#now menina is girl in portuguese menino is boy and menine would be the gender meutral equivalent

[corujalesbica]

Okay, a few people have wished me a happy womens day today and like. I appreciate the sentiment, I do, but I'm not a woman. Yes, im afab, and the patriarchy does affect me, so i share lots of struggles with women. I am, however, not a woman. Please dont wish me a happy womens day just cause im not a man either. That being said, I hope every girl and every woman out there has a wonderful women's day. <3<3<3

[cepheusgalaxy]

Okay so I have a newfound love for names (it's a worldbuilding interest) and so this is a reblog chain post, for anyone to say little things about their culture's name conventions or explain how names work in their culture! I start:

In Brazil, most people have at least three names: A given name, and two family names.

Your surname/family name is usually a mix of one of your father's surnames and one of your mother's surnames. So let's say your dad's surnames are Souza and Silva, and your mom's surnames are Cerqueira and Carvalho, so your surname (and your siblings') would be something like: Souza Carvalho.

There is a little convention about family names, though, and the sequence they are in: The father's surname comes last, and the mother's surname comes first, right after your given name. Now what happens is that when you pass down one of your family names to your children, you will usually chose the last one, so, your father's last name. Your child will still have their mother last name but it won't be passed down, likely.

That is a general convention, ofc, but nor a rule. In my case, for example, my father passed down his mother's name to me and my siblings, and my own mother's name comes last on my surname.

Given names are usually composed by one or two words. Those last ones are known as compound names and are pretty common. Let's say someone's name is Maria [surname] [surname]. That is a singular name, right? But Maria could also be combined with another single name to form a compound name, like Ana Maria [surname] [surname] or Maria Júlia [surname] [surname]. There are also a few conventions about forming compound names for your child:

Gendered names are a thing, so when you mesh them together they are usually going to be names of the same gender, like "ana" [fem], with "eduarda" [fem] and not "lucas" [masc]. There are some neutral names, like "yuri" or "luca", too. There are also some combinations that are more popular than others, mainly names with Ana, Júlia, Maria, and João.

There is also a little rule for gendered names, specially biblical-inspired ones, that allows you to turn a masc name into a fem name. That comes from the characteristics in the Portuguese language (the one we speak in Brazil) that include a gendered vowel at the end of some words to define if they are masculine or feminine. For example, the words boy [menino] and girl [menina], as well as its newly introduced neutral counterpart [menine] are the same word, just with a different gendered vowel. So, most names that shift from one gender to other usually are masc in their origin and get an -a gendered vowel at the end. So a name like "Rafael" becomes "Rafaela", a name like "Eduardo" becomes "Eduarda" and so on. Sometimes masc names like Raphael/Rafael don't really have gendered vowels but since they lack one, we just assume they are masculine.

Using that structure, Brazilian people have either three or four names commonly, but I've also seen some people with three or more family names, and compound names composed by like five names or more, but that's more uncommon.

And lastly, I want to make a little note on variations of the names. A single name like "Evelyn" usually has a bunch of different variations, like: Evelin, Evellyn, Evellinn, Evellynn, Evelynn, and so on. These variations usually happen by: replacing /i/ with /y/, adding or cutting /h/, replacing /c/ with /k/, replacing /ã/ (which is a more closed /a/) with /an/, adding or cutting accents or doubling consonants. So names with /i/ like Iara can become Yara, names with /h/ like Helen can become Elen, or vice versa, similarly, names like Cauan can become Kauan and vice versa, Lúcia can become Lucia and Julia can become Jullia.

And that's it! Brazilian names work pretty differently than Usamerican names, and the formality in calling names is also a bit different (we almost never call people by their last names, even if they are teachers or figures of authority). Look foward to seeing you guys' addition to this post! 👍

(edit: most people i've known that have compund given names also have a preferred one between the two they have. i have one friend that absolutely despises one of them, and other who never tells other people hers bc she never uses it.)

(also quick note spelling differences make absolutely no differnece in how a name is pronounced. but we do tend to get annoyed when people mispell our names.)