Brazilian Names

[Grant Barrett]

While this is not related to dialects of North American English, I think it may be of some interest to list members. It is a long article from the Los Angeles Times concerning the odd names Brazilians give their children.

http://www.latimes.com:80/excite/990517/t000044248.html

This is the part that caught my eye:

"We are more open in Brazil," he says. "People commit every grammatical aberration you can imagine. Sometimes we get names so long they won't fit in the computer." 
Quintanilha wrote a manual addressing the proper spelling of first names. Although he tries to share his expertise, parents insist on phonetic versions, and delight in inserting the letters K, W and Y, which are not used in Portuguese, the language spoken in Brazil.

"They say they like the way a name looks," he says. "They are concerned more with the visual appearance than the etymology."