Why “¿Cómo te llamas?” means “¿Cuál es tu nombre?”?

Question

Why does "¿Cómo te llamas?" mean "¿Cuál es tu nombre?". After all, it literally means "How do you call yourself?". Yet, most of the time, you don't call yourself anything; rather, other people call you, usually, by your name.

So, then, why is "¿Cómo te llamas?" more commonly used than "¿Cuál es tu nombre?"?

Answer 1

¿Cómo te llamas? translates more literally to How are you called (in general, maybe by others)? than to How do you call yourself?, since it's a reference to a pronominal verb (a verb that needs to be conjugated with a pronoun, and in this specific case it was formerly called pseudo-reflexive), contrary to the call in your example, which is simply transitive. But in practice it just means What's your name?.

Merrian-Webster:

llamarse reflexive verb :
to be called, to be named
<¿cómo te llamas? : what's your name?>

You have a very similar verb, apellidarse, which has the same construction:

Merrian-Webster:

apellidarse reflexive verb :
to have for a last name
<¿cómo se apellida? : what is your last name?>

This case is more obvious, since there is no confusion between the two different flavors (transitive and pseudo-reflexive/pronominal) of the same verb. Despite the existence of the transitive version of apellidar, it's not as common as the transitive version of llamar.

llamar (a alguien, transitive) vs llamarse (preudo-reflexive/pronominal).
apellidar (a alguien, transitive) vs apellidarse (pseudo-reflexive/pronominal).

Now, regarding the last part of your question Cómo te llamas is more likely to be used in everyday speech and Cuál es tu nombre, since it's a little bit more formal, maybe also a little bit less used.

Answer 2

Different languages, like different peoples, have different customs. You cannot expect to use literal translations to get the correct phrases/meanings -- it is something you have to learn.

(After all, if it was as easy as literal translations computers could do it for us with no problem; try running a phrase or two through some of the free translation services to see that it is not, in fact, an easy thing to do.)

So the reason is: Because it does. ;)

Answer 3

This is because the verb llamar is a pronominal verb when it has the meaning of "having a name or a last name"; here's the relevant part of the definition according to RAE:

llamar.

(Del lat. clamāre).

1. prnl. Tener tal o cual nombre o apellido.

In fact, llamar (when used with the above meaning) is an example of a strictly pronominal verb always requiring the non-tonic pronoun.

Just to clarify: In the expression ¿Cómo te llamas? the term te must not be taken as a reflexive pronoun at all (it is, in fact, a morphem), so it is not true that ¿Cómo te llamas? would be translated as How do you call yourself?