>>- Anything wrong with the guy, dad?
>>
>>- Now, nothing. He's dead.
>
>Good old Bogdan Diklic ;-) (If I had that name I would change it to John Smith in no time).

Um, Bogdan means "given by a god".

>I just finished reading a book that had a character named Dragan. He was Croatian, though. Is it a popular name in general in that area?

I gather it is - I always had between one and three classmates with the same name. Somewhat less in Croatia, I guess, but the fashions go both ways. Uroš, for example, is a popular name in Slovenia, and that's the name of one of the kings in the first dynasty.

Probably came into fashion a hundred or so years ago. I think I got mine after some lieutenant in "Serbian trilogy", which depicts WWI, where the guy has a little brave episode which ends shortly. Funny, though, how completely non-military I turned out :).

Just recently reconnected with an old friend in Croatia, and she says she knows a guy in Australia named exactly the same as I, who is a complete ustasha, i.e. a total and over-the-board Croatian ultranationalist. When she's in the mood, she just annoys him by telling him that there's a Serb of the same name :). Actually, now that I've done my (roughly annual) autogoogling, I have at least two more of namesakes, plus that blabbermouth Dragoljub or Dragutin or Dragiša in Paris who is some sort of Serb nationalist, but instead of using his name (which is actually more traditional, so should be more properly Serbian) insists on signing his drivel as Dragan. Anything that gets published under my name in Paris, and is linguistics or politics, is not me, it's him, I have nothing to do with that guy, and will not pay his debts.