Hey colleagues,
I’m Alberto from Barcelona. I want to share with you some words about names and other related things.
As everybody knows, or not , the common surnames in Catalonia are García and Martínez. I don’t know much about surnames but there are people who study their origin. As instance, my parents wanted to know the origin of their family names and they contacted one person who works in it. From this moment, I did realise that all the jobs you can imagine exist. Thanks to the person who studied my parents’ family names, I know their origin and a little legend about it, which I never remember.
My family name is not a common one, but it is not strange, so I have no problem with the pronunciation - comprehension. I know people who have to repeat at least twice to achieve that the other one can write it correctly. As one of the posters has said after, they are a lot of surnames referred to professions in Spain. I think that the origin comes from the profession of the ancients, obviously.
I have looked for the names more used in the statistic institute of Catalonia and I have found that are: José, Antonio, Francisco, Maia, Montserrat and Carmen. Nevertheless, for the last years, the names are shorter, like Marc, Alex, David, Paula, Maria and Carla. There is always the common catholic origin of the names, but now, the names are more Catalan names and less Spanish ones.
Best Regards
Alberto