Religious Connotations in Spanish and English Forenames: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

Names are a subject which concerns us all. Although in recent times the interest in them has grown, until now, most of the research carried out on names in both England and Spain has been devoted to the exploration of surnames and place names. The Bible states that man was created by God on the sixth day with the ability to name. The main purpose of this study was to examine the religious connotations suggested to a group of 425 participants from the metropolitan districts of Murcia (Spain) and Leeds (England) in a list of forenames. A questionnaire with two versions, Spanish and English, was used as the data source in the form of an interview. A mixed methods research was adopted. The findings reveal that, apart from being a stronger influence, the presence of religion was more varied in the metropolitan district of Murcia than in that of Leeds. In addition, only in the former was there a statistically significant relationship between these two socio-demographic and academic factors, age and educational level and religious connotations. Based on the above considerations, we can begin feeling the story behind names.