| Boys' names |
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Traditional Dutch names for boys included the following abbreviated forms (the longer forms would be used in official documents): Bert (< Albert, Robert), Eef (< Evert), Flip (< Philip), Geert (< Gerard), Henk (< Hendrikus), Jan (< Johannes), Kees (Cornelius), Klaas (< Nicolaas), Piet (< Petrus), Toon (< Antonius), Wim (< Willem). Some of the short forms are derived from French, such as Sjaak (from Jacques) and Twan (from Antoine). In the last fifty years the old names became less popular, and many names were introduced from foreign languages. From French, Italian and Spanish were adopted (only with minor changes in spelling and pronunciation): André, Jean-Paul, Lucien, Manuel, Marco, Mario, Mathieu, Maurice, Ramon, Raymond, René. Other names were introduced from Scandinavian languages, such as Lars, Mikael and Sven, and from Slavonic languages, such as Boris, Dimitri, Igor, Ivan, Pjotr, Joeri/Yuri, Sasha, Wanja. From the late 1960s onwards English names became more popular: Brian, Colin, Dennis, Gavin, Jeffrey, Keith, Kevin, Patrick, Robin. In recent decades some names were introduced from Frisian, such as Jelle , Sietse, and Tjeerd. Dutch names from earlier centuries gained a new popularity, such as Boudewijn, IJsbrand, Floris. Some popular boys' names (ignoring the ones obviously copied from foreign movie stars) are: Bart, Erik, Ivo, Jelle, Jordi, Jorrit, Jurriaan, Lucas, Marnix, Martijn, Mirco, Remco, Tim, Timo, Tom, Xander. [to be expanded] © DutchToday 2007 |
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