Names

[Paolo]

I come from Italy and my name is really common there. Being a very Christian country there are lot of people in Italy named Giuseppe, Maria, Francesco, Giovanni, Paolo, Antonio...etc. the origin of my name is Greek and it means "small". There are some names quite funny in my country like "Guido" that means "(I) drive". There are also some foreign names very common in Italy like Christian for example. This is just the translation of “Cristiano”, that is also quite common. In my country when you meet someone for the first time we usually use the first name, but it depends on the situation. When we meet someone older then us we often use a title followed by the name or surname. There are no rules nowadays. For instance, if I met for the first time a person at the gym it’s not really important the age, the social position or whatever, I use most of the times just the first name.

[Sonia Gutiérrez]

In Spain, the use of the family name is very similar than in Italy. Although the social rule says that we should place a title before the family name when we speak to someone older than us, there are some situations (the gym, for example) where we can break this rule and use the first name, because of the familiarity.