Mexican boy names

What Mexican boy names look like

For most of the twentieth century Mexican boys were named from a short list of saints, usually in pairs: José Luis, Juan Carlos, Miguel Ángel, José Antonio, Luis Miguel, Juan Manuel. José and Juan were so common that the second name did the real work of telling brothers apart. That generation is still the majority of adult men, which is why the all-population list looks so different from the newborn list.

Since about 2010 the registry has shifted to single names with an Italian or Latin sound: Santiago, Mateo, Sebastián, Leonardo, Matías, Emiliano, Gael, Thiago, Bruno, Iker. Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, has been the number one boy name in Mexico for most of the last decade. Emiliano honors Emiliano Zapata, and Benito, Lázaro, and Porfirio all carry the names of presidents.

The indigenous revival is smaller for boys than for girls but growing. Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor, has been a real given name since the 1920s; Tonatiuh (the sun), Ollin (movement), Tenoch, and the Maya Balam and Canek appear in the registry every year.

Nicknames are part of the name

A Mexican boy named José will be Pepe. Jesús will be Chuy. Francisco will be Paco or Pancho, Ignacio will be Nacho, Salvador will be Chava, Alberto and Roberto will be Beto, Eduardo will be Lalo, Guillermo will be Memo, Antonio will be Toño, Enrique will be Quique, Luis will be Güicho, Sergio will be Checo, Vicente will be Chente. These are not childish; grown men, politicians, and footballers go by them. Each name page lists the nicknames, and the nickname guide explains the sound changes.

Pronunciation in brief

Stress the second-to-last syllable unless an accent mark says otherwise: sahn-tee-AH-go, mah-TEH-oh, seh-bahs-tee-AHN. J is an English h (ho-SEH, heh-SOOS). Nahuatl names stress the second-to-last syllable and end in a single tl sound: kwow-TEH-mok, toh-nah-TEE-oo. The pronunciation guide has the rules with examples.