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KQ, I have a good friend whose daughter is named Maggie, only it's Magdalene. I really liked that.
Sometimes they call her Mags, which is even cuter.
About the old-fashioned names: when I was a young single woman, "Emma" was such an old-fashioned name. I had a senior citizen friend named Emma and that's what I always thought of. "Emily" was the hot name. But a few years later I had 2 friends name their babies Emma, and later that same year Rachel (Friends) named her baby Emma, and now it's like #1. So you never know which names are going to keep sounding old-fashioned and which are going to become new again.
Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: Demonstrocity, I want a Maggie (Margaret), but my husband thinks it's too old-fashioned.
How is Sayuri pronounced?
I'm ok with Maggie, although Margaret is too unfeminine sounding a name for my taste.
Sayuri is pronounced, approximately, Sah-YOU-ree; the important part is the R and the way the American accent overblends consonant & vowel sounds. The "R" is a Japanese R; short of actually verbalizing it, the closest approximation I can give you is that it's pronounced similarly to the first R in "Ricardo" in Spanish or the R in "Rotoli" in Italian. Even that doesn't quite capture it correctly, but it's as close as I can get to explaining. Posts: 246 | Registered: Jul 2006
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I love my grandmother's name, Evangeline, and her friends usually shorten it to Angie. If one day I get married and have kids, that's the name I want for a daughter.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Originally posted by ketchupqueen: See, I don't think that certain names "fit" a certain child, although there is usually some changing of the middle name some time in the third trimester.
I had chosen the name Amber for my first daughter, but decided when I was two weeks overdue that I didn't like it and chose a different name. The night before my second daughter was born, my sister called and asked if I had another girl (this was back in the day when you didn't KNOW what it was going to be) if I'd name her Amber. I told her I didn't think I would. But when she was born, she just LOOKED like an Amber. She had strawberry blond hair and the name just "fit".
It still fits... she's the amber-est person I know.
That year and the several around it were big years for Ambers though. She always had 2 or 3 Ambers in her classes, and her younger sister's two best friends were both named Amber. Mine was the only one with amber colored hair though.
Posts: 2069 | Registered: May 2001
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Natalie's name changed at the last minute, she was supposed to be Emily but when she was born on Christmas Day when wanted something to comemorate that without being too cutesy with something like Christy or Carol. We got down to Noel and Natalie, and I just liked Natalie better.
So, when my second daughter was born we gave her the name Emily because we still loved it. And yes, it's very popular and there's lots of Emily's around, but gosh darn it, it's the perfect name for her. Her name came from Emilia, Iago's wife in Othello - my favorite Shakesperean play.
We went to Biblical names for the twins, and while Abigail has certainly gained in popularity, she's the only Abigail we know that is called Abigail. The rest are Abby's. Daniel is the only Daniel we know in our circle of friends, church, and neighborhood. Odd. I would have thought there would have been more Daniel's.
At any rate, middle names, except for Emily's, were all family names. Natalie's middle name is the same as mine, Daniel's is Wesley for his father, Abigail is Abigail Rose for her great-grandmother Rosa. Emily's is Catherine simply because I loved the way they sounded together.
One thing that I've noticed with popular names is that when there's more than one kid with that name, they usually either call each other by the last name or make up nicknames. There are two Emily's in her gymnastics class, and the coach calls her Ward, or Happy. Ward because the other Emily's last name is a lot longer than ours, and Happy because Emily never smiles. She says it's because she is busy concentrating.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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My name is pretty unusual. I have never met anyone with the same name as me. I have never seen my name before actually. In high school, we watched a movie on the Doner party and one of the Doners quoted had a similar name and my friends were so all excited because this was the closest to my name they had ever seen (they decided I must be named after her and teased me for a while after that). But my name also has a relatively common shortening, so I can choose how to introduce myself. I have always been pretty happy with this.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Belle, I still love Emily. I've wanted to use that name since I was seven. Funny, I had two girls and neither of them ended up being "Emily" - it just wasn't right. But I love that name.
And I didn't know "Natalie" was a Christmas name. (Although I do have a couple December friends named Noel and Holly.) Could you explain?
Oh - someone up there mentioned Peanut - I do have a Peanut! Not his legal name, though. Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Natalie to commemorate the Nativity, JennaDean.
