I'm guessing now it's the same as Spanish because of imperialism, but did Catalan names originally follow the First name + Second name + Father's surname + Mother's surname naming system?
Yes, nowadays we use both surnames. We can't be sure of what would have happened, but the two surnames we have now were a Spanish imposition in most cases.
Before the 19th century, most Catalan men used only one surname. Only the upper classes had more surnames, since they often wanted to keep stacking titles (think of those really long names of nobles, if you marry into another powerful family and yours is powerful too you wouldn't want either of the lineages to get lost, the most titles you can "collect" the better!). Women could often use two surnames after getting married (their father's and their husband's).
In 1870, the Spanish law decided that civil register should have 2 surnames (first the father's and secondly the mother's) for each person to identify them better. That's how people started to have two surnames.
The most visible effect of this law, however, is the spelling. When Spanish-speaker state officers had to write down Catalan surnames, they would write them down according to Spanish spelling rules. That's why many Catalan surnames have a "Spanishified" spelling, like "Peña" instead of Penya, "Calzada" instead of Calçada, "Lladó" instead of Lledó, etc.
(As for first names, usually we only have 1 except you've been baptized, but that's not an official name and how much those 1 or 2 extra names are counted as part of your name depends on each person or family)
More information about the origin of Catalan surnames below the cut.
In the Middle Ages, Catalans had a name and a "nickname", often referred to a characteristic. Many of our surnames come from here. For example, physical attributes like Roig ("red", red-haired), Tort ("hooked"), Petit ("small"), Rossell ("blond"), Calvet ("balding"), etc; or jobs like Ferrer ("blacksmith"), Fuster ("carpenter"), Carnisser ("butcher"), Oller ("potter"), etc.
Among Catalan people, the use of surnames started being generalized in the 9th century.
In legal documents of the time, we see people are referred by who their father is. If the text was in Latin (even though people already spoke Catalan, Latin was still the most used language in writing), the first name would be in nominative case and the father's name in genitive case; if the text was in Catalan, it would be after the preposition "de", meaning "of" (same meaning as the cases in Latin). For example, Berenguer son of Ramon was Berengarius Raimundi in Latin and Berenguer de Ramon in Catalan.
Genitive case often ends in -is, that's why in Spanish and Aragonese you can find lots of surnames that come from a name+ez. For example: Sánchez would be the son of Sancho, Hernández of Hernán, López of Lope, González of Gonzalo, Rodríguez of Rodrigo, Martínez of Martín... Even nowadays, in Spain, 14 out of the 17 most common surnames are a name+ez! (Source)
This is not the case in Catalan. This Latin-derived surnames didn't become used. We only have 3 surnames with this origin (Peris, Sanxís, and Llopis) and they arrived to us from influence of Aragon, Castile and Navarre. Besides, neither of them is very common, unlike their Spanish equivalents. There was an exception in the Valencian Country, because some areas had a lot of Aragonese people as well as Catalan people or at least a strong Aragonese influence, so there existed more surnames related to the Aragonese ones.
From the 11th century on, the nobles started using the name of their lands as a surname, either after "de" (de Barcelona, d'Empúries...) or in adjective form (Barceló, Tarragó, Giró, Tàrrec). This started in the nobility to know who inherited what territories, but it was soon followed by the lower classes as well.
Lower class people often didn't have a territory to refer to and so they would use a name that made reference to their farmhouse, where they live, or other geographical terms. From here we get many of the most common Catalan surnames such as Riera ("stream"), Torrent ("watercourse"), Puig ("hill"), Pujol ("hill"), Vall ("valley") or Valls ("valleys"), Coma ("mountain pass"), Pomar ("apple orchard"), Vinyes ("vineyards"), Rovira ("oak tree forest"), Ribes ("shores") or simply the names of towns or areas like Solsona, Bages, Segarra, Agramunt, Vila, Canet, Cardona, Cabrera, Güell, Barberà, Cerdà...
All of this applies to men, but it worked differently for women because they weren't considered carriers of lineage in the same right as men, and were seen as under the property of a man (father or husband). In the Middle Ages, Catalan women usually had a feminine version of the father's surname (for example, if the father is Ferrer, she would be Ferrera). After getting married, women sometimes had both the father's and husband's surnames or only the husband's.
Source: Janer Torrens, Antoni (2014), "L'origen dels noms i cognoms catalans. Les arrels antroponímiques que marquen una identitat", II Congrés de la Societat d'Onomàstica i la XXVII Jornada d'Antroponímia i Toponímia de la UB. PDF.
it's six in the morning and i haven't slept and i just realized that santa claus and saint nicholas are literally the same name. like it's not alternate names for the same dude it's literally the same name
i was looking up possible name meanings and origins for filbrick
and somehow. somwhere. along the way.
the name, as a surname with the alternate spelling of "philbrick"
gets tied to a medieval tome by the name of "the domesday book"[x]
or. you know. in modern english. "the doomsday book".
its not like ! the pines family has to worry ! about end of the world scenarios !
Okay some of the first names that I found or that popped into my head were:
TRADITIONAL
Jasper
Wyatt
Bertram
Connor
Donovan
Dexter
Edmund
Frederick
Henry
Percy
Quincy
Timothy
Vincent
Caspar
Viggo
Rafferty
Conrad
Zachary
Thomas
Cameron
Richard
Philip
Robert
Hayden
Spencer
Dominic
Phineas
Xavier
Declan
Malachi/Malachy
Patrick
Robin
MORE UNUSUAL
Calloway
Zebedee
Beckett
Keegan
Raven
Taran
Merrick
River
Hudson
Zebulon
Balthazar
Casimir
Breccan
Cosimo
Finbar
Crispin
Hamish
Jotham
Maxfield
Phelan
Sayer
Chester
Jareth
Wallace
Shepherd
Wolfgang
Marius
Dmitri
Kingsley
Crosby
Cassian
Eben
Ossian
Calixto
Drury
Haven
This is probably a lot to take in lol but take your time! Just let me know which ones stand out to you (for better or worse) and I'll work on making a better, more specific (and shorter) list
I think in my senior year, for my senior thesis project, I'm going to make a book of names. I will aggregate various meanings and stuff and cultural references, but each name is going to be of someone important to me in my life. If I met more than one person with that name, I will elaborate on their similarities and how their name could affect that. I will also use names I like, names I want for my kids, and names I made up.
probably shouldn't be so annoyed that names which have been topping my future baby name list for the last six years are now in several 'Most Popular Names of 2013' articles. boo. by the time i actually bear progeny all my favorites will be used up.
