Early Start Spanish 1: Tú y Yo

4: ¿Cómo te llamas? -introductions

Early Start Spanish 1: CONTENTS | HOME

We did a survey of first names in Spain
Famous Spanish-speaking people (opens a new page)
Spanish surnames

What you will learn in section 4:

"Yo soy Miguel Ángel" - "Me llamo Yolanda" (wearing a school T-shirt)

In the final part of the video section, pupils see the phrases in writing (but it's better if children are familiar with hearing and saying the words first)

This section introduces two phrases for saying your name in Spanish. You hear lots of Spanish children say thei names, and learn how to ask what someone's name is.

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We did a survey of names in Spain

One school collected the first names (nombres) of all the children in each class, and of their parents. When they exchanged lists with their Spanish link school, they found that in Spain, some names were very common, like Juan and José for boys and fathers. Often they had a second Christian name - like Juan Miguel, José Antonio....

Some girls' names were more unusual. Maria was very common, after la Virgen María - the Virgin Mary. There was a María de la Concepción, Mary of the Conception - and other variations. Some girls had the name of the local patron saint.

One boy was called Josep , which is José in catalan - a local language soken in the Barcelona region. Spain has several local languages, including Galician and Basque. The school asked their link school for other names which would be common in those areas. The link school asked if there were local languages used in parts of Britain - and this led to an exchange of Welsh and gaelic names.

The lists from Spain also included some English names which have become popular though international stars of film and sport.

10 most popular names in Spain (2006)

Girls' Names
1. Lucia

2. Maria

3. Paula

4. Laura

5. Claudia

6. Irene

7. Marta

8. Alba

9. Sara

10. Carla
Boys' Names
1. Alejandro

2. Daniel

3. Pablo

4. David

5. Adrian

6. Alvaro

7. Javier

8. Sergio

9. Hugo

10. Die

Source: http://www.babycentre.co.uk/pregnancy/naming/top10namesaroundtheworld/

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Spanish surnames

You'll find out in this section that each Spanish person has TWO surnames. A demonstration on the Interactive e-CD (pictured right) shows how a child - Lucía - takes one surname from each of their parents.

Did you know?

Picasso's name was originally 'Pablo (and a lt of other christian names) Ruiz Picasso'.

When he was painting in Madrid in 1901, aged 20, he started signing his work simply 'Picasso' (his mother's name) rather than 'Ruiz', his father's name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Spanish surnames: demonstration
Lucía takes one surmame from each of her parents: demonstration on the Interactive CD-ROM

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What you will learn in section 4:
"Yo soy Miguel Ángel" - "Me llamo Yolanda" (wearing a school T-shirt) In the final part of the video section, pupils see the phrases in writing (but it's better if children are familiar with hearing and saying the words first)
This section introduces two phrases for saying your name in Spanish. You hear lots of Spanish children say thei names, and learn how to ask what someone's name is.