As for names fitting after birth, I know some people feel that way, and I can picture it happening, but just not to me. I have gotten strong feelings both times about what will or won't fit during the pregnancy, usually toward the end. Bridget was going to have a not-Gaelic middle name, but I started feeling really strongly that I wanted this child's name to honor my Irish heritage. She ended up with Niamh, and she seems to have all the "Irish-looking" genes-- reddish, curly hair, very very very pale skin (not skin that immediately tans like her sister's), blue eyes that are getting bluer instead of darker, the list goes on. So as I wrote the other day, we seem to have given the right child the Irish name-- but I chose it while I was pregnant, I had a very strong feeling that it would be right for her. I dunno, it just seems to work that way for me. I don't know if the name fits the child or we see the child the way we want to to fit the name. *shrugs*
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:I have gotten strong feelings both times about what will or won't fit during the pregnancy
Me too, every time.
Although with my first, I had a dream near the end that we had the baby and started to name him what we'd decided and suddenly I felt like, "My goodness, that name is entirely too long for such a tiny person! What were you thinking?" Fortunately that went away when I woke up. Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Another rule that's very important to me:
Never name your child before you've met them.
That's an important one to me too. I still don't understand why so many people were surprised that we hadn't named Lego before he was born. We were asked a couple of times what we were going to do about the birth certificate. I guess they figured that if we hadn't decided already, then we weren't going to decide before leaving the hospital, either. Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Don't name your boys Taylor. Its not that I don't like the name, but you are basically going to have a "Tyler" if you do. Its worse if your lastname is a valid first name like mine is. Teachers wanted to call me Tyler or Brad my whole life, but never Taylor.
Normal names mispelled (like in Utah) just annoy me to no end. There are plenty of GREAT names that just are not used as much. Then again I might not be the best judge of this, I think "Fyodor" is an awesome name.
The Russians have some great and some not so great names. I'm going to give all my kids secondary Chinese names too
As for Japanese names I know its a last name but I think Inoue is my favorite.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Don't name your boys Taylor. Its not that I don't like the name, but you are basically going to have a "Tyler" if you do. Its worse if your lastname is a valid first name like mine is. Teachers wanted to call me Tyler or Brad my whole life, but never Taylor.
Normal names mispelled (like in Utah) just annoy me to no end. There are plenty of GREAT names that just are not used as much. Then again I might not be the best judge of this, I think "Fyodor" is an awesome name.
The Russians have some great and some not so great names. I'm going to give all my kids secondary Chinese names too
As for Japanese names I know its a last name but I think Inoue is my favorite.
Inoue is also a first name. Posts: 246 | Registered: Jul 2006
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We are doing Chinese middle names, American first names. Middle names will be selected some astrology thing that my husband's grandma does. The weird thing is, my husband and I agreed to this when we got married five years ago. Now that I am pregnant and asked somebody to remind Grandma that I would need her to do that (I am not Chinese and can not speak the language and grandma only speaks Chinese), my mother in law is in absolute shock that I am still doing it that way. Surely being pregnant I would change my mind.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Don't name your boys Taylor. Its not that I don't like the name, but you are basically going to have a "Tyler" if you do. Its worse if your lastname is a valid first name like mine is. Teachers wanted to call me Tyler or Brad my whole life, but never Taylor.
Normal names mispelled (like in Utah) just annoy me to no end. There are plenty of GREAT names that just are not used as much. Then again I might not be the best judge of this, I think "Fyodor" is an awesome name.
The Russians have some great and some not so great names. I'm going to give all my kids secondary Chinese names too
As for Japanese names I know its a last name but I think Inoue is my favorite.
quote:Never name your child before you've met them.
I agree. My parents always had a bunch of names that they had lined up, ready to give once we were born and I think that's a good way to do it.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I swear my name is not a purposeful misspelling. My mother sincerely thought that this was how you spelt Amelia. She offered to have it legally changed for me once when I was in high school, but by then I had long since stopped caring how people spelt my name. And I rather like it now: Amilia has a rythmn and symmetry to it that Amelia does not have.
Either spelling, though, it is not a common name. I am starting to run across a few Amelias every now and again, which is very fun as I was in my twenties the first time this ever happened.
