What's in a name... Part IV

Honduras is, for the time being, mostly catholic, and the following names are very common:

Santos (Saints)

Concepción (Conception)

Encarnación (Incarnation)

Asunción (Ascension)

Cruz (Cross)

Martiro (Martyr)

Jesús (Jesus)

Santa (Saint fem.)

Interestingly, the name “Jesús” is, as far as I know, not used as a common name in any other language. Years ago I worked at a bilingual school in Copán that was involved in a pen pal project with children from a school in the US. One of them got to write to our student Jesús. It was quite obvious that the American kid was not writing to his nine year old Honduran pen pal! The letter was so heartbreaking and disturbing that we decided not to let "our" Jesús read it…

Also quite common here but strange to me, is the custom to name people after places. Except for Paris Hilton; I can’t think of any, not counting names as Virginia or Georgia that are places named after people. Here some people’s place names…

Asia

América

Kenia

Israel

Virginia

Saudí

Argentina

Francia

Bélgica

Then there are colours….

Celeste

Azul

Blanca

Rosa

Lila

And to wrap up the whole name issue, here some “big” names from world history that you can find in even the smallest villages in Honduras…

Lempira

Napoleón

Julio Cesar

Narciso

Demetrio

Hipólito