Aussies with weird names???

[Lemon[H]ead]

i've always wondered why some australians have weird Croatian\Yugoslavian sounding names.

Hellmund, Mickwish, VERT (although you are a NZer) would you care to enlighten me?

[Warthog]

Same reason why Irish have last names like O' Leary, O'Day, etc., Americans have last names like Smith, Thompson, Chamberlin, Jones.....Brits have first names like Nevil, Charles....

Warthog

[willy_ph]

Wart, the majority of the names you mentioned originated in the "old world". That being places such as England, France, Germany, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, etc.

[Lemon[H]ead]

yes, but i mean is there a specific REASON behind it.
Was Aus a place where Croatians were sent because they were good/bad/smelly/brillian. Did Yugoslavia conquer Australia in the 1970s or something? Was there a yugoslav hacker in the 1600s who changed all the government records to be yugoslav names and everyone just accepted them cos they were cool?

[willy_ph]

It could have something to do with the history of a certain country. For instance, in Canada, different regions have a concentration of one particular heritage because of immigration. This could have also happened in Austrailia.

I'm not positive, but it would be one easy way of explaining it.

have weird Croatian\Yugoslavian sounding names

But why do you think they are weird? What is not weird according to you?

Names are proper nouns and can be spelt and pronounced in a multitude of ways. Calling names weird smacks of being labeled a bigot or ignorant. Or possibly both. IMO.

[KraM]

yes, but i mean is there a specific REASON behind it

No

[willy_ph]

There isn't neccessarily one specific reason behind the entire trend. But I'm sure there would be serveral contributing factors to it.

[capybara]

i think its because things are upside down in oz, and the peep get tired from standing on their head and walking on their hands

Australia is one of the most multinational developed nations in the world, so if we have a lot of peopler who have "foreign" sounding names, its because we have a lot of "foreign" (that is, non-Anglo-Saxon) people groups.

Australia also was very proactice in resettlement of displaced peoples in the past (and still is, despite the recent bad publicity over "boat people"), so we have large groups of Croations, Yugoslavs and other peoples whose hoemlands had recent turmoils.

But some "strange" sounding names are actually Anglo-Saxon in origin, so you can't really judge by a surname. And "strange" sounding is a matter of ethnicity - "Smith" sounds real peculiar to a person of Chinese or Japanese descent.

And

i think its because things are upside down in oz, and the peep get tired from standing on their head and walking on their hands

yep, this is a problem, but it causes us to have very hard heads, which we need for trade dealings with some other nations! hehe..