My wife and I decided on our Daughter’s name together after narrow down a long list to three names. As two names had Welsh and mythological connections, the exact spellings were open to debate. We chose one that had both mythological connections and a tie in to a great CSN song written by David Crosby.
I disliked the spelling they used however and wanted a slightly different pronunciation so instead of “Guinnevere”. Gwenhwyfar, Guinevere, Guenevere, Gwinevere, Gwynevere or any other odd spellings I had seen over the years, I went with Guenivere. I felt this version tied in to Jennifer better than most of the other spellings and that was my wife’s great-grandmother’s name.
This is a very rare spelling from what I can find, but not unique. It appears to be well received and of course, no one can spell her first or last name. I have an aunt that still addresses birthday cards to Gwen. My wife did not like the Welsh spelling.
By the way, the other Welsh name was also tied to a famous song. It was Rhiannon, which could have several spellings. I am glad we did not saddle her with Willow. This was pre-Buffy and seemed cute and unique at the time, now the name seems too common. It was the name of a character from a Charles De Lint book and had a Hobbitish feel to it. My wife absolutely refused names like Galadriel, Tinuvial and the like. I think she was correct.
BTW II: My Mom has a very unusual name and hated it. She ensured all four of us kids had normal American names and is still not happy I rejected James as an adult to be Jim.
Jim {Laurie, wanted to let you know I have a cousin Laurie and that is how I usually see it.}
I like creative spellings as much as the next person (points at screenname), but I don’t think I’d inflict it on my kids should I ever have any. Having a French name in an English community was bad enough–people reading it can’t pronounce it (it’s ‘len’, not ‘lane’), and people writing it can’t spell it (it’s ‘laine’, not ‘len’, and where’d that ‘g’ come from?). To make matters worse, I now go by a shortened version which is a proper name, but I don’t spell it the same way so I get to correct the spelling on that too–but at least it’s easier to pronounce.
I had a student a couple of years ago named “Adrien.” He hated it and tried to get everyone to spell it “Adrian” and it was continuous source of aggravation for him. I imagine it gets tiresome to have to correct people all the time, never have your name spelled right, etc. I most definitely will NOT give my kids weirdly spelled names. It does’t actually come off as clever and uneek (sic), it comes off pretentious, annoying, and will be dated when the kid gets older.
“Someone told these parents that they were ‘creative,’ and they lacked the self awareness and judgment to figure out the truth. They probably have written a ton of bad poetry, too.”
.
I know it’s been mentioned on the board before, but Baby’s Named A Bad, Bad Thing is always a good link in one of these threads, even if only one person’s never heard of it.
My feeling is, if you want to give a kid a unique, or distinctive, or creative name, that’s what the middle name is for. Stick something normal and familiar in the first name slot, and then go crazy with the middle. That way, your child will only ever really need the name that everyone knows how to spell and pronounce, but if e wants to flaunt es uniqueness with es name, e can use es full name, with middle. So go ahead and name your daughter Elizabeth Luthien Smith, or your son John LahSarus Jones, or whatever.
Makes sense. Christina turns into Kristine, Linda turns into Lindsey…
Between all the different potential ethnicities for names and the “creative” names out there, I’m sure the whole name thing is only going to get worse before it gets better. If such a thing is possible. There’s no real way to standardize names like languages are standardized, especially if you’re going to have Latin forms and Nordic forms wrestling for dominance over similar names.
I’m against it. The spelling of your kid’s name shouldn’t be a canvas for your creativity. Why should the kid have to spend his/her life telling people how to spell it? I have a difficult family name; if I had to tell everyone how to spell “James” I’d go nuts. Besides, I think standard names are like words in a language. If I have a kid and decide to name him John, but spelled J-O-N-N, then isn’t that like deciding to spell “lamp” L -A-H-M-P-P or “table” T-A-B-E-L? Maybe worse, because at least furniture doesn’t have to explain how it’s spelled.
On the other hand, if you can think of a creative name, rather than just a creative spelling, then go for it.
This is my peeve - people who want to ignore the rules of English when pronouncing names. Your name as written in English is pronounced Caroline - the ‘e’ at the end makes the ‘i’ long. It’s your name, and you can pronounce it Throatwarbler Mangrove if you want, but don’t expect the rules of English to automatically be suspended for your name for the rest of the English-speaking world without you explaining that to us. Frankly, I would really prefer it if people didn’t do this. It is jarring to mis-pronounce words on purpose.
My name is Tracey - yes, that is an ‘e’ in there. I’d say I get it spelled right without telling people about 25% of the time. This has been a minor but constant irritant for me my entire life. My maiden name was unusual, and I got tired of spelling that out for people a loooooooong time ago. I don’t even want to think about going through life with a “creative, unique” name. Just don’t do that to kids. If your little Linda is a massively artistic, unusual girl, she can choose her own weird name when she’s old enough.
In addition to your two sentences, Max Torque, I’ve also heard that you should test out your future child’s name by going to the back door and shouting it out a couple of times.
One of the reasons I dislike the cutesy, “clever” names is because of how fricking self-righteous some of the parents get about them. My sister in law is a retired schoolteacher. You cannot imagine the number of times she had had frothing, screaming parents literally in her face because she did not magically know how to pronounce the abortion of a name they gave their kids.
Toward the end of her teaching career she stopped even trying. She would just look at the class roster, heave a sigh, and spell out each name asking for the correct way to say it. Lovely way to use limited class time, don’t you think?
I don’t think these kind of parents are helping their kids. Poor kid is going to go through life with their names being rejected by spellcheckers. And the first thought of anyone who sees one of those names on a nametag at a meet and greet is going to be “boy, your parents were pretentious assholes, weren’t they?”
Well, this happens with my name, too. Spellcheckers are definitely biased towards Western names! I’ve learned to let it roll off my back when I type my last name and it says “Did you mean England?” (England & my last name share the last three letters. :smack:
But, RedRoses, do you live in the U.S.? Because if you do, then the word “laurel” (as in Mountain Laurel) is legitimately pronounced “law-rel” here (at least according to dictionary.com…I can’t find my real life dictionary :eek:!). Since your argument is that “Laurie” is the shortened version of “Laurel”, I guess I just don’t see the outrage at it being pronounced differently than you prefer by some people. It has nothing to do with the “creative spelling” of other people and everything to do with people pronouncing the name the way you spell it. Although I do agree that creative names are annoying, I don’t agree that your issue stems from the use of creative names.
I didn’t pick my name or how to say it. It’s what I was given at birth. Does it annoy me? Yes. But, hey, it’s the name I grew up with and I’m not going to change the spelling or pronunciation for other people’s benefit. I will politely correct people and otherwise not really care how they say it–as evidenced by the fact that my brother can get away with saying my name the “standard” way. I wish my mother hadn’t spelled my name like this, but it’s the name she gave me, and I’m not going to change that.
Caroline being pronounced “Carolin” is an acceptable, normal pronunciation, though, even if it isn’t very common in America. We don’t demand people named Jesús go by Jesus, just because “that’s how it’s pronounced in English.”
Yep. I’m “Bob”, and because my e-mail on campus comes across with my “legal” name Robert, there are one or two of my fellow teachers in my department who still always greet me as “Robert” – even though I sign off my e-mails otherwise.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…
AND… nobody can ever figure out how to spell my last name correctly, which is only 5 letters and, according to the listings in the local phone book, is more common than the “other” way that everybody wants to spell it.
Agreed. From everything I’ve ever seen, “Caroline” is with a long i. It’s “Carolyn” if you want it with the ‘linn’ pronunciation. Like featherlou said, it’s your name and you can pronounce it however you want, but when it’s basically the opposite of the pronunciation convention, that’s something you just have to deal with.
I have a problem with people naming their children creatively. Sure, they have a cool, unique name, but they are also going to be tormented about that name for the rest of their lives.
Even naming them after someone with a retarded name is a bad idea. I believe I’ve spoken here before about my friend named “Mangas Coloradus Fouse,” named after an Indian chief.
As for me, my name is Tasha. I always thought it was kind of a common name - not too common, I can’t buy a lot of personalized stuff, but common enough. Apparently not - everyone I meet seems to spell it “Tosha.” I’ve also gotten “Toshia,” “Tashia,” and “Taesha.” :dubious: When it comes to naming children, I tell all of my pregnant friends this: “You are not naming a kid. You are naming a person who is some day going to be an adult. Remember that.”
My cousin, 17, named is daughter Karma. Cute. Now she’s going to be teased relentlessly in middle school when everyone figures out what that means. :rolleyes:
Yes, I know it’s the opposite of the English pronunciation convention. Believe me, this isn’t a surprise and it’s neither something I’ve done purposefully–how many people here have up and decided to change how they say their names?–nor something I’m obnoxious about. Input on unusual names was requested and I gave it. I think they’re a bad idea and are a world of trouble for the poor kid saddled with stupid, gratuitous letters. I am firmly in the *anti-*creatively spelled names camp.
For the record, to avoid the issue entirely, now that I’m out of school I just go by “Carrie.”
I was named Jonathan which is fine. It is the most common spelling by a long long way (116,000,000 google hits as opposed to 6,500,000 for Jonathon.) Unfortunately people try very hard to mangle it, Johnathon, Johnathahn, Johnethehn. What is it? Are there a heap of spare 'h’s lying around the place?
A lot of it seems to stem from a general belief that John is short for Jonathan. It’s not. Jon is short for Jonathan, John is an unrelated name. Jon as a name in its own right is fine by me as well. Jon is a family name on my father’s side, correctly pronounced “Yon” but anglicised to “Jon” over the years.
I think one of the problems with a name like Caughner (Coffner is how I’d pronounce it if I didn’t know otherwise) is that it sounds like an easy name to spell. That means that people won’t bother asking how to spell it because they think they know how to spell Conner. So it will get more misspellings than a name that sounds more complicated.
Going back to my own name as an example. People will think they know how to spell Jonathan and will then get it wrong. I won’t always be given a chance to correct them. My surname is Norwegian and sounds more complicated than it is, it sounds foreign. People have no idea how to spell my surname so they ask, and as a result, they get it right.
The thing is, kids are going to be teased for almost any name and I am certainly not all about destroying nice ethnic names for the sake of avoiding teasing. I went through it pretty bad but I survived.
However rearranging letters or just randomly picking names out of a Foreign Hat sounds a bit off and even cruel to the kid.
