Boy baby name that sounds good in English, Spanish, and Russian

December 18, 2018 1:20 PM

My boyfriend and I are expecting a child. I'm Russian, but grew up in the U.S. I have a Russian first name and last name. My boyfriend grew up in a Central American country, but his dad was of Japanese descent, so boyfriend has a Japanese first name and last name. Right now, we both live in the Central American country boyfriend grew up in, but we would like to move back to the U.S. in a few years. We can't seem to find many boy names that sound good in English, Spanish, and Russian.

We have some names picked out for a girl, but are struggling with finding some names for a boy. The baby will get my boyfriend's first name and both of our last names. So, it will be JapaneseFirstName, MiddleName, JapaneseLastName, RussianLastName. Both of our last names are kind of long. Boyfriend's first name is short, but difficult to pronounce for some Spanish speakers. We need one additional name to use as a middle name. We could also flip the first and middle names.

Ideally, we'd like the name to exist in both English, Spanish, and Russian. I've gone through the lists of Russian names for boys, but am having a hard time determining if it's a name that sounds good to a native English speaker. I would prefer that the name be kind of normal and not too unique since the child will already have an uncommon first name and last names. Any suggestions?

posted by Lingasol to Human Relations (42 answers total)

Gabriel. So many languages have Gabriel.
posted by wellred at 1:25 PM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Victor leaps to mind.
posted by Wobbuffet at 1:28 PM on December 18, 2018 [17 favorites]

I’ve known Alexanders (of various spellings/pronunciations) from all those groups.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 1:29 PM on December 18, 2018 [16 favorites]

My son is Roman.
posted by sestaaak at 1:30 PM on December 18, 2018 [5 favorites]

Alexander is easy for Russian and English, and has a close Spanish cognate in Alejandro.
posted by googly at 1:30 PM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Ivan?
posted by Smearcase at 1:30 PM on December 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

Issac? I really like Victor too.
posted by leastlikelycowgirl at 1:32 PM on December 18, 2018

Nic(h)olas, too. I have a student right now named Nikolai who goes by Niko, which also seems good. Nobody’s confused by a Nicholas variant I feel like.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 1:32 PM on December 18, 2018 [19 favorites]

Looking through this list, I'd say Tomas is a good bet.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:33 PM on December 18, 2018 [9 favorites]

Hugo (though it would be pronounced slightly differently in each language)
posted by greta simone at 1:34 PM on December 18, 2018

Looking at some Russian Baby Boy name lists, I'd say these would be pronouncable in all 3 languages:

Andre
Victor
David
Ivan
Maxim
Roman
Taras
Eduard
posted by hydra77 at 1:35 PM on December 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

Boris
posted by sudogeek at 1:38 PM on December 18, 2018

Anton
Fabian
Fedor
Filip
Konstantin
Luka
Maksim
Sevastien
Stefan
Vadim
posted by easy, lucky, free at 1:42 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

A friend of mine is married to a Russian-born man named Denis. In English the stress is on the first syllable rather than the second, but it seems to work for both his English- and Russian-speaking family and friends.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:43 PM on December 18, 2018

Filip or Tomas would work.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:43 PM on December 18, 2018

Armen
posted by Sassyfras at 2:12 PM on December 18, 2018

As some people have pointed out, some names have natural translations across languages, eg, Alexander, Alexandr, Alejandro; Peter, Pyotr, Pedro - if those are ok, there's a lot of options.

If you're looking for ones where the spelling doesn't change and they feel mostly like names used across all three languages, it's a bit more limited.
maybe:
Anton
Ivan
Roman
Stefan
posted by vunder at 2:14 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Also Maxim, which is usually going to be Maximo in Spanish.

Also Yuri scans in Spanish, BUT is more known as a feminine nickname for Yuridia.
posted by vunder at 2:37 PM on December 18, 2018

Igor works in all three, but has connotations in English that may not be wanted.

