WONDER OF LANGUAGE

Languages fascinate me. I speak Croatian as my mother tongue and English. I understand Slovenian and some German, Italian which I learned by watching satellite tv channels. I would definitely like to learn few more languages. I like vibrant sound of Spanish and smoothness...if that's the proper word...of Brazilian Portugese.
It's a pity that so many beautiful languages spoken in small nations will surely die because of dominance of so called big world languages...or just powerty of people in those small communities, nations...
Personal names and surnames are very interesting part through which one can see culture of certain country, nation.... Some names or surnames have origin in ancient time...for example prechristian period....others have religious history...There are names who describe certain aspects of human personality, their occupation, geographical features etc.
Let me mention few examples of personal names and its origin.. Michael (hebrew – „gift from God“), Sophia (greek – „wisdom“), David (hebrew – „dearly loved).
If one is interested good web site with explaination of orgin of personal names is
www.namecentral.com
Believe it or not here in my Croatia there are surnames of Margarin (Margarine) or Musica (little fly). They rare, but they exist. Some surnames sound kind of strange in certain situations for example imagine Mr. or Mrs. Sparks or Burns who sell fire insurance...
In some cultures surname did not appeart until the 17th or even 19th century. There are cultures where surname is not used for example in Tibet. In Iceland family names does not exist in traditional form. Family names are actually created by adding word „sson“ for men and dottir for women to the name of father. So, surname Karlsson can be translated as „son of Karl“. Male and female forms of surnames also exist in countries like Russia or Czech Republic. For example, male in Russia can have surname Ivanov („son of Ivan“) and female Ivanova („daughter of Ivan).
There are countries like Spain or those Portugese speaking where a person has several surnames. In the Netherlands surnames became obligatory when it's occupaed by French at the beginning of 19th century. Some Dutch tought official use of surnames won't survive so they chose funny surnames like for example Rotmensen („rotten people“) or Naaktgeboren („born naked“). I wonder if such surnames still exist.
Finally let me mention that most countries put name before surname, but there are those where surname is put first. Some of such countries are China, Japan, Hungary and Vietnam.
That's all from me today. Bye, bye!!