Malta to allow Maltese baby names

Flag of Malta
Flag of Malta

Yay for Malta!

Years ago, I mentioned that Malta was the only nation I knew of in which parents were not allowed to register baby names in the national language.

Why couldn’t they? Because Malta’s government IT systems could not handle Maltese font.

But “a collective overhaul across government IT systems [is now] being done to ensure Maltese orthography is accepted across the board,” and Malta will soon be allowing parents to officially bestow traditional Maltese names.

Maltese, a Semitic language that descended from Sicilian Arabic, has six letters that English doesn’t have. One of them, ie, is easy enough to replicate on a computer; the other five (below) are not.

Here’s how to pronounce them, roughly:

  • C-with-a-dot makes a ch-sound
  • G-with-a-dot makes a j-sound (without the dot, G makes a g-sound)
  • Gh-with-a-line is silent*
  • H-with-a-line makes an h-sound (without the line, H is silent)
  • Z-with-a-dot makes a z-sound (without the dot, Z makes a ts-sound)

Without these letters, a large number of traditional Maltese names are unable to be rendered properly.

(I would love to list some of those names, but, ironically, I can’t — my blogging software doesn’t handle special characters very well.)

Anyway…well done, Malta! I’m proud of you. :)

P.S. More on the silent letters: “Maltese orthography continues to reflect the presence of some letters that are no longer pronounced in order to indicate semantic provenance — a convenience that makes it possible, among other things, to look up words in the dictionary under the three-consonant root (as one does with Semitic languages).”

Update, 6/13/20: Here’s an image of a list of traditional Maltese names…

Maltese baby names

The list above includes Maltese names that are equivalent to: Angelo, Beatrice, Francis, Elizabeth, Jacob, James, George, Juliet, Justin, Joseph, John, Hilda, Lucia, Luigi, Theresa, and Vincent.

P.S. While gathering these names, I happened to find out that the surname Buttigieg — as in former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg — is Maltese and means “poulterer.” Specifically, it comes from a pair of Sicilian Arabic words meaning “father, master, owner” and “fowl.”

Update, 1/2/21: “A baby boy called Ganni is the first child to be officially named using Maltese fonts after an IT system change that recognises letters in the national language” (Times of Malta, Dec. 23). Of course that uppercase G-with-a-dot won’t render correctly in this post, though, so here’s an image:

Maltese name Ganni

It’s the Maltese equivalent of John.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Flag of Malta (public domain)

The children of Nat King Cole

Casey & Timolin Cole in 1963
Casey & Timolin Cole in 1963

Jazz pianist and singer Nat King Cole (1919-1965) was born Nathaniel Adams Coles. He dropped the “s” from his surname early on, and acquired the “King” after forming a trio called the King Cole Trio (originally the King Cole Swingsters), which was a reference to “Old King Cole” from the nursery rhyme.

Maria, his second wife, originally went by Marie. She changed the name to Maria after she married Cole because, as she said, “[i]t sounded more lyrical.”

The two of them raised five children together:

  • Carole, nicknamed “Cookie” (adopted)
  • Natalie, nicknamed “Sweetie”
  • Nat Kelly (adopted)
  • Casey
  • Timolin

Nat, the only boy, was given the middle name Kelly in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, which was his father’s birthday.

Casey Eugenia and Timolin Elizabeth were identical twin girls born in September of 1961. (I mentioned them in the celebrity baby name debuts post.) Their middle names came from two of Maria’s sisters. Casey’s first name was inspired by Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel, the manager of the New York Yankees throughout the ’50s. Timolin’s first name was inspired by the youngest daughter of lyricist Johnny Burke,* whose song “Swinging on a Star” won an Oscar in the ’40s.

[*Burke’s four children were Reagan, Rory, Kevin, and Timolin. Reagan and Rory were female twins born in 1941 — long before the names Reagan and Rory were regularly given to baby girls. And Timolin, born in 1954, was very likely named after the Irish village of Timolin.]

Sources:

  • Grudens, Richard. The Music Men: The Guys who Sang with the Bands and Beyond. Stony Brook, NY: Celebrity Profiles Publishing, 1998.
  • “The Nat King Cole Twins.” Ebony Aug. 1963: 106-114.

Image: Clipping from Ebony magazine (Aug. 1963)

Nature-inspired Kazakh names: Burkit, Kuralai, Samal

Baiterek tower in Astana, Kazakhstan

We looked at some culturally significant Kazakh names a couple of weeks ago, so today let’s check out a few nature-inspired Kazakh names that reference flora, fauna, weather, and more:

  • Agashpai, “tree”
  • Ainur, “moonlight”
  • Aisulu, “beautiful moon”
  • Aiturgan, “new moon”
  • Aizharyk, “bright moon”
  • Akseleu, “stipa” (feathergrass)
  • Almagul, “apple blossom”
  • Anara, “pomegranate”
  • Arystan, “lion”
  • Beibars, “leopard”
  • Boranbai, “snowstorm”
  • Bota, “young camel”
  • Burkit, “golden eagle”
  • Kalampyr, “carnation”
  • Karlygash, “swallow” (the bird)
  • Karzhau, “snowing”
  • Koshkarbai, “sheep”
  • Kuralai, “young dappled deer”
  • Kyskyrbai, “wolf”
  • Kyzgaldak, “tulip”
  • Orken, “stalk”
  • Otarbai, “rich with sheep”
  • Raushan, “rose”
  • Samal, “breeze”
  • Sandugash, “nightingale”
  • Tanatar, “dawn”
  • Tekebai, “goat”
  • Tumanbai, “fog”
  • Tylkibai, “fox”
  • Zhanbyrbai, “rainy”
  • Zhuldyz, “star”
  • Zhupar, “wormwood”
  • Zhylkaidar, “speeding horses”

Which of those definitions do you like best?

Source: Linguo-Semantic Peculiarities of Kazakh Proper Names (2014)

Image: Adapted from Bayterek by night 04 by Davide Mauro under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Three-letter “-io” boy names: Rio, Gio, Lio

3-letter boy names ending with "io"

A few weeks ago we looked at all the “-ia” names that have ever appeared in the SSA data. So today let’s do the same thing for the masculine equivalent, -io.

Here are all the permutations 3-letter -io names, ordered by 2018 popularity levels:

  • Rio (currently the 1,134th most popular name for baby boys)
  • Gio (1,951st)
  • Lio (4,533rd)
  • Pio (6,571st)
  • Dio (7,696st)
  • Mio (8,562nd)
  • Nio (9,363rd)
  • Jio (currently unlisted)
  • Kio (currently unlisted)
  • Tio* (currently unlisted)

Which of the above –io names do you like best? Why?

*Tio, which happens to be the Spanish word for “uncle” (but is also used as a slang term for “guy” or “dude” in Spain) was a relatively high-hitting one-hit wonder in 1983. Any idea what the influence might have been? Commercials for Tio Sancho foods perhaps?