International Baby Names

Some thoughts on choosing from International baby names for your baby and links to lists of foreign baby names.

The world is increasingly interconnected today and more so in the future, when a baby needs to communicate effectively with people from different cultures and conventions.

When choosing a baby name, many modern parents have been taking into account the fact that it is increasingly likely that it will be an advantage to the baby to have a name that will translate easily across cultures, like a good business brand does.

That fact will likely increase the changes to get chosen for a job with a foreign company and makes it easier to seem international without being boxed into national stereotypes.

In essence, when choosing an international name, you have to think in terms of language groups. Names that have their origins in the Latin language usually have their national variations and are accepted as local through most of Europe and Americas.

For example, such names and William, Richard, and Michael for baby boys, and Mary, Katherine, and Sarah for baby girls all have their local variations that will work in most of the area.

Latin based names do not cover most of Asia or Africa, however. There are no true naming conventions in Asia, beyond the similarities between close neighbors such as Thailand and Malaysia, for example.

For Asian parents, however, a Latin based first name to a baby may give an advantage in the international stage when doing business, especially as Asian names may prove to be hard to spell and remember to the Latin based businesspeople.

Africa has a lot of people with European first names, due to the closely intertwined histories of the European and African continents.

You have to always think about how the first name works with the last name to give it a fully international feel, like a business would choose a name that gets a positive response internationally.

Here are some of the links to international names within Baby Guide: