A person is given a name in childhood and for life, it becomes so familiar that he does not think about its meaning. Most often, the question of choosing a name and its meaning arises when you need to give a name to your own child, and it turns out that this is not an easy question.
A name is a person's self-designation, a combination of sounds that other people and himself designate him. People use names so that they can easily and without wasting time turn to exactly the person they want to communicate with. A person needs a name more in order to contact other people. Man himself needs a self-name much less. Isolated from other people, a person may even forget their name. A person's personal name is the "face" that he wears in society, it is a kind of sound code that largely determines his communication with other people. Most often, a name is given to a person in childhood by parents, guardians. Their desires and expectations are reflected in the choice of a name. Certain character traits are associated with each name in the minds of people. We can say that each common name has its own psychological image, portrait. This portrait is fixed in the experience of communication, in oral folk art and in fiction. There are so-called "speaking" names, for example, "Alexei" is associated with a person of soft, positive and stable character. First of all, the formation of a stereotype is influenced by the combination of the sounds of the name, in this case, the absence of solid consonants and hissing sounds, and then cultural associations are superimposed (Alyosha Popovich from the tale of the Nightingale the Robber, etc.). Often children are called certain names with a thought that this will help the child to repeat the happy or glorious fate of those who bore these names before. There is a tradition to give names in honor of the closest elder relatives of the child: father, mother, grandmother or grandfather. This is pretty much a homage. Often, parents are looking for a rare name for a child. They choose foreign, atypical names so that there are as few namesakes around as possible, and the stereotype of the name does not affect the fate. Sometimes people quite consciously direct their lives along the path that their own names tell them. Holders of common, popular names use diminutives, derivatives or nicknames in communication so that they are not confused with namesakes. In extreme cases, people change their name. In many countries, this becomes possible when a person reaches the age of majority.
