Mahmoud Ali Ahmadi Pour - M.A TEFL student,Kerman Institute of Higher Education
Mehdi Khodaparast - Kerman Institute of Higher Education

Since the creation of the human beings, naming people has been an important issue.People began naming their children after many different properties, such as:natural properties,regions they used to live in,the days of their birth,and finally,their relatives,no matter maternal or paternal,and for several different reasons such as:making a personal identity(Richard J. Gerrig and Mahzarin R. Banaji,1991),simplicity of being called among the members of a society, and to enable people to get their rights in the case of courts of law(Social security). The aim of this study was to investigatethe resources parents most frequently use to name their children in Kerman-Iran.The sample includes 130 subjects who completed a questionnaire developed bySoheila Feiz, 2004. The instrument comprises 5 categories and 28 sub categories people normally use to name their children. The study shows that parents’ decisions were mostly influenced by ethnic motivation and individual characteristics categories (47.6%). The others’ influence as a naming category was not favored by most parents. Surprisingly,the minority of the participants (13.8%)favored religious names which reject the previous studies.

Identity, Naming,Ethnic, Individual Characteristics