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How Pena Became Pamela and Gracian Replaced Grozyo

There is one absolutely positive thing about the month of January - Bulgarians usually spend it eating and drinking. This merriment is most often than not staged not at home but in the company of people celebrating their name days. Hardly St Vassil's Day is over and it's time for the Yordans (Jordan) and Ivans to start paying respect to their patron saints. Even before these are over, it is time for Antons and Atanases to prepare the shindig. Along with them in the recent years a number of infant Alexes, Yoans and Vanessas celebrate on these days - a whole horde of foreign names that have busted into our everyday lives along with the other niceties of democracy. So it has come for granny Pena to have her granddaughter Pamela named after her and old Grozyo spends a week to learn to spell the name of his offspring Gracian. The vogue in naming children follows the tides of the epoch's tastes fluctuations. After the Liberation, for instance, Venelin gained ground as a personal name in Bulgaria and it actually originates from the family name of Yurii Venelin. Ferdinand had been unknown in Bulgaria before Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's grandfather came to rule the country. A great number of parents, who lacked foresight when naming their sons Stalin, later blushed for their stupidity when the cult of his personality collapsed with a bang. In Bulgaria there are enough Lenins and here and there you can meet a lady called Petiletka (five-year plan), all of them are scions of the enthusiasm about the communism coming to Bulgaria and their parents' revolutionary infatuation. Once socialism in Bulgaria collapsed, we were immediately flooded with all kinds of foreign names and their probable variants. Parents could not wait to name their children after non-Bulgarian actors and pop stars. Composite names, from the popular Anna-Maria to the embarrassing for the kids Klavdia-Paraskeva have largely spread and flourished. Besides the soap operas proved inexhaustible source of inspiration. No one has dared count the Osvaldos and Koraimas who at present are in the fourth grade (because it was exactly ten years ago when the hit soap opera Cassandra started in Bulgaria). Isauras are about to complete their secondary education and on the other hand Rossalindas and Octavios have not started school yet. By the age of the bearers of such names a media chronologist can perfectly know the history of TV series. Lately the craze about soap operas has been falling and Bulgarians are now more and more often inclined to choose the traditional Bulgarian names for their babies. In 2004 many people from Sofia chose to name their children Dimitar, Dimana, Georgi, Gergana, Vassil. At present the most popular foreign borrowings are Vanessa (for the girls) and Alex and Denis (for the boys). A few families have chosen to name their offspring Lolita, Eleanor, Alissia. There are still an invariable number of fans of Pamela, Christina and the derivatives of these as well. There have been several rather curious renaming attempts. Not long ago a man from Rousse entered epic fights against bureaucracy to be given the right to bear the name of his favourite football team Manchester United.
Stella Stoyanova