A person must somehow designate himself and his kind. The first step was the selection in the human consciousness of the people from all the other living inhabitants of the planet Earth. The next step was the isolation of their own tribe, a kind from other people. The final step was the selection of self-identification of their own "I" from its community. When did this thing, "I", it was in need of some sort of naming convention that would be suitable for use around - nothing but confusion and chaos, would not leave, call each itself only "I" and is trying to communicate with tribesmen and relatives. Therefore, as the designation of a person name is displayed.

Name - Mirror man

Thus, in general, very simplistic terms, looks like one of the most likely scenarios appearance of names in the scientific sphere painted on the many, many hundreds and thousands of pages of theses, monographs, and other tomes. The scientists, including historians, linguists, psychologists, and many more who still argue over the nuances of the emergence and development of the names in the human community. However, most of them converge in the main - the original names are just nicknames, based primarily on the personal qualities of the person, on its external features or important, for whatever reasons, the facts of his biography.

All of us in childhood with a certain degree of interest in reading adventure books and watched adventure of the North American Indians .  It seemed funny names, like the fleet-footed deer or the Great heel and we are then, of course, did not think that all human names as the first ancestors have approximately the same nickname .  With the development of human society, culture and religion, the names become difficult, they are fixed in the capacity of independent parts of speech, losing its original meaning directly .  With the formation of dialects and linguistic groups appear different-sounding names that have common roots, interact with each other .  The name appeared in one ethnic group, fell into another language environment, transformed and acquired a new meaning (the Hebrew name John in different nations has become this kind, Ivan, Johann, John, Ian, Giovanni, Juan, and so on) .

How to choose names

If you ask parents to question why they have chosen for their child a particular name, response options can be set from "well, we do not know, just sounding like ..." to "in our family tradition to alternate names Vladimir and Victor ... ". But there are a number of reasons that parents are guided in choosing the name most often. If we speak about the traditional orthodox method, the name of the newborn anoint according to Svyatka (Christmastide or mesyatseslov - church calendar, which reflects the major religious holidays and memorial days of saints) to give the child the name of a saint or holy day whose memory (which) fell birthday, or the day of baptism, or in the interval between these events, or on the third day after birth or baptism. In the Russian Orthodox Church traditionally do not baptize infants in the name of Jesus is a sign of reverence for the name of the Savior.

Modern parents can easily find out about the meaning of any name and, if they want their son to be brave, call him Andrew, as if unwilling to daughter grew quiet and obedient, called Galina .  Also, the increasing popularity acquires naming according to various astrological systems and horoscopes .  Often, the choice of name affects modern fashion for any name (in Russia are especially popular Alexandra, Vladimir and Sergey), or some significant event associated with a particular person (during the Olympic Games of 1998 in the world a lot of the boys have been named Paul in honor of the hockey player Pavel Bure ) .  However, most of the approach to the choice of the name of a purely worldly and based on the fact that the name was associated with the middle name of his father, for example, fathers are not at risk Ivana called Maries daughters, fathers and siblings called Sergey Alexandrov undisguised ambitious plans .  Well, there is a category of parents who decide to be original and come up with specific names of the children: for example, in the 1930s in the Soviet Union there were girls named Traktorina, and Cosmos Kholmogorov from the series "Brigade" is very real namesakes .

Name: history and geography

Given that the modern world is becoming smaller, and national distinctions are increasingly blurred, more and more there is an international phenomenon, including generic names, yet the specificity of the name in different countries is preserved. For example, in English-speaking countries traditionally accepted to give a child two names, the first - most importantly, a personal name, and middle name. In addition, the English names are curious in that they had a considerable influence national literature. It works great English writers created a lot of names that have become part of the English language: for example, the works of Shakespeare, his privnёs England names like Julia, Jessica, Sylvia; Jonathan Swift expanded the list of names at the expense of the Stele and Vanessa and Scott and Byron affected the distribution of "Manfred" and "Ralph".

In France, as in many countries with a Catholic cultural roots, the child also receives the name of a composite of the three names. And now give names arbitrarily, but there is a fairly old tradition of naming: the first son in the family got the name of his grandfather on his father's, grandfather's name on the mother and the name of the saint, on whose day has dropped baptism; first daughter received the name of maternal grandmother, paternal grandmother's name and the name of "their" saint; He gets the name of the second son of the father paternal grandfather, father's name maternal grandmother and the name of "their" saint; second daughter received the name of the mother maternal grandmother, mother's name paternal grandfather and the name of "their" saint.

And here in Germany for parents is legally entitled to give the child as many names as they want, and in any desired combination .  Therefore, among the Germans can meet people with the same name as a well as a composite with a name consisting of a dozen simple names .  However, German law has a clear set of criteria for determining what names people do not have the right to give: the names recognized by the court immoral and abusive child; the names that can offend the followers of one or another officially recognized religious movement (for example, the name of Judas); parents can not themselves choose to invent names or as the name of the names of cities, cars or culinary dishes, there is an official list of the existing international names; name must wear a gender dimension, ie correctly determine the sex of the child - in the event of confusion necessarily adoption of the second name determines the sex of unconditional .

Alexander Babitsky

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