Slovenians Choosy about Their Names, Statistics Suggest
Ljubljana, 24 September - Slovenians appear to be increasingly choosy about their names, judging by statistics. These show that they had almost 53,000 different first names at the start of the year, 695 more than a year ago.
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Photo: Tina Kosec/STA
What is more, the Statistics Office has established that nearly 70% of all first names in Slovenia were unique to one person only, although this was often due to composite first names.
On the other hand, 27 first names appeared more than 10,000 times. The most common among these are Marija (Mary), Ana (Ann) and Franc (Francis).
More than 60,500 women or one in every 17 was named Marija, and almost 27,000 were called Ana. However, Marija in particular is getting ever less popular; there were 1,771 fewer of these than a year ago.
The most frequent male name is Franc (25,810), followed by Janez (John, 22,368).
With the older generation passing away, new names are gaining frequency. The youngest among those carrying 200 most common names are named Tian at an average five years of age.
The youngest bearing the most popular female name are called Zoja (Zoe) at an average of six years of age.
Meanwhile, the most frequent names evoking natural phenomena are Val (wave) for men and Zarja (dawn) for women; there were 779 Vals and 734 Zarjas in Slovenia at the beginning of 2015.
Also popular are Svit (daybreak, 634), Luna (moon, 269), Gaj (grove, 255), Dan (day, 153), Rosa (dew, 139), Zvezda (star, 41) and Iskra (spark, 15).
Most of people carrying these natural phenomena names were born after 2000.
The most common family name is Novak, and the most frequent natural-phenomenon last name is Oblak (cloud).