Numbers as personal names

https://www.reddit.com/r/culturalstudies/comments/1h96aak/numbers_as_personal_names/

created by SpielbrecherXS on 08/12/2024 at 00:20 UTC

4 upvotes, 1 top-level comments (showing 1)

Historically, both Russian and Japanese peasants had this naming convention where sons could be literally named "First", "Second", or "Third", like Первак (Pervak), Вторак (Vtorak), Третьяк (Tretyak, as in Tretyakov Gallery) and 一郎 (Ichirou)、二郎 (Jirou), 三郎 (Saburou), and so on. Were there similar conventions in any other cultures, or are these two just and odd outlier coincidence?

Comments

Comment by amishius at 09/12/2024 at 03:46 UTC

0 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I'm not sure if you're really asking this in the right plus, but yes— Latin has a history of this which has made it's way into Romance languages. Primo (first) in Italian or Quentin (fifth) in English (not a Roman language but with French elements, of course).