commentary
What’s in a name?
It’s about that time where we really need to nail down a name or two for this child I am carrying.
My children have a name they so lovingly refer to it as, and I’m a little afraid this baby will be stuck with that name for the rest of it’s time in our family.
I read an interesting article about how in Sweden you have to get your child’s name approved by the Tax Board before naming it. One couple wanted to name their baby girl Elvis. The Swedish Government disapproved saying the name was more suited to a male child.
The discussion was opened after the article and by the time I got there over 40 comments had been made as to whether government should, or should not be able to regulate the naming of a child.
Surprisingly as I read through the comments it seemed to be a split issue. Half the commenter’s thought some children needed to be saved from the names their parents gave them. Of course there were many claiming to know people named “Lemon Jello,” and Ima Pig.”
I’ve heard those urban legends before as well and have a hard time believing them.
Then there were the commenters that recognized the fact that letting the government control these aspects of our lives is never a good thing. Where would they draw the line?
One comment in particular stood out in my mind, her name was Amy and she was very passionate against people naming their children ”ridiculous names”…she said it would affect the future of these children, and she could never back a political candidate named “Aiden” for instance. She claimed to have named her children with their future in mind. Her sons would (she was sure) grow up to be doctors and lawyers and so she named them with that in mind. Daniel and Nathan.
Names are fascinating to me, and as hateful as she sounded at least I know that she is passionate about her children’s names, and I know her reasoning behind naming them Daniel and Nathan. I don’t know where she lives to say ”Aiden” is a weird name because I think we hear it often these days, and in many forms…Hayden; Jayden; Kayden…I’ve heard them all. No one freaks out about them. And if Amy really thought a name would have ill effect on a political candidate she must think “Barak” fits right in there with “Daniel” and “Nathan.”
So what is your opinion people?
Why do you give your children the names you do? I’m curious. You don’t have to give your child’s actual name, if you blog anonymously as I do, but something along the same line of thinking as an example perhaps?
Or what would you name a child if you had one, and why?
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There’s a girl in the daycare where Ethan is who is named Jezebel, which I think is not such a great choice. And my in-laws had some name suggestions for Ethan’s Chinese name that sounded REALLY bad in English.
I think that a name can affect a child’s life in a lot of ways, but I dont think it can determine your future. Still, we tried hard to pick something that wouldn’t be too easy to make fun of on the playground!
Good luck with the choices. This is why we wanted to know the gender before the baby was born, we were too lazy to go through the effort of picking two names
Ima Hogg was the daughter Texas governor Jim Hogg. She was a highly respected woman in Texas during the 20th century.
Poor girl used to try to downplay her name by signing her first name illegibly.
Leave it to us Texans.
I have been known to tell my friends who insist on coming up with “creative” names to quit playing around and give the child a NAME. I like good old fashioned normal names, but that’s just me.
We chose our girls’ names because we liked them. One is “common,” and one is not, though it is normal. We haven’t decided what to name this next one, though.
Some name regulations might not be a bad idea. For example (and this is a true story): there is a little boy whose given, legal name is f**k-a-h*. Seriously. His parents are in jail, and his teachers have no idea what to call him. Parents should NOT be allowed to do things like this to their children. It’s not right.
When pregnant with our twins, my husband and I agonized over names, trying to decide if naming them after family would be a good idea or just hurtful to those who weren’t chosen…
We both are from Scandinavian heritage and wanted at least one of the names to reflect that. We decided against Thor, but finally found a name both of us liked and honored both sides of our family with a Scottish version of a common name. For middle names, we went with Presidential-sounding names (who also happened to be Apostles in the New Testament, thus giving us Brownie points from his grandmother!).
With this new baby, we found the short-short list of names we liked before making the decision easier… and have decided on a middle name after my husband’s best friend.
As a former teacher, I didn’t want my kids going around with weird names that would just aggravate playground fights. At the same time, though, I didn’t want them to always have to put their last initial after their first name to distinguish themselves from the five other children (male and female) with the same name. We’ve tried to pick “normal” but less-often used names to accommodate for that.
Oh, I love talking names!
