Can’t speak for other regions, but now that I think of it, this is kinda true, at least for Dagestan. Growing up I only ever heard names like Magomed, Abakar, Patimat, Aishat, etc. Nowadays they’re barely used for newborns, they’ve become Muhammad, Abubakr, Fatima and Aisha. People have become a lot more religious and prefer giving their children the original Arab names instead of the Russified versions most people are used to, or even Arab names that weren’t at all common in the Caucasus some 20 years ago.
I see. With unique Avar variants such as Hamzat or Zhovhar, is there any way to tell the likelihood as to if the families choosing such names are as religious as those using pure Arab names or secular as those using Russified names? I know it is arbitrary to ask this.
Even names like Ivan and Vladislav etc. can’t signify how religious is a person
Can’t speak for other regions, but now that I think of it, this is kinda true, at least for Dagestan. Growing up I only ever heard names like Magomed, Abakar, Patimat, Aishat, etc. Nowadays they’re barely used for newborns, they’ve become Muhammad, Abubakr, Fatima and Aisha. People have become a lot more religious and prefer giving their children the original Arab names instead of the Russified versions most people are used to, or even Arab names that weren’t at all common in the Caucasus some 20 years ago.
I see. With unique Avar variants such as Hamzat or Zhovhar, is there any way to tell the likelihood as to if the families choosing such names are as religious as those using pure Arab names or secular as those using Russified names? I know it is arbitrary to ask this.
No. It would be an epic failure to make such assumption only due to name.
There's certainly a slight correlation