In this thread, I was explaining how I like names for the esthetic rather than for their association with someone I know. In fact, I tend to prefer rarer names because ordinary ones are banal and lack originality or character. We are not to blame for the name(s) our parents chose for us or the one we inherited from our ancestors. But it would be more interestin to choose our names ourselves.

Many given names are the same in all Western countries (with variants in spelling and/or pronuciation). In China, family names only have one kanji for 1.3 billion people. Given that there are about 20,000 kanji in Chinese, and that most people know at best 6,000, and that only a fraction of these are used in names, that means that hundred of thousands of people share the same family names, and certainly thousands of each family name also share the same given name (only 2 kanji).

So why not create new, international names using our imagination and creativity ?

Here are a few that pass through my mind at the moment (note that they sound quite ancient, and more Aryan too) :

Sardapan
Esegide
Elagabal
...


Disclaimer : these are not names I would necessarily choose for me. I chose "Maciamo".