totally random garbage: Yumpin’ Yiminy! – Latino Baseball Players & the Letter Y

The wife and myself were watching some baseball the other night, and were struck by some of the players’ names. In particular, it was the Latino players whose first names began with Y – in this instance, Yordan Alvarez and Yainer Diaz (of the Astros). We then tried to see how many others we could come up with – Yadier Molina, Yonder Alonso, Yoenis Cespedes …

It really got me wondering … What’s behind all this? My thought was that it might be a replacement for the letter J. Now, in Spanish, that letter is typically pronounced “h.” What, though, if Spanish speakers wanted something closer to an English J sound?

Since that is simply not a sound in Spanish, maybe the closest they could get would be a Y sound – like in German or Dutch. There’s also something similar going on in Hebrew and Arabic – Yusef for Joseph, Yonathan instead of Jonathan, Yakob for Jacob …

A final consideration might be the prevalence of Russian names beginning with Y – Yuri, Yevgeny, Yefim … Now, that would definitely be a consideration in Cuba, but it might also have some effect in nearby places like, say, Puerto Rico.

NOTE: Since these names are so weird, SpellCheck wants to immediately correct me. I've throw in some of those corrections when they seemed particularly odd.

I Kinda Get It

Now, these ones seem to support my theory. Like the name Jordan? Well, Yordan’s not that far off. Partial to Giovanni (another English J sound)? How about Yovani? Not bad.

Yordan Alvarez
Yordano Ventura (Yordanov)

Yovani Gallardo
Yovanny Lara
Yohan Pino / Yohan Flande

It’s Not Working Here Though

That same idea isn’t going to work with every name however. Like the name Jack? Well, you certainly don’t want to name your child after a musk ox now, do you?