baby names

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

bodypoet – i love the name olivia. it’s my best friend’s name. she hates it (too hard to find things with her name on it in the states, and the stuff in france where her mother lives is all in french! ;)) but we all call her livia and livi, which she likes.

cazzle, riley? why didn’t i think of that? i’ve been trying to fit in names from my family to sort of soothe the fact that i’m not technically married yet, and riley is the big name in our family. it’s my grandmother’s maiden, and her side of the family has huge family reunions with “riley family” t-shirts and so on. yet, i don’t think i have any cousins actually named riley. it’s something to think about.

the s.o. doesn’t like the name lorelei. it’s not celtic. so i stupidly made the deal that if it’s a girl i can call her lorelei, and if it’s a boy he can choose. and he comes up with: hamesh, furgus, and shamus. how does one do the rollyeyes smilie???

don’t worry, i’ll get out of that one.

22

I’d recommend against Lorelei Marie–she’ll never get that I-before-E thing down.

I personally love when girls have guy’s names as contractions–Sam, Max, Alex, like that.

23

Gotta cast my vote firmly in the anti-trendy-name camp. Give a kid the first name “Riley” and you might as well tattoo “I was born between 2000 and 2003” on her forehead. Lorelei, while a lovely name, screams “my mommy named me after a TV show” (whether you did or not). And (puts on asbestos suit) the Celtic name trend is extremely played out. As is the last-name-as-first-name trend, and the place-name-trend, and the Kayla-McKayla-Kaylee-Kayleigh-name trend, and the boy-name-for-girl trend, and the Name-O-Tron trend, and the unusual-spellings trend and the I-made-up-this-name trend, and and and…

You should name your kid something that you like, but do yourself (and the kid) a favor and try to step back and see whether you are unwittingly being trendy about naming your kid. If you are sure that’s what you want to do, fine. But do it with your eyes wide open, and know what you are doing.

24

A great place to amuse yourself for hours on names, in general, is http://www.kabalarians.com

Ignore all the numerology stuff, these guys who do this stuff are smokin’ way too much weed.

Go to the bottom of the page to hit the link to get you started on 250,000 names.

25

I’m in Green Bean’s camp on this one.

I’ve got two boys, and I was not very creative in naming them (except for the fact that I would never give a child my name then tack “Junior” on the end). The thing is, though, is that they have names that won’t hold them back from anything. For instance, how many CEO’s do you know who are named something unusual? Occasionally you’ll get a strange name in Congress (“Orrin”, anyone?), but for the most part, they tend to have the usual William, John, Robert, James, Samuel, Joseph, Benjamin, what-have-you.

In this way, the child’s first name is merely a tag, not a title to live up to or an entity in itself. The child’s personality is allowed to develop unhindered, without undue influence from others treating him or her a certain way because of preconceived notions about an unusual name.

The only thing I did in any unusual fashion was that I honored both my father and my wife’s father by incorporating their names into my sons’ middle names. My sons have unique names in the extended family, but whenever a relative hears their full names, they smile and wink in acknowledgement at my Dad. Pretty neat.

26

Try the baby name database at Moms Online. You can browse the database or get info on a certain name. They also list drawbacks for names.

27

Hey, there had to be some reason I’ve had a total obsession with the name Riley of late.

Scottish sounding names seem to be popular at the moment (in Australia anyway). Lachlan, Angus, Hamish, Fergus… I think two of the four appear on last year’s top boy’s name list for Victoria, Australia, and this site says Lachlan was the most popular name in all of Australia (I believe it - I read the baby names in the newspaper, and there are a lot of Lachlans!!).

Mer de Noms has a bunch of links to other name sites. You might find them useful. Names at Kaeori.netis a good site, lists names by themes, and has a lot of unusual entries.

Green Bean - it’s hard not to be influenced by trends. Sure, give your child a name you like, but your tastes will be influenced by those around you. My mother dislikes the name Emily because she thinks it belongs to an old lady, I like the name Emily but can’t imagine it as an old lady’s name. I never really knew any Emilys or Lilys when I was young, but my mother had Aunts with those names. Also, my mother was going to name me Michael, just because she liked it, but I hate the name because I went to school with so many Michaels. I like the name Lauren, which didn’t exist amongst my classmates, but my friend (who is a couple of years younger) hates it because she went to school with so many Laurens.

What’s traditional today isn’t always the same as what will be traditional in the future - while the old favourites are always on the list, in some decades they’re more popular than others. David is a traditional name, but while it was the number 1 name of the 70’s, it was number 23 in the 90’s and it’s way down at number 38 for the year 2000. Yet Jack, which didn’t make the list in the 70’s, is number 1. When I was a kid, Jack was an old man’s name. Thomas, a good traditional name, was number 56 in the 70’s, but is number 5 for the 90’s and 2000. Being named Thomas will date you as surely as being named Riley, because it’s an old name being rehashed for a while - in a couple of years, it will max out and sink down the list again. Here I was thinking I was being unique, dragging Thomas out of the cupboard, and instead I find that it’s in fashion!

All you can really do is go with names you like, and forget about everyone else. Sure, try to avoid the names from the top of the list, but outside of that, anything goes.

28

Using the link I gave above, I happened upon an interesting combination: Emmett Leroy, “Universal King”. :slight_smile:

29

cazzle–You’re confusing “trendy” with “popular.”

“Thomas” may have ups and downs of popularity, but it was never, and will never be “trendy.”

I doubt it. I don’t think that anybody would think that Thomas Jefferson(born 18th c.), Tom Thumb(born 19th c.) , Tom Brokaw(born 20th c.)and baby Thomas down the street(21st c.) were the same age.

30

Originally posted by Green Bean

Riley “B.B.” King might disagree with you there :slight_smile:

There are trends in popular names too. While Thomas could be from any century, once you’ve got a vague idea of which century he’s from, it’s possible to use his first name to guess which decade he was born in.

While “popular” and “trendy” are different, there are “trends” in “popular” names. However, I agree that boys fare better with a more traditional name. There is a little more room for individuality in girl’s names.

Riley isn’t a new name. It is a name that’s been left to languish for a long time before being “rediscovered”. I like Riley because it sounds like a strong name for a man, but also because it honours our Irish heritage. In the case of abuse angel, it also happens to be a family name which gives it further significance if she uses it in her baby’s name. Now, it may be the trendy name of the moment, but that’s not why I’d choose it - that’s just how it came to my attention. I’d use a family surname if I had a suitable one! Unfortunately, I’m descended from a long line of people with ugly or boring surnames. :slight_smile: I so cannot imagine calling my child Higginbottom B______, or Groombridge B______!

31

Siobhan (sha-von) is a pretty name, and Celtic.

32

I like Lorelei for sound, but the meaning bugs me. Like being named Medusa.

Regarding trends (both in ‘trendy’ and ‘popular’ senses), yeah, you don’t want to be smack in the middle of one, but how do you avoid it? Trying to dodge it may not win you anything. My mom beat the first peak of the ‘Heather’ trend by three years - nobody cares that I’m not ‘technically’ in that trend, I just get lumped there anyway. You can’t always dodge. We’re of Scottish descent, but we don’t have good records from that side, so my mom just picked Scottish names she liked. I don’t mind the Celtic trend much, really - any kind of family heritage trend seems valid to me.

My general rules for naming (gathered from family experience and from teachers who have to see the results on the playground) are:

  1. It has to yell well - if you can’t yell it like you mean business without stumbling or laughing, you are going to be very sorry later. (this from my great-grandmother, who named her first son Oglebert, and regretted it).

  2. Meaning is nice to consider, too. Either the actual name’s meaning, or stories of a namesake, or family heritage, or some such. Pretty is nice, but a name IMHO should say more than ‘someone thought it sounded nice’. It should at least evoke something more for you. Having a ‘story’ behind your name is generally cool.

  3. If it is very different, make sure there’s an alternative, either as a nickname or a middle. Sometimes kids don’t want to stick out that much. Especially boys.

  4. Funky spellings of otherwise well-known names are a pain - annoying to pronounce, annoying to spell correctly, and they often just end up wrong on all sorts of documents. If different is what you want, pick a different NAME, not just a different spelling. Or go for an interesting middle name.

  5. Heritage names can be interesting - check out your family tree. If you end up with a trendy name, at least you’ll have it from a respectable source! :slight_smile: (We went back to the 1600’s for one of the ones on baby-2-to-be’s list.) A lot of the heritage names are less likely to be trendy (in the ‘look how clever we are’ sense), and may or may not be popular.

Boy names have always been hard for me - such a tricky balance between too common and too unusual. I want something that can be masculine without being boring, unique enough to be individual without being odd… AHHH! Girl names are far easier, IHMO. We ended up picking Gabriel and Nicholas as possibles for our son… he wasn’t a Nick, which is just as well, since that year Nick went to number 2 on the top 100.

Good luck! (and congrats)

33

Few people who saw that name would know how to pronounce it, and few people who heard it would know how to spell it. :slight_smile:

34

HAHAHAHAAAA!! hedra is right. Make sure to yell out all three names when you’re trying it out, since that’s how you’ll be doing it when you reach your height of anger at the child. If you sound like you’re trying to say a Klingon tongue-twister, then choose another name. :smiley:

I agree with hedra on all points, but the ones I’ve quoted are, to me, gold. Pure gold. :slight_smile:

35

Oh, so Mr. Angel wants the baby to have a Celtic name? May I suggest Shayla if it’s a girl?

36

i’m really not very worried about being trendy. yes, riley is a very trendy name, but it would mean a lot to my family. i told my mother about that idea today, and she really liked it. she likes that and sandy (my grandfather’s first name). and to us, the celtic thing isn’t about the trend; we both come from very irish families, and, in mine at least, irish heritage is very important. i don’t consider myself a potter or a dykstra or any other, i am and always will be a riley. so i can understand why the s.o. is hung up on it.

i really like some of the names you guys have brought up, but i’m still stuck on lorelei and nobody likes it but me. my mother rolled her eyes at me. as for the tv angle, the only tv show i know with someone named lorelei is gilmore girls, and i can’t see it lasting long enough for anyone to remember by the time she starts school.

i couldn’t do that one. i knew someone whose screenname was siobhan and i always thought it was sio-bo-han. i don’t think i could get it out of my head long enough to consider it.

huh? lorelei means “melody.” what’s wrong with that?

37

Daryll: (How the heck do ya spell that?)
Momma! Momma! If the baby is a girl, will you name it Lorelei, and if it is a boy will you name it Tomas?
Momma: Daryll, if it is a girl, I will name it Lorelei, and if it is a boy I shall name it Tomas.
Daryll: Tomas is a very good name, but not so much as Daryll…

Te hee.

38

Holy shit! She invoked B.B. King!

::Green Bean rolls over, exposing her soft white underbelly to cazzle::

I still disagree about Thomas though. There are Toms and Thomases in every age category. Lots and lots of them! Off the top of my head: Tom Cruise, Tom Green, Tom Arnold, Tom Jones! I don’t see how you can say that this pinpoints a person.

39

Not an authentically Celtic name, I’m afraid. I assume (because I can’t think of anything else remotely similar) that it’s derived from the Irish Síle - but that’s pronounced “Sheila”.

A much better resource for Irish names is here.

40

Lorelei - (lôr´l, Ger. l´rl) (KEY) , cliff, 433 ft (132 m) high, on the right bank of the Rhine River, near St. Goarshausen, W Germany, about midway between Koblenz and Bingen. There the Rhine forms a dangerous narrows, and in German legend a fairy similar to the Greek Sirens lived on the rock and by her singing lured the sailors to their death. Heinrich Heine’s poem, Die Lorelei, is world famous. The rock has sometimes been identified as the place where the hoard of the Nibelungs is hidden under the Rhine.

That’s the only meaning I knew of… melody is a far nicer meaning. ::wince:: hope I didn’t ruin the meaning for you, never knew there was another.