[Sumerce]

According to I.N.E. - Instituto Nacional de Estadística, -- unfortunately, when I found this it doesn't say the year -- the most common Colombian boys names across all ages are:

1 JUAN CARLOS
2 CARLOS ALBERTO
3 ALEXANDER
4 ANDRES FELIPE
5 LUIS FERNANDO
6 DIEGO FERNANDO
7 JHON JAIRO
8 CARLOS ANDRES
9 ALEJANDRO
10 JUAN DAVID

The girls are:

1 SANDRA MILENA
2 LUZ MARINA
3 CAROLINA
4 PAULA ANDREA
5 CLAUDIA PATRICIA
6 MARIA EUGENIA
7 PAOLA ANDREA
8 DANIELA
9 LILIANA
10 MARTHA CECILIA

Just as here, names go through ebb and flow. 14 years ago when we were married, we spent 5 months in Colombia. I attended several baby baptisms and met numerous friends of my husband. At the time it seemed like everyone was naming their kid Juan CAMILO (boy) or Maria CAMILA (girl). I met dozens of them. Then, about 7 years later I heard tons of SANTIAGO, JULIAN, SEBASTIAN and FELIPE being called in the park together with MARCELA, CATALINA, NATALIA and JULIANA.

It seems to me that the current trend among the upper and middle class in Colombia is to name their children really SPANISH sounding names -- what we would have called old fashioned in the 80's is now super hip. Kind of like what has happened here int he US with Abagail and Isabella.

Try running a name by your American family and your Colombian family -- trying to get some sort of agreement that it sounds OK in both languages. My DH wanted to name our kid FREDDY or OSCAR (popular names for boys in the 80's) -- I said NO WAY!!! Horrible! I made some suggestions that were immediately shot down by him.

In our Colombian family adoption group there seems to be a trend to name the kids the following names because they work in both languages. (In order of popularity based on the actual names the kids ended up with)

Boys: Mateo, Alexander, Christian, David
Girls: Isabella, Sofia, Juliana, Cristina

One thing that I do know is that among the lower classes in Colombia you are likely to see all sorts of strange names, many names are words in English:

USNAVY (Comes from United States Navy and pronounced OO S NAH VEE)

STICK

MERRY CHRISTMAS (I actually know someone with this name and her brother's name is -- drum roll please)

ONE DOLLAR

MACGYVER (Other spellings include: Maguiber, Magaiber, Maguaiver -- Richard Dean Anderson would be so thrilled)


Here is a link to a fabulous article by Daniel Samper Pizano. It talks about the strange names that have been seen on Colombian passports that have passed through the Colombian Embassy in Spain. Very humorous -- in Spanish but you can read the names even if you can't read the article.

Los nombres extranjeros, otro ejemplo del complejo de inferioridad que padecen muchos colombianos! (Poorbuthappy in Colombia!)

[meganicolson]

Thanks for the research and for sharing your experience! This is great! I love names.

We certainly heard many of those same names during our first two adoptions. We were also surprised by the older children who were being adopted with very American sounding names, not Americanized versions of their Colombian-given names, but: Harold, Kimberly, Jennifer (a few of those), Michael.

[jenniferjp1969]

Sumerce you are a wealth of information!

I can rest easy tonight knowing that I've finally discovered a classic name my husband and I can both agree on....STICK!!! Hilarious...thank you!

Jennifer

[emi]

I love names, too! Our first son is David, which we loved anyway (it means "beloved") but also loved because it works in Spanish and English. Our Colombian son's birth name was . . . . Kevin. (It's now his middle name.) Doesn't strike me as Spanish at all, but our agency said it's fairly popular in Colombia lately. Who knew?

[entropy]

Leydi is my favorite name. (Lady)
I've heard of a Leydi Di. (As in Princess Diana)

My colombian teacher that has done some field research in Linguistics told me about names such as Usa, Made in Usa, etc. Its a very interesting topic. Thanks for that link.

[mommytoEli]

one dollar? i had to laugh...that is a little funny. thanks for continuing to be a wealth of information.

[colombiamerican15]

I was wondering if there is anyway you can point me in the direction of the rest of the list of common colombian names from the census?

Thanks so much!!!