what's in a name?

i met jeanne d'arc a few weeks ago. she lives right here in my neighbourhood.
ben hur lives just down the street.
messias lives quite a bit further away, in vidigal, a favela near ipanema.
jesus lives there too.
hanibal lives in a different state. as does teorema.

names in brazil are literary fantastic. they are as varied as the skincolour of the brazilians, as their hairdo's, as their ancestry (the latter of course partially explains the diversity in names).

sure, a lot of people have names i can recognise and handle. names you expect in latin america. like fernando, monica, carlos and maria.
but then there are plenty of pretty weird names.

first there are the classical names. marcus-antonio, flavia, thiago, regina, homero, attilio, cesar. i like these names. they keep alive a cultural heritage. i think it is a pity in holland not more names like this are given to our babies. there is nothing wrong with 'rembrandt' or 'artemis', is there?

also classical, but typical of brazil are the indigenous names. these however are just as rare as all other traces of indigenous life in brazil... also, they are too strange for me to remember.

more history, i think, is hidden in 'vander', 'vanderlei' and names as such. clearly they are derived from dutch (or german) surnames. these often start with 'van der' or 'von'. some completely unbased ethymology makes me suspect that this part of the surname has been given to (descendants of) slaves as a first name.

the next category of bizarre names in brazil has much more to do with spelling than with anything else. for example ueslei. read it out loud. exactly - wesley! other 'misspelled' names i have read are uetney (whitney), jhon, ualter or valter (walter). in a way these name form the opposite of the above category: by changing the spelling they take away the ethymology, the roots of the name. oh well, whatever...

also good for a surprise are names referring to almost anything american. a not uncommon name here is washington. of course washington used to be a name in the usa as well, but what about ualtdisnei (yes, walt disney..)?

the most spectacular names however are the completely made up names. as if 3 random names have been written on a piece of paper, the paper has then been shredded and reassembled to form a complete new name. and oh boy, the results are amazing! there are some patterns - like endings in '-son' and '-ton' for guys and '-ia' and '-ildes' for girls. but really, anything goes...
some examples? adilson, ivanildes, cleverton, helton, hercilia, ...

please try to brazilify your name in these 3 easy steps.
step 1:
change the first vowel of your name for another vowel.
step 2:
add a letter at random somewhere in your name. if this is difficult, remember you can always add an 'h' somewhere...
step 3:
for guys: add -ton, -son, -ei or -lei at the end of your name.
for girls: add -ia, -(i)ldes or -(a)cia at the end

let's try with my own name...
eric --> aric --> arnic --> arnicson.
a friend's name...
merel --> murel --> murtel --> murtelcia
perfectly brazilian.

alternatively you can swap around syllabes, add your second name in the middle of your first name, feel free to experiment.

it is of course exactly this feeling free to do whatever they want that has happened with brazilian names. sure, they have a heritage - of portugal, italy, europe, of the indigenous population - and a reference - of the usa, of britain and france. but these are no more than guidelines. brazil is now no longer a colony, it is no longer part of any culture or heritage. it makes up its own history and its own culture.
including its own names.