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[Opinions] Re: American Names
All that you've said is true for other English speaking countries, but not if other countries are taken into account. For example most Slavic languages have Faith and Hope in their language (Nada, Vera, Nadezda, etc) and most Catholic countries are big on Bible names like Gabriel, so they're not what I'd call 'American names'.
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Yes, but Nadezda is not the same as hope. One is in English and one is in Russian and they obviously sound very different. And your right that many other cultures use lots of biblical names, but few of them are spelled and pronounced the same way. Gabriel is one of the few that is. But it's not like we borrowed Gabriel from Mexico or something. Americans started using it from biblical inspiration on their own. It's rightfully American, just like a name like Nicephore is considered uniquely French, even though equivalents in other languages (like Nikifor) exist for this name and it was borrowed from the Ancient Greek Nikephoros. All languages are related. So you can argue this for any name. But I'm referring to actual names that occur more commonly in America than anywhere else, disregarding lingual differences. Nathaniel may be used in Mexico as Nataniel, but that's not the exact same name to me because they are pronounced differently. Nathaniel, spelled this way, is pretty trademark American in the grand scheme of things.
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Wasn't the original question 'what is a uniquely American name?'? In which case names like Gabriel or Nathaniel can hardly be seen unique when they're used all over the world and are quite popular in some other countries. That's all I meant with my post. Just because a name is popular in the US that doesn't make it 'trademark American' which is what the OP was asking for I believe.
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Yes, I think most people would assume Nathaniel was an American, unless it was spelled Nataniel. Nathaniel really isn't used much in other countries as far as I know. It's a very American name to me.
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