A Mexican state with a tradition of giving children odd names
The saints didn’t march all the way in
ON A SCORCHING Saturday in Jonuta, a poor region of the tropical Mexican state of Tabasco, a woman sits in the shade by a river cradling her granddaughter. The child’s name is Sirse, a twist on Circe, a Greek sorceress who turned her enemies into animals. “I saw the name in a novel and I liked it,” explains Sirse’s mother, Nabil. The trend towards greater variety in names is a global one. In Tabasco, giving babies unusual names, often based on Greek ones, is a proud tradition.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Tabascan onomastics”
From the October 3rd 2020 edition
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