Would you use a name from another culture?

Would you use a name from another culture?

This is the nameberry question of the week: Would you  give your child a name from an ethnicity other than your own?

….more specifically, would you choose a name which has not been fully integrated into Anglo-American nomenclature and would be in contrast to your surname?

Sometimes this can make for a felicitous combination–one example  that springs to mind is newscaster Soledad O’Brien.  And there are certainly plenty of Seans and Ryans with non-Gaelic/Celtic surnames.

But how about you?  If your last name was Magee, would you name your son Adriano?

If your surname was Greenberg, would you call your daughter Siobhan?

Or do you feel that a child’s name should reflect his/her own ethnic ancestry?

About the Author

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz is the co-founder of Nameberry, and co-author with Pamela Redmond of the ten baby naming books acknowledged to have revolutionized American baby naming. You can follow her personally at InstagramTwitter and Facebook. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed New York Review Books Classics novel Talk and a number of other books.