For a girl, we have 2 options:
Reese (my mom has 4 daughters: Rebecca, Elizabeth, Ellen, Susan. So, Reese is taking the first initial of each girl’s name, with an ‘e’ thrown in for good measure)
Charlotte (but I would call her Charlie. I think this is cute and spunky. My sister said she would call her Chuck. I’m not too keen on that).
Cohen (I actually got this from the OC where it was a character’s last name, but I just love it. We could also go for Cowen, which is Irish for ‘twin’)
All middle names would be family oriented, using our mom’s middle names or my fathers name (he passed away 5 years ago).
http://www.stinkylemsky.typepad.com/
I think the naming process is a very personal thing, and we may roll our eyes at people who name their kids what we consider strange (APPLE?), but we shouldn’t really judge.
I grew up with (and still have, btw) a very common name and one which rhymes with tons others. . . Mary, Larry, Harry, Jerry, etc. There are several diff. ways of spelling ‘Carrie’ too and when people give me a nard time about how to spell it, I just refer them to the Stephen King movie.
As annoying as it is, having this seemingly ‘normal’ name, I wish I were named something different, something unique, something that would set me apart . . . but that’s just me.
Our children are named for family members, and yes, McRae is most heard as a last name, but not in our family’s Scottish heritage. His formal first name is Henry - there we go, confusing everything. Know what? He likes it. And when he’s in trouble, and I use Henry, he knows it’s serious. We loved the name Wyatt for a few reasons, one being the cowboy - and at the time, we thought we were being original. His biggest complaint about his name is that anytime someone says “quiet” he thinks they’re saying “Wyatt.” Who knew? And Katie is short for Catherine, which is a family name as well, her middle name is my mom’s name as all of the kids carry a piece of their grandparents around with them. That’s just how we did it.
I think paying attention to meanings, originality, strength, cultural significances, etc. are all important - but when it comes down to it, it’s just a name. And if it’s that bad, you (or your children) can change it.
And me? I worked with kids most of my youth so I (like a lot of teachers I know) have strong associations with names for really no good reason. For example, Trevor - he was a very naughty kid and I vowed to never name one of my kids Trevor, or Lance, or Crystal . . .
We named ours after a family member and our heratige.
I don’t think the government should have a say– though sometimes it might be nice to get their feedback. IE– every kid on your block is already named THAT. And for some people, they could also use some help. You know because people have got to be able to pronounce a name and all of that.
I always chuckle when people name all their kids with names starting with the same letter, or presidents or some other kind of “theme.” I once knew a lady whose girls were all named something with an “ee” at the end. Like, Bailee, Kailee, and something else. Well baby four came along and they were kind of out of names. Ainslee. Sort of cute, I guess?
Interesting topic!!
As a Jenny and Jason (blah) we were committed to finding a unique name for our son, but one that was pronouncable and recognizable as a name. To this day I scan the top 50 baby name lists to make sure his isn’t on it! There were 6 Jenny’s in my 6th grade class… it’s hard to feel unique when you have the same name as everyone around you! On the other hand I know people who go CRAZY because others can never pronounce/spell their name right. Then there are some friends of ours who wanted to name their son Tucker but didn’t because it rhymes with F***er.
They way this Wall Street Journal article is worded, I think it’s only Germany that ensures the baby’s gender is obvious by the name. - “Sweden and Denmark forbid names that officials think might subject a child to ridicule. Swedish authorities have rejected such names as Veranda, Ikea and Metallica.” As much as I hate government regulation of things I think Sweden and Denmark’s rule might be a good one. Although I kind of like the name Metallica. *grin*
I like classic names, which includes classic names from other countries. Boys names like Lindsey (think Fleetwood Mac
), Loren, Shannon, and other names usually reserved for females in the US. Kurt hated all those names and insisted that if we had a boy he should be named Darth (think Vader) or Attila (as in the Hun). As it turns out there are boys out there with both of those names. We found that out when watching some extreme sports show. We also considered using a boy’s name from Kurt’s heritage (Danish), but uuumm we didn’t like any of those. I’m sure Monk, Fulmer, and Knute are wonderful names in their own region, but they aren’t for me. It’s probably a good thing we had a girl. Her name is Sophia. 
