and in a lot of cases that is absolutely true, the celebrities act as a loudspeaker, even if they are not starting the trend. But I noticed that in the Romance
Europe (the
Europe that I know for names: Iberian Peninsula,
France, Italy) this situation seems less common than in the English speaking world and in a lot of cases, the only explanation for the rise of a name is an internal process: the name sounds like another popular name, has the same style...
Honestly, in the case of
Matilde I don't know, but if two Italian people (who are into names) think that
Matilde Brandi is not an explanation for the rise of the name, probably the explanation has to be found in other places. For example, the book
Matilda (1988), by
Roald Dahl, was translated into Italian as
Matilde and the kids from the 80s are now having children. This concurring with the trend of old fashioned names (this trend recovered
Mathilde since 1980s in
France).
Lumia
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