Leo works fine; the longer forms (Leonid, Lenardo, Leonard, etc.) have variations in the different languages, like variants of Alexander.

Dominic also works.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:39 PM on December 18, 2018 [6 favorites]

I can confirm Ivan satisfies your constraints. I know an Ivan from Uruguay, of Russian descent, who lives in the US now, and he does just fine. You do have the problem of the English pronunciation being different from the Spanish and Russian ones, but I think you'll have that with any name because English is weird.
posted by madcaptenor at 2:59 PM on December 18, 2018

Adrian or Tomas
posted by pinochiette at 3:17 PM on December 18, 2018

Sasha/Sascha
posted by ROTFL at 3:52 PM on December 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Emilio, Emil is another possibility
posted by typecloud at 4:41 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Lot of biblical names have slightly different versions/ pronunciations in many languages. We went with biblical names (we're not religious) for English - Finnish combos. Pronounced differently by different sides of the family, but easily understandable for all.
posted by zeikka at 4:56 PM on December 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

George
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 5:37 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Milo?
posted by Segundus at 5:38 PM on December 18, 2018

People have listed some excellent Russian names which would work across the three languages but I would caution you to consider whether you want the name to sound obviously foreign to American ears. An Ivan or Igor or Roman will sound Slavic (or at least foreign) to a lot of people and while there's nothing wrong with that, it'll probably subject him to a lot of "where are you from?" and the like. I guess if you plan to give him a Japanese first name and you'd expect him to go by that, that ship has already sailed.

(I have a little experience with that -- the name I go by sounds American but seeing the full name spelled immediately makes it foreign. It's usually not a problem but a consideration).

The other thing is whether you care that the name sound fundamentally the same in different languages. As you know, English, Russian and Spanish emphasize different syllables so polysyllabic names will tend to be pronounced differently.
posted by bsdfish at 6:15 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Mark; Alan; Ken; Tony; Peter; David; any form of Michael,
posted by Enid Lareg at 6:28 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Felix... Although I can attest is becoming more popular.
posted by jrobin276 at 7:02 PM on December 18, 2018

Julian has a version in each.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:11 PM on December 18, 2018

Joseph/Josef
posted by sutel at 9:47 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Felix is my son's name. Works in French, Spanish, German, English. My Russian friends have no issues with it. Also it means happiness so that is awesome.

Noting that two suggestions here are related .. Alexander is shortened to Sasha (in Russian) so can easily be Alex/Alexander/Sasha as needed.

Similarly Mischa / Michael, but I don't know if Michael works in Spanish.
posted by chapps at 9:51 PM on December 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Sergio (Sergei in Russian)

Ilya (Russian version of Elijah)
posted by pseudostrabismus at 10:22 PM on December 18, 2018

Some variation of:
John, Michael, Stephen, Joseph, Mark, Nicholas, Peter, Paul
posted by TrishaU at 3:32 AM on December 19, 2018

Bob.
posted by jillithd at 6:28 AM on December 19, 2018

What about Samuel/Самуил?

(Full disclosure, it's what we chose for our boy too because it's one of the few that works both in English and Italian).
posted by lydhre at 6:53 AM on December 19, 2018

Maxim
posted by Middlemarch at 11:17 AM on December 19, 2018

I know a Niko who goes between Belarus, Texas and South America very successfully. I think he's actually a Nikolai, but Niko scans effortlessly.
posted by theweasel at 12:30 PM on December 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

My vote is for Maxim
posted by Ironmouth at 12:39 AM on December 20, 2018

My British/Russian/Serbian nephew is Sava. I don't know how that would fit with Spanish though.
posted by Aubergine at 4:07 PM on December 20, 2018

Nico, Michael, David...
posted by Toddles at 7:17 PM on December 20, 2018

Personally, if I was planning on moving to the US I would go with the shorter "Max" rather than "Maxim." It's not particularly common in the States, but more than that, it has a strong association with the men's magazine of the same name.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:36 PM on December 20, 2018