Posts: 364 | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Teshi: You should also avoid incredibly famous figures who have a singular name, however good they were/are. Your little Gandhi is never going to live up to the original with a label like that.
Speaking of Gandhis... I know two guys named Gandhi, another named Mahatma and apparently one of the Gandhis once dated a girl named Indira. And they're all from the same city in Mexico.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:She got a lot of "Amelia Bedelia." So one year she dressed as such for Halloween.
I wish I had thought of that back when I was being called Amelia Bedelia! It's not too late, though. I can still do it for this Halloween. :-)
Posts: 364 | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ketchupqueen, I've been wondering for a while now how you pronounce that name. And for that matter how you spell it - is it anglicized? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What name now?
I'm sorry, did you not mention on the first page that your daughter has a middle name that is "unusual (for this country, but traditional and popular in another)"? I meant that name. You mentioned some time ago what the name was, and I've been wondering since then how you spell and pronounce it, since the correct spelling and pronunciation would be difficult for Americans (as in, strangers). This, of course, assuming I am remembering correctly. Posts: 2762 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Ah, Niamh. It's pronounced kind of like "Neeve". It was on our short list when we were using babynamesofireland.com (where you can hear it pronounced by a native speaker) to help us think of Irish, preferably Gaelic, middle names. After trying out all the names and all the initials, we decided on Niamh, which happens also to be the name of one of my favorite singers (so I actually already was familiar with the name and its spelling and pronunciation.) I believe that Neve Campbell's name may be an Anglicization of it. But we didn't name the baby after her. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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My sister as far back as I can remember had a doll she named, "Mary Katherine." She said one day she would have a daughter and her name would be Mary Katherine. She never said anything about it through her post doll days, and one day after she was married, she found out she was pregnant and that it was a girl. She named her Mary Katherine, and almost all of us had totally forgotten she had made that declaration as a little girl.
I like the name but more than a few times she has had to tell people not to call her daughter Mary or Katherine but to utilize the full name Mary Katherine. Though she is ok with us calling her MK. It sounds really cute in Italian, "Maria Katerina"
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote: Demonstrocity, I want a Maggie (Margaret), but my husband thinks it's too old-fashioned.
kq, I have a Margaret that we call Maggie. Margaret is a family name but we only call her Maggie or Maggs. I love it. People often think we're calling her "Meggie" though so I try to pronounce it clearly.
I'm all for different names as I have one myself (gasp, it's even made up). I was adopted and my parents each gave me half of their names and I always liked that I really am a part of them.
My children have family names or meaningful names and I like how they have loved to hear stories about the people for whom they are named.
Posts: 697 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Don't take a regular name and spell it weird. That's just CRUEL.
Don't name your child one of the top 10 names. Name them something so that they have a really good chance of not having the same name as someone else in their class at school.
You don't want something that people can't pronounce or can't spell though. Your child will have to be spelling his/her name for the rest of their lives.
I agree not to name your child before you meet them. If you have names picked out, do not discuss them with anyone else.
If you're wrong about the sex of the child, don't tell the child the other name you had picked out. If you think it's a girl and it turns out to be a boy, don't tell Mike (or *anyone else*) that his name would have been Emily Anne. The story *will* get out.
"If you name a kid Rita, you have a good chance of getting a slut." --Richard Mulligan
Don't name a child after a celebrity.
Know what the name means. Make sure it means something you agree with. Don't name your child Anastasia if you don't believe in the Resurrection.
If you want to call your child Bobby, name him Robert and call him Bobby. Don't put Bobby on his documents. He'll just have to correct people his whole life.
Save the *really* unusual names for middle names. The child can then choose which to use.
Don't name a child Martha, or Bertha. They're just not attractive names. That could be my own prejudice.
Don't name a child Rosemary. It's a beautiful name, but someday she'll have to endure "Rosemary's Baby" jokes.
Think of the initials. They might want something monogrammed someday.
For girls, remember she may change her last name. If her name only works as a whole unit, consider that it may not work as well with another last name.
Realize no matter *what* you name your child, they will have their name mocked. Realize that if you use a common name, they'll be able to find bracelets with their name on it, but have trouble standing out as individuals. If their name is uncommon enough so that they can't buy souvenirs with their name preprinted, they will complain about this. Buy them some custom stuff and realize they'll complain about something anyway. Everyone has problems, and the thing they attribute their problems to isn't necessarily really it.