Those “girly” names I listed for boys, those I what *I* would want for a boy. Sophia has recently made it to the top ten names and I don’t really like that, but I fell in love with the name back when it was somewhere around #50.
I thought a lot about baby names when I was pregnant and even before! I think I was a teenager when I started keeping a list of “kid’s names” in the back of my journal.
Our sons’ names are Orlando and Mica. I wanted meaningful names that weren’t too popular.
Orlando came from the book by Virginia Woolf. I just love that the character transcends time, gender, and place (and that the book doesn’t take itself too seriously). My husband is Filipino and while Orlando is not a popular Filipino name, it “fits” because of all the Spanish influence there. Orlando has two middle names that mean “peaceful day.”
Mica wasn’t even on our list! We had three boys’ names and none of them seemed right. We named him in the middle of the night after he was born, when I was up nursing him. His middle name is my maternal grandmother’s maiden name.
I don’t agree with government involvement, but I have a friend who was in Germany when her children were born and they were subjected to the review. Luckily, their names, which weren’t traditional, were “okayed.”
I would like to name my boy Edmund ( 2 months away!!!…crazy!) . This is a characters name from Chronicles of Narnia. I like the way it rolls of my tongue and I like the character. There’s my reason.
Adam
I also think baby names are fascinating, including our societal responses to them. Names like “Chimera Griffin” or “Leper Priest” or “Oswald” will always get a conversation going.
I got those real names from this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/science/11tier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Basically, it says kids cope well with unusual names; people don’t judge unusual names the way you think they might. Tierney terms it the “Boy Named Sue Paradigm.” It’s a cool piece.
Signed,
Lora (not Laura)
I am a fan of unusual names and I by looking around my son’s preschool I think that the new “unusual” names will be things like Jennifer and David. Don’t hear much of those anymore.
As far as being protected from ridicule by naming a child something common, I think that is just plain silly. If children are going to tease, they’ll find something else. When I was a kid, there wasn’t much fodder in my given name, so they called me fatty, my friend Maria got dubbed “nose job”. Probably more hurtful than something based on a name our parents chose.
Anyhow, I love the names we chose for our sons and will defend the choices of other parents, even if they are names I am not crazy about. I mean, hell, after dealing with pregnancy or the rigors of adoption, you should feel free to name your offspring whatever you like. Sheesh.
We all have our own rules, don’t we?! We went with 5 letter names for our kids - nice and short for spelling when they’re young and should always fit in the blocks provided on forms. Also, there tends to be big confusion for my husband with what he is called (and such common name - David). For our son we went with a name that couldn’t be shortened. Turns out our daughter’s name can be shortened, but, it still has just 5 letters! We also stayed away from family names so as not to play favorites (and, really, we weren’t overly fond of them!). Good thing there are 9 months to choose because it is HARD!
Naming my kids was probably the second hardest thing about pregnancy.
Samara wasn’t too hard actually- I heard the name in The Ring and I knew I wanted it, all it took was hours of nagging her father to stop saying no to it. Her first middle name is a Beethoven opus, her second is my sister’s middle name. Her name is perfect to me.
Caesar was a little more difficult. Up until a few days before his birth he was going to be Seth. But Christian {who hates his name} and I {I love mine!} threw Caesar back on the table and we waited to see which he’d look more like and Caesar he is. Definitely wasn’t a Seth. Caesar, from Julius Caesar, of course. His middle name is the same as Christian’s {which he also hates}.
And Mercutio was the hardest one to name. We had a few boys’ name ideas and none of them appealed as they had when we thought them up. We finally chose Mercutio, being fans of the Shakespearean character, and Christian’s brother’s name just fit perfectly in the middle!
Good luck choosing a name!
We recently had our daughter and named her Zoë. It was actually a name we picked out on our 3rd date, years ago. Crazy, huh? We liked that it was cute, simple but different and a bit artsy.
I named my last child after my dad, someone I have a tremendous amout of respect for.
As for the nick names you have for the unborn… don’t worry after a day or two they will be gone. I called my first child Rasin, my parents were terrified it would stick, and then # 2 we called burger.
Bockshnar or Throckmorten. I don’t know what I’d choose if it were a boy…