Albanian names and their meaning: from Bardh to Gent

Names that are words

Anyone who learns a little Albanian soon notices that many names can be found in the dictionary. Drita comes from dritë, light, and its male form is Dritan. Shpresa comes from shpresë, hope. Flutura means butterfly, Lule flower, Era comes from erë, wind. Kaltrina is probably linked to kaltër, the word for sky blue.

Boys' names work the same way. Agim means dawn, Ylli comes from yll, star, and has the female form Yllka. Blerim means greenery, Besnik faithful, and Fatmir comes from fatmirë, lucky. Ardit combines ar, gold, and ditë, day: a golden day. Such names are wishes. Parents who call their son Fatmir wish him luck; those who call their daughter Shpresa give her hope to carry.

Names from the Illyrian past

A second large group of names looks back to antiquity. Ilir simply means Illyrian, after the ancient people of the western Balkans. Dardan comes from the Dardani, an Illyrian tribe. Arben is derived from Arbën, meaning Albanian.

Teuta is the name of a queen. She ruled the Ardiaean kingdom on the Adriatic from about 231 BC as regent for her stepson and fought the First Illyrian War against Rome, which she lost in 228. Her name is usually explained as queen or mistress of the people. Today Teuta is a common name for Albanian girls, and the football club of Durrës has carried her name since 1930.

Bardhyl is the Albanian form of Bardylis, who reigned from 393 to 358 BC and founded the first Illyrian dynasty known to us. His name shares its root with the Albanian adjective i bardhë, white. Gent and its variant Genc go back to Gentius, who ruled from Scodra, today's Shkodra, from 181 BC and was the last attested Illyrian king; in 168 BC a Roman army defeated him.

The word behind Bardh is richer than a colour. The adjective i bardhë means white, but also pure and clean, blank like an unwritten page, and lucky. It goes back to an Indo-European root meaning to shine, and is related to the Germanic word that became bright in English. Its counterpart is zi, black. A name like Bardh therefore carries more than a colour: it carries light, purity and good fortune.

When the state chose the names

In communist Albania, names became a political matter. In the late 1960s, newborns were to receive names without religious meaning. A decree dated 23 September 1975 went further: citizens whose names were considered objectionable had to change them to pure Albanian names by the end of that year.

In 1982 a dictionary of personal names listed the names considered suitable. Next to native words such as Flutur, butterfly, it contained creations of the regime such as Marenglen, put together from Marx, Engels and Lenin. Some supposedly Illyrian names were taken from inscriptions found in the necropolis of ancient Dyrrachium, today's Durrës, excavated between 1958 and 1960.

How surnames are built

A full Albanian name has three parts: the given name (emri), the father's given name (atësia), which appears mostly in official documents, and the family name (mbiemri). Many family names tell a story. The ending -aj means son of, as in Lucaj, son of Luca. Others come from places, such as Frashëri, Shkodra or Prishtina, or from occupations: Hoxha means the Muslim cleric, Prifti the priest.

Grammar shapes surnames too. Male family names usually end in -i, or in -u after the letters k, g, h and i, while female forms end in -a or -ja. The same family name can therefore appear in slightly different forms depending on whether it belongs to a man or a woman,.

In northern Albania and Kosovo, many surnames go back to the old clans, among them Krasniqi, Berisha and Gashi. The names Gega and Toska, or Gegaj and Toskaj, point to the north and the south of the country, the regions of the two main dialects. Many surnames have Islamic or Christian roots, but they say little about a family's faith today: the two often no longer match.

Names today

Fashions change. In Albania itself, international names have become popular: in 2014 not one of the twenty most common names for newborns was an Albanian name. In Kosovo, North Macedonia and Montenegro, by contrast, Albanian names, including the Illyrian ones, are still widespread, alongside religious names. In the diaspora the picture is mixed: in Greece and Italy, where Albanians are among the largest migrant groups, many newcomers have adopted Greek or Italian names.

Two of the names in this article also stand in the name BARDH & GENT: Bardh, white, the root of Bardhyl, and Gent, after the last king of the Illyrians. One is a word everyone in Albania knows, the other a piece of history more than two thousand years old.

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1. Wikipedia: Albanian name
2. Behind the Name: Albanian names
3. Wikipedia: Teuta
4. Wikipedia: Bardylis
5. Wikipedia: Gentius
6. Wiktionary: bardhë
7. Wiktionary: Gent