countries were thinking when they called him Stuart, I can’t begin to think–he was called Estuarrr most of his life. Horrible.

I’m sorry, but Jaquetta REALLY reminds me of the Spanish word for jacket (chaqueta, I think). Some of these are really lovely!

Does anyone have an idea on how to change up Edna?

Edna -> Ethna/Eithne.