Look at the trends. Don't give your child a name that is becoming used for the other gender. I know a guy named Shannon. He is *not* happy about that.
Don't use unisex names. What if your son Chris marries a woman named Chris? Pick something else. There are too many Chriseses anyway.
Don't be afraid to reuse names from a previous generation. They have the advantage of being already known and also other parents probably won't do it. You get the uniqueness along with no problems with spelling or pronunciation.
Realize that your baby will not be a baby for long. He or she will be a baby for a few years, a child for a few years, and an adult for a lot longer. If they have an unusual name (not an insane name, but just an unusual one) they may not like it growing up. But as an adult they'll be glad not to be one of an endless array of Mikes, Davids, Jennifers, and Ashleys.
Posts: 454 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Which ones? I don't think they do, I think they are designed to offset tendencies towards extremism in either direction.
On the one hand we have John, David, and Michael. Traditional, normal, but very common.
On the other hand we have Brooklyn or Makenzie. Trendy, and often with horrific spelling changes.
Then we have Galadriel, Moxie Crimefighter, Drudwen, Ceindrych... just far out wackiness.
As someone above noted, we don't want to make our parent's mistakes, so we make *their* parent's mistakes. I'm just trying to inject a little more sanity into the equation.
Posts: 454 | Registered: Mar 2005
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My name is Jennifer. Do you have any idea how many Jennifers there are in the US????? I hate over-popularized names and really enjoy names that are unique but not pretentious. My ex-brother-in-law named his new daughter Quanita (pronounced kwaneeta) Lokita Rivera. When I heard it - no joke- I said "chiquita banana woman what?" That poor child has to live with that name for the rest of her life.
I have a love of all things Irish, so my favorite girls name is Cathrionna (Gaelic form of Catherine). I personally don't like to re-use names, so I wouldn't make a son a "Third" named after his dad who is a jr. (I have agreed to give a boy the name Robert James in honor of Kwea's uncle who died on D-Day in Normandy. It is still Robert for the first name, but not the same middle name. I grudgingly agreed to that because it means so much to Kwea, personally I prefer the name Ronan Christopher.) Anyway....that's just my humble opinion of being stuck with a name that is so popular there were 12 baby girls born in the hospital where I was born...on the same day... named Jennifer! Be original, be creative, but don't give the child a name they won't be able to spell by the time they are 7!
Posts: 325 | Registered: Aug 2002
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I know I'm late with this, but I haven't laughed so hard in a very long time. Thank you for the pick-me-up, it's been a tough week. Posts: 1069 | Registered: Feb 2005
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How about: if your last name sounds like a possible first name, don't name your kid a first name that sounds like a last name. I know I knew a few boys growing up whose names always got inverted by teachers and so on at first (doesn't help that roll sheets are printed last name first anyway)...plus it sounds weird. I'm a Jennifer, but it's nice because I have so many nicknames for it, and I've only been in the same class with I think one Jennifer anyway. I second (or third) the injunction against nicknames as first names. Not every kid wants to be a Tom or a Liz or whatever, so open up the choices! Make sure it's pronouncable the first look-through and won't be mixed up with another name easily (my friend Sjahannah got sooo many "Savannah"s). If it sounds more like the name of a horse, it's a no go...including "Apple." Come on. Ooh, Aerin would be a great name. (Angharad, now that I think on it, wouldn't be too bad either; just be prepared for a possible Harry.) I thought Niamh rhymed with "dove"; that's what the Sevenwaters book pronounciation guide said...which I read before reading the book, else she would have been "NEE-am."
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
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I like my first name: Jaclyn. It was French enough that my grandmother approved (but not quite as French as my mother's Ann-Marie Madeline), but simplier than the more common Jacqueline. I've known very few Jaclyns of either type growing up, and, while I haven't ever been able to find mugs with my name on them, I never get stares for my name or questions on pronunciation. I do occasionally get misspellings, but not enough that it's a bother.
I think potential nicknames should be considered when giving out names. If I gave out a long, flowery name to a girl, I'd make sure that there was first a suitable, possibly more masculine nickname for the time when she wasn't quite big enough to fit her name, or in case she turned out to be a tomboy. Sam or Sammie for Samantha, Chris for Christine, Mimi for my mom's Ann-Marie, etc.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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Something I think is odd, but very common, is to name a son after his father. Isn't one the main purposes of a name to designate an individual? Doing that seems to defeat the purpose. And later on don't the son and father start opening each other's mail a lot?
Posts: 120 | Registered: Jun 2005
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When I was in pre-schooled they renamed my name from "Tyler" to "Taylor". That really bothered me.
I have a pretty awesome name- my middle name is Andrew and somehow Tyler Andrew just fits pretty awesomely together. I agree about the no taking normal names and "making them unique" by making them impossible to spell.
I inherited this little predjudice from my mother- but I really don't like one syllable names. A good 2 or 3 syllables is very nice. Except for the name "James" I really like that name....
One kid I met at TiP- his parents were Nigerian (so was he- genetically- pure American though) who we called Tobi- Tobi was short for his full name which was: Oluwatobiloba Oleyemi John Ademola Olufolabi. It took me a while to memorize his name.
Posts: 980 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dav: Something I think is odd, but very common, is to name a son after his father. Isn't one the main purposes of a name to designate an individual? Doing that seems to defeat the purpose. And later on don't the son and father start opening each other's mail a lot?
When I was growing up, my parents were close friends with another couple who had children about the same age and my brother and I. The father had been named after his father and was something like George the Second, or Third, etc. He was a doctor so most people who also knew his father, they called him "Doc George." Him and his wife then named their son, George as well. We all called him "Lil' Doc George." I think back now and wonder if that nightmarish nickname is still attached to him.
My parents gave my father's name to my brother as his middle name. I think that's a nice way to keep traditional names in the family and still give a kid his own name.
My middle name "Elizabeth" is also a family name. Its also a tradition for the women to give their girls middle names that start with the letter E. I don't know why, but I kind of think its cute and plan on doing it myself. My mother was "Ellen" for those wondering.
quote:I think potential nicknames should be considered when giving out names. If I gave out a long, flowery name to a girl, I'd make sure that there was first a suitable, possibly more masculine nickname for the time when she wasn't quite big enough to fit her name, or in case she turned out to be a tomboy. Sam or Sammie for Samantha, Chris for Christine, Mimi for my mom's Ann-Marie, etc.
My mother's name is Barbara. She's been "Barb" and now "Aunt Barbie" forever. She absolutely hates it. By the oddity of nicknames, I have three uncles (two on one side, one on the other) nicknamed "Butch." My mother swore her kids would never have named that could be shortened.
However, I wish she had realized sooner that "Brandon" and "Jordan" end the same way and so when she calls for one of them, they both come running.
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Sorry, kq - a Hatrack search tells me that the poster I was thinking of was PSI Teleport. You two strike me the same way, I guess, so I confused you. Sorry about that. Posts: 2762 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote:My parents gave my father's name to my brother as his middle name. I think that's a nice way to keep traditional names in the family and still give a kid his own name.
I think this is a great idea. I do, however, find it a little bizarre when ALL of the men in a family have the same name. In my friend's family, all of the men are named Jonathan. To avoid confusion, they all go by their middle names.
And speaking of middle names, I love mine. Ayako. It was my grandmother's first name, and I never had the opportunity to meet her. I feel really connected to her for it.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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My first name is Kristina, and I've always loved my name, both the spelling and the sound. It's just "me." I was always Kristina, never Kristine, Krissy, or Kristy. Although some of my friends do call me Kris, and that's cool.
My middle name, however . . . my parents named me after my Norwegian paternal grandmother, Bergliot. Pronounced Bairg-lee-ott, not Berzh-lee-oh as some people want to Frenchify it.
I'm in my forties now, and I guess I started to be okay with it about ten years ago. As a very shy child, I was convinced that this middle name was evidence that my parents had lost their minds. I knew they didn't actually hate me, so I figured they weren't trying to make me miserable.
Now I'm to the point where if I ever published a novel I'd probably use it as part of my author name, because I think it would look cool on the cover of a book! ;-) (since I'm not writing a novel and probably never will, this is purely a hypothetical)
Posts: 3149 | Registered: Jul 2005
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