Violets wrote:
Backlash wrote:
A curious thought occurred to me on my drive home. I've known for a while that Japanese people often use very old/obscure kanji for their names, and for the longest while I reckoned this a tremendous pain. What if, however, instead of having a comprehensive knowledge of these characters, the typical Japanese speaker simply learns how to write the character? It's easy once you get the hang of it; all you need is a meaning, even if it's just the name of your best friend. I further compared this to how the typical English speaker can effortlessly pronounce most modern English first names, yet have very little idea what those names actually mean. "Scarlet" and "Autumn", certainly, but what about dear Ingram and Lambert, Aubrey and Samantha? Even the unassuming "Alice" has a history so obscure, one could spend an entire lifetime tracking it down.
Do English names like Samantha and Ben have meanings other than being just names though? Generally curious.
I'm pretty sure most names, and all the common ones, have some sort of meaning.
"The name Benjamin is a boy's name of Hebrew origin meaning "son of the right hand. Benjamin is derived from the Hebrew name Binyamin, from the elements ben, meaning “son” and yamin, “right hand.”
A lot of "English" names aren't really English but adapted from other languages. My first name happens to be English, but has it's origins in Gaelic.