A name should have at least three syllables. Otherwise it just sounds too lowly. And it should also have a quick monosyllabic nickname, maybe 2 if it still sounds good. That’s my advice
A couple more I recalled during the night…
Girls:
Cassandra (Cassie)
Cassidy
Ariadne
Ariana
Adriana
Meghan
Jenna
Boys:
Casey
Eric
Gavan
Angus
Hamish
Cameron
Dante (Would never, ever use it. I just like the word).
Jasper (Ditto!)
Either:
Ashley
If it’s a boy just name him Unixrat Jr.
I would put Sincere in the realm of what are known as hortatory names also sometimes called virtue names. They were very big among the Puritans and other stricter Protestant sects historically. Names like Chastity, Thankful, Hopestill, and Verity were all pretty big and on the less ‘colorful’ side, sometimes whole Bible verses were utilized as names, I even saw a grave for a woman named ‘Fear Nash’ once. I haven’t seen that many names in this catagory lately.
If you love the word as a name, I suggest you consider it as a middle name, and I certainly would never consider nameing a kid something for the humor quotient. Never make your kid a target.
Of the names you listed, I think Skye and Syndney are the nicest.
I once knew a girl names Science. I had to bit my tongue to keep from asking her if her brothers were Geography and Math. I’ll bet many others went ahead and asked.
To understand our rationale for naming our kids, you have to go back a generation. My in-laws, being Jewish and reaching child-bearing age in the early/mid sixties, were so taken with the film version of Exodus, that they decided to name their first-born Dov, after one of the characters (played by Sal Mineo). Their first-born, however, was a girl. They elected to use it anyway, adding an “e” to the end so that it seemed much more feminine. (The fit had passed by the time her brothers, Joseph Rubin and Hugh Kenneth, were born). They also hedged their bets, naming her Sandra Dove so that she’d have a more conventional first name. She’s always gone by Dove, however, and in the decidedly non-Jewish atmosphere of Asheville, NC, it was distinctive but not necessarily confusing. This has changed now that she’s in Atlanta and frequently in company of Hebrew-speakers and those familiar with Israeli culture, since “Dov” means “bear” in Hebrew, and is a common boy’s name in Israel. She is about as un-bearlike as you can be; people who merely see her name on lists often assume that she’s male and that the “e” on the end is a typo. In a certain sense, she’s the female Jewish equivalent of a boy named Sue.
As a teenager, she determined that she would name her first-born “Ari”, after Paul Newman’s character in Exodus. This resolve continued unchanged, and she made it clear as we were expecting our first that the baby would be named “Ari” or some variant thereof, male or female. We thus ran the real risk of perpetuating the gender-name inversion l’dor v’dor, since “Ari” is Hebrew for “lion” and is also a common Israeli boy’s name. Fortunately I was able to muster up the required y chromosome, and we avoided that problem.
Being Jewish also imposes some additional cultural expectations around baby-naming. For one, it’s been the practice for several generations now to give children two sets of names: one for the secular culture in which the family lives, and a separate Hebrew name for religious use (this was generally true for men only until this century – women frequently had only secular names). There are a variety of historical reasons for this, but to me it smacks too much of the “a man in the world and a Jew at home (or synagogue)” approach of the German Reform movement; I want my kids to consider themselves Jewish all the time, not just when they’re in shul. My wife and I agreed that since the name she wanted to use was strongly Hebrew anyway, it’d be absurd to give the child another Hebrew name simply for the sake of having one.
The other expectation is that kids will be named to honor a deceased relative, preferably one that has died recently and hasn’t yet been so honored. In practice, many contemporary parents find the names from their grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generation too old-fashioned or otherwise distasteful. Many simply look for a name with a common first letter, and let it go at that. I’m ashamed to say that in Ari’s case, we picked the name first and went looking for a dead relative to fit – an Uncle Archie, in the case of his first name. At least his middle name, Moshe, was picked since it was his late great-grandfather Morris’ Hebrew name.
When we found that we were expecting our second, my wife informed me that since she’d picked the first one, it was my job to come up with the second. We compiled a list of potential honorees, grabbed our Jewish baby-name book, and went to work. The leading candidates to be honored were always my wife’s grandmother, Frieda, and Frieda’s sister, Rose. Neither had Hebrew names, and Frieda simply wasn’t an option. We decided to focus on Hebrew names that had equivalent or nearly equivalent meanings, instead of just picking a name that began with the same letter. Frieda derives from a group of Germanic names meaning “peace” or “joy”, while Rose is pretty much self-explanatory. The most common Hebrew equivalent of Rose is Shoshana, but the Hebrew word actually refers to a different flower, and my wife didn’t particularly like it. Shalom, the Hebrew for peace, seemed a little too common, and is also a male name in Jewish culture (particularly in Israel). The other options, Zulima, Schlomit, Salome (!), etc. (all variants of Shalom) and Axelle or Axella, did nothing whatever for me. Eventually, I settled on Aliza, “joyous”, and Vered, “rose”.
So that’s how we ended up with Ari Moshe and Aliza Vered. I can’t say that I was entirely happy with the combination of Ari and my surname, being as it is a very common two-syllable English/Scots-Irish name, but it’s grown on me, and he won’t have to worry about confusion with other people of the same name (unlike his dad, who at one point had the credit records of at least three other Atlanta residents of the same name conflated with his own).
Hey, many thanks to all of you for replying so far…
A quick perusal of what my relatives have named their kids in the last ten years…
Griffin, Dashiel, Hunter, Maxwell, Eleanor (whom everyone calls “Ellie” but I still call “Nora”), Kirsten, Lindsey, Peter and Jenna.
My father and my step mother adopted 4 kids from a family a few years ago. The family is…
V-name-that-I-can’t-recall, Violet, Valerie, LaVonne, (and here she runs out of V names) Ron and Miranda. (The last 4 were the ones adopted. The other two had already ‘grown’ and shipped off to wherever then send juvenile delinqs nowadays. The other kids are alright, however. Good kids.)
I can’t stand ‘Jack’ as a name. It’s a nickname, people!
For boys, my wife and I have been kicking around Douglas or Dominic with other names like Zebediah in the running…
Hmmm, don’t deride the name Jack. That’s my father’s, brother’s and nephew’s name. Actually, Henry is Pop’s and Bro’s first name and Jackson the second but Jackson is the nephew’s first name and it works for him. He is SO a Jackson-personality, grace, sense of humor (13mths) can we tell I am enamored with this tyke? This “Jack is a nickname” thing has equalled some strange mail at work (I work for Dad). It is amazing what some Yankees up north presume Jack is a nickname for.
And speaking about nicknames–I work in a doctor’s office and more of our patients are elderly. They have lived many years, had exciting lives, and have some weird nicknames. The trouble erupts when they insist on being addressed and filed by their nicknames but Medicare kicks back the claim because the name is incorrect. We had one patient who did not actually know his first name was (lets say) Robert, thought it was Calvin because for some reason he was called Cal all his life then the Social Security Office and Medicare went by his birth certificate name Robert Owen Smith (name changed to protect privacy) as you can see, no Cal. Can we say big trouble finding patient’s chart when he makes appt as “Cal” Smith and he is filed as Robert Owen Smith? Now the point I am making here (I think)is when you nickname go with something actually derived from the given name or at least remeber that records regarding medical care are easier to maintain and NOT foul up if the patient remebers and goes by the name on the birth certificate with the hospital and all his/her doctors. You do not want your record mixed with someone else’s. That can lead to some major complications.