One name on my ‘like’ list–Katya. Various reasons, first because it’s cool, second because it has ‘cat’ in it and third because Nocturne’s cool :).
In fact, almost all ‘old-lady’ names drive me up the wall. Bridget, Olga, Bertha, Agnes, Agatha, Matilda, Mildred etc.
That is the first name that popped into my head when I read the OP. I didn’t have a good reason, it just grates on me . . . so I just had to say: “Silver Fire, you rock!” Thank you for so aptly justifying my distaste! Let me also agree with the ludicrous intentional (or in some cases, unintentional) misspellings of perfectly good names. I like the sound of Michaela, and the actual spelling has a certain pleasant, dignified look in print, but bastardizing a name just to be different, as in ‘Mikayla’ (which, as I understand it, has now become the norm), seems both pretentious and stupid.
I also dislike any name that seems like it will not wear well as the person ages, like naming a child the diminutive of a name instead of the actual name. I grew up with a Ricky (on his birth certificate) Newman who grew to be a surly 6’4" teenager, of course, preferred to be called ‘Rick.’ Can you imagine correcting teacher after teacher on that after they’ve read it aloud off of the attendence sheet? And imagine when he’s 65 and his social security check comes addressed to ‘Ricky’ . . . that stuff may seem cute when he’s little, but come on, parents! It’s just not fair!
There are some names that I have just never liked, and they are mostly ones that I have found to be too trendy, or (especially in the case of girl’s names) lacking in dignity, such as: Britney, Kristen, Kirsten, Misty, Suzie, Kayley . . . There are also a few names that seem unweildy, that I just can’t warm up to: Roberta, Alexis, Charlene, Brenda, Patricia. These names feel to me like they’re already middle-aged. It’s like Gary. I can’t imagine saddling an infant with a name like that, and expecting them to survive childhood.
I have a deranged fondness for whimsical or folksy names, like Lulu and Daisy, which are charming and relatively unique, but I probably won’t bring myself to actually burden a child with a name like that. I’ll keep those in reserve for my fictional characters . . . a compromise my children will surely appreciate! My philosophy of names is that the name should be either so widely known (if not widely used) or so rare that the child will be able to make their own individual identity without the name interfering too much. So, I like classic names like Jane, Kate, Claire, Stella . . . and I don’t object to unisex or last names for girls, like Cameron or Flannery. There will be few with these names, so whatever association people have for the name will most likely be from my child, not the millions and millions of Jennifers and Bethanys that they’ve already met. That’s my hope anyway.
There are some very interesting names on my family tree that I would never name a kid.
Ambus
Que
Cohen (It’s a nice last name, but not a first.)
Velmon
Erlene
Luvene
Johnnie-Mae (a girl)
Mildred (It reminds me of mildew.)
The one that takes the cake, though, has to be this one:
Minervie.
I keep wanting to think my relatives wanted to name my great-grandaunt “Minerva” after the Roman goddess of wisdom, but something just tells me that’s probably not it.
Name I love - Charity (for a girl)
Names I hate - Hrothgar; Leonardo; George (the Spanish pronunciation is hideous… Whore-hay)
I agree that it’s annoying to see a name “misspelled” for the sake of uniqueness, but I always pause to see if an alternate spelling was used for a reason. I do this because my mom’s name is Kahlene, pronounced pretty much how it looks (kah-LEAN). Her parents would have named her Colleen, but in the midwest, especially in the Indiana-Ohio-Michigan supercluster, Colleen is often pronounced Ko-lean, which isn’t what they wanted. They wanted kah-leane, and that’s how they spelled it, goddamn it. (Can you tell I’ve heard my mom explain this a time or three in my lifetime? :))
Of course, people tend to assume that her name is Kathlene and she just forgot the “t” when she wrote her own name down. :rolleyes: My very favorite instance of this was when she took a store credit card on which her name was mispelled to the customer service desk to see how to get a correction.
Mom: I need this fixed. There’s no “t” in my name.
Desk Lady: No, it’s right there.
Mom: You misunderstand. My name is spelled k-a-h-l-e-n-e. There is no “t” in my name.
Desk Lady: No, we spelled it right. There’s a “t” right there on the card. We spelled it with the “t.”
It was like “Who’s on First?” only more tragic than funny. She finally wrote it down in very large, block letters and said, “This is how my name ought to be spelled on the card. You have spelled it incorrectly on the card. There should not be a “t” anywhere on this card.”
Oh I just remembered a name I hate…
Texas
Oh yes we had a boy next door to us before we moved the first time and his name was Texas. He was a little snot if I recall correctly (this was a loooong time ago) plus Why name your son after a state?!?!? It’s so annoying to me.
But then I also find it weird when reading of names that are the same as a town or something I know of even though the town or whatever was named after a person.
[aside]What kind of name is Alberta for a girl? I know a Princess was named that and the province was named after her but it seems so so… I dunno not good for a girl…[/aside]
Bad family names - my great great grandmother was born Arlette, but at some point in her life decided to play with the spelling, and changed it to Harlettie, which was sometimes corrupted to Harlotte by other people.
She had two granddaughters named after her, but neither of them have it spelt the way she spelt it - they were Harlettee or Harlotee - and even her headstone has the wrong spelling (Harlettee).
Finally, people must have looked at the name and thought something was very wrong, so some records have her name corrupted to Charlotte or Charlotta, and one lists her as Haslette. Some just ditch the first name, and call her by her middle name.
George (aka “Whore-hay”) might seem bad, but it’s no worse than a girl named Harlot.
This just reminded me of a guy named Christopher that I once knew. His last name was such that on the roster in his high school, his name read (say) “Reinsthrom, Christophe” with no room for the final “r”. He referred to himself as “Christophe” from that point on with no help from anyone. By definition, I’d guess even Webster would call that a delicious love for one’s self.
Since I’ve finally surfaced after reading every hilarious piss and moan on this thread, I’ll point out that I feel for the sisters Shanun and Nikol that I work with. One blames it on Mom and the other on Dad. Now that the 'rents are even, they left behind two daughters that are odd. Lousy names to begin with… now let’s dork 'em up?
I happen to have one of those English surnames that gets used as girls’ first names. I had them put my last name on my name tag at work because it is a fairly common girl’s name now, and I got tired of people mispronouncing my first name, which is Loretto. You wouldn’t believe how many people asked me if my name was spelled wrong on my tag, or looked straight at it and called me Loretta. Right now, there are a few people around work who call me Loretto, most people just call me by my last name. A lot of them know it’s my last name, but once I told them my first name, they understood… Quite a few people think my last name is my first name. Oh well. Right now, my rule is, if you can pronounce it right, you can call me by my first name.
I was named for my oh-so Catholic grandmother, who is probably spinning in her grave because I was chrismated in the Byzantine rite of the church instead of being a plain vanilla Latin rite Catholic.
The name is derived from the Italian town of Loreto, home of the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto. The Blessed Mother’s house, where the Annunciation took place was moved there from Nazereth in 1294, after making a stop in Croatia.
I quit going by the diminutive Lori during my sophomore year in high school when I found myself in the same classroom with two other Lori’s, a Laurie and a Laura. It just got to be too damn confusing.
I have a hatred of diminutives in general, especially when attatched to adults. Any guy over the age of twenty-one who is still going by Bobby, Ricky, Kenny, whatever, needs to let go of his childhood and grow up. Ditto for Candy (Candace is a perfectly respectable name), Missy, Shelly (if your name is Michelle).
Incidentally, my step-cousin named her firstborn daughter (who was born on my birthday) Taylor. The kid’s last name is Williams.
Taylor Williams. I shit you not.
Names, just like everything else, come in and out of fashion. For the longest time you didn’t hear anything but Tyler, Taylor, Hunter for boys. Ugh. What’s wrong with “Sam?” Now that’s a good name for a kid. “Hey, Sam, come here.”
My personal un-favorites for girls are Crystal and Tiffany. I hear them and I automatically think trailer trash. Big hair, driving a Camaro, acid-washed jeans that are a little too short, white socks showing, cigarette dangling seductively from her lips.
I prefer simple names. My daughter’s name, for instance, is easy and pretty, but not one you hear much - Lilly.
Nina. <shudder> Bad association.
I love the old fashioned names. A girlfriend of mine wants to name her kid Zoe, but I hope not. For some reason, I can’t stand the name. And I knew a really nice Zoe once, too. Now, she says they may name the kid “Katelyn.” I don’t know how they are going to spell it, but that’s the pronunciation. Sounds kind of redneck-y to me, but what are you going to do? I told her I hoped she had a boy.
Funny…I have a rat named Timothy.
I agree witcha, doomraisin, but am afraid that I’ll be seen as “burdening” the child with an old fogey name (Lily, Stella, [sub]ahem[/sub] Philomena).
But, really, what do I know? (Other than the fact that Manda JO doesn’t like my name… sniffle)
I tend not to