Best answer
Puff, that is a big list.
Boys:
Mariano, Javier, Andrés, José or Jose, Gabriel, Daniel, Fernando, David, Ignacio (nicknamed ‘Nacho’), Manuel, Jose Manuel (together) , Samuel, Jonás, José, Jacobo, Álvaro, Manolo, Jesús, José María (together), Carlos, Antonio, Francisco, Juan, Pedro, Miguel, Angel, Luís, Ramón, José Luís (together), Luís, José Antonio (together), Rafael, Juan Miguel (together) , Miguel Ángel (together) , Juan Carlos (together), Francisco Javier (together), Rubén, Sergio, Alberto, Alejandro, Iván, Pablo, Adrián, Jorge.
Girls:
María, Carmen, Dolores, Francisca, Antonia, María Carmen (together), Isabel, Pilar, Concepción, María Pilar (together), María Teresa (together), Teresa, Ageda, María Ángeles (together), María Isabel (together), Ana María (together), Cristina, Mónica, Raquel, Lucía, Sonia, Susana, Yolanda, Sara, Marta, Patrícia, Beatriz, Verónica, Laura, Andrea, Ana, Alba, Paula, Sandra, Nerea, Clara, Leire, Juana, Ana Irina (together), Irina, Reyes, Míriam, Esther, Aurora, Sofía.
Something you must know is that even though second name have not been too common in Spain until recently, there are certain names that Spanish people like to put together. Usually they are said as if they were the same name though, not separate. That is why they are often ‘nicknamed’ to be seen as to seem as only one name. Like: “Maria Carmen” into “Maricarmen”, “María Ángeles” into “Mariángeles”, “José Manuel” into “Josemanu” or “José Miguel” into “Josemi”.
Answer
Uh… Just take a calendar printed on a Spanish-speaking country (and maybe other Catholic-tradition ones).
Some of them come with a “Santoral”, meaning that they’re annotated with Saint names that are associated with a particular day. Let me look one up… Ok, this will do:
(from almanaques.net)
This is a simple one, listing only one (the main, I guess) Saint per day, but others list more than one.
So, why is this related to the question? Because for a (long) while now parents have chosen their children’s names out of their own preferences, but there was a time when people would only choose Christian names, and for that they’d often just look up to the calendar. The child was born in “St. XXX’s” day? There you go, name. To the point that to this day some people still celebrate their “Onomastic” (their “name day”).
This would lead to a lot of, erm… weird names. At least for modern standards. So, from that January page I posted above, I can see some still-popular names:
- María (Mary – always popular)
- Mario
- Inés (Agnes)
- Pablo (Paul)
- Ángela (female version of Angel)
- Tomás (Thomas)
- Pedro (Peter)
There’s a bunch of them that are still used, but not all the rage (Juan, Marcelo, Franscisco). Tatiana is a strange case, because for a while it was “in” to give your children slavic-sounding names. I have myself a cousin called “Tania”. Sonia was very popular for a while (funny enough, most parents probably didn’t know that it is a derivate from the now all-popular Sofía)
Now, note something: most of those popular names have similarly-sounding equivalents in other cultures (media affects us like anyone else), and most of them are short, just 2-syllable names. Now, in the list you can also see names like:
- Basilio (Basil)
- Genoveva (Genevieve)
- Rigoberto (a form of Ricbert)
- Raimundo (Raymond)
- Eulogio
- Nicanor
- Fulgencio
- Timoteo (Timothy)
Those are all examples of “old people name”. Note that they’re mostly:
- Long-ish (3 or more syllables)
- non-Latin based.
Some of them are still used in English, but not all the rage they used to be some 60 years ago. Say, Genevieve (Gaulish), Raymond (Germanic), Timothy (Greek). I don’t think you’ve met any Basil recently, have you? Not to mention Ricbert – I tried looking it up in a name-popularity database and it died on me.
Fulgencio is a proper “Latin-derived” name, but it just sounds odd. You don’t hear many names with “f” on them, particularly with that “g” and “n” sounds in the middle; plus the “-cio” ending is totally an “old name” thing. A total no-no.
Entonces, algunos de esos nombres se están convirtiendo (o ya eran) en «nombres de personas mayores» incluso en otras culturas.
Y recuerde cuando dije que los calendarios a veces enumeran más de un nombre por día? Dios mío, tendríamos un día de campo si buscáramos algunos de los más, eh … inusuales.