Alternate personal names?

An interesting development in Vandal Africa was the tendency to use mixed names - combining Germanic suffixes and elements with Latin, Punic, Greek, Berber names and vice versa. An example would be the Vandalic feminine name - Muritta: it's a combination of the name Maurus and the East Germanic suffix -itta; another example is Cyrila which is a Vandalic feminine counterpart to the Greek name Kyrillos. You had similar developments in the Lombard Kingdom when you had a much greater proliferation of mixed names. If Roman reconquest of Africa is aborted, this trend would've continued with the Vandals and perhaps would've spread to the other post-Roman Germanic kingdoms.

Do you have a source where I could read more, by any chance?

In the US, President's names were once more common as well, but I don't see that much in current use. Roosevelt, Washington, Lincoln, etc were more common a generation or two ago. I personally haven't encountered any Clinton's, Bush's, or Reagan's so far. Might we see a generation with Barak, Obama, Trump or Hillary as a common name?

Were those really that common in the US? I think they were more common in Latin America (especially Brazil) than in the US proper, although I know they were used here as well (Lincoln especially).

I don't think you're ever likely to see anyone named Bush after the presidents, since Bush I is considered pretty mediocre and I don't think Bush II has a positive reputation amongst anyone nowadays (even conservatives tend to think he was pretty mediocre). That said, I'm amazed there aren't more people named Reagan considering his popularity amongst certain segments of the American populace.
 
"Benito" is actually a Spanish name, always unusual in Italian (except for children born in certain period, or as pretty marked political statement after that). I think its popularity also declined considerably in the Hispanophone world post WWII.
As a matter of fact, Mussolini's father named his son after Benito Juarez (and his other given names too, Alessandro Andrea, were in remembrance of two well known anarchists of the time)
 
Name popularity runs in cycles. For my generation, there were a lot of Terry's, Randy's, Vickie's, and Bonnie's. Not so much currently. For my kids, there are umpteen spelling variations of Michaela & Mackenzie. I've seen at least six different spellings of each...

Where I work has about 100 employees on site.
With 4 Sam's and 3 Josh's ... (Which can get confusing)
And I'm the only one with my first name, although there were 3 of us in my class at school.

And the school where I volunteer has some really strange ones, and an unusually large number of Daisy's.
(And a massive number of questionably spelled and pronounced Irish names ... yes its a Catholic School)
 
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Where I work has about 100 employees on site.
With 4 Sam's and 3 Josh's ... (Which can get confusing)

My year at school has approximately 170 people. Of which there are 7 Sam/Samuels, 6 Sophies, 5 Daniels and 5 Rebeccas (well 4 Rebeccas and 1 Rebekka).

I think it's safe to say that parents aren't particularly imaginative in my area.
 
In some cases, parents seem to strive too hard for individuality in creating a unique spelling/pronunciation of a name and it creates more confusion (and embarrassment) for the child later on.

There are like a dozen different spellings of Riley/Reilly/Rylee/Rhyleigh.
 
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