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Growing up, it was very common for my mother & other family members use the German particle 'die' in front of my given name in conversation, such as:

'Die Natascha war schon mal gestern im Kino," or: 'Die Taschi mag immer die dunkleschwarzen Schokoladen'.

Is this a regional practice? My mother and grandmother both came from Bayern.

Chuha
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    See https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/3937/why-is-there-a-definite-article-precedent-to-a-name – Takkat Aug 31 '17 at 06:04
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    Du darfst (uns sollst, wenn du kannst) Fragen gerne auch auf Deutsch stellen. Denn ganz ofensichtlich sprichst du besser Deutsch als Englisch, sonst hättest in einem englischen Satz nicht den deutschen Namen Bayern sondern den englischen Bavaria verwendet. Siehe auch: https://german.meta.stackexchange.com/a/830/1487 – Hubert Schölnast Aug 31 '17 at 06:55

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Is this a regional practice? My mother and grandmother both came from Bayern.

Yes.

In Bayern, Baden-Württemberg and maybe some other parts of (southern) Germany personal names are (nearly always) used with articles.

People coming from the north of Germany told me that they were very confused about this.

There are other regions in (northern?) Germany where you use the article only when talking about cattle: In these regions a cow named "Natasha" would be named "die Natascha" and a person would only be named "Natasha".

People coming to southern Germany form such a region will be very, very confused!

Edit

"Nearly always" means that names like "Herr Schmidt" or "Professor Maier" are also used with article in southern Germany:

"Der Herr Schmidt", "der Professor Maier"

Martin Rosenau
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