BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture German Culture Favorite German Baby Names

You are right, she is Franka Potente. I must point out though, on imdb.com it lists an alternate name of Franke Potente. I don't know why! But there is the link for information:BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

Adelheid (Adelaide)...Rosa...Hulda...Mella..Herman..Emile..!!!

Cornelia is nice (although it derives from Latin - like Sabine).

I've always thought that the name Gisela was very pretty.

I have met many women named Gisela. And they are all lovely, both inside and out. I wonder why that is? The name Gisela bring to mind something soft and feminine for me.

I think Gisela derives from the Germanic "silaz" (hall). The houses of the Teutons which had only one (big) room were called siliz (pl. of silaz). Later the journeymen were called "gisel" (in contemporary German: Geselle), which meant a journeyman who shared a room (for accomodation) with other journeymen.

I like Katarzyna for a girl and Tadeusz for a boy. (My grandmother's name was Katarzyna)

Yes they are really lovely names, and I have heard of neither Katarzyna nor Tadeusz before.

There are some lovely �old fashioned� baby names coming back into fashion here, such as Charlotte for girls and Elias for boys, but German Christian names tend towards being conventional any way.

There are fashions as there are in any country, at the moment there seem to be a great many tiny Hannah�s and Maximilian�s, and my youngest son has four friends named Konstantine, so that was obviously the vogue around twenty years ago.

However there is no chance for anyone to have to go through life called Gramophone, Moon Unit, Zowie or Apple here because the name has to be one of which the very strict office of vital statistics, or Standesamt, would approve, which means it has to fit to the sex of the name bearer and it should not cause distress to that child as it goes through life.

As young people that were going to have to live in various different countries my sons have names that fit just about everywhere, with the names of their father and Grandfathers as second and third names, and that is also something that happens frequently in this multicultural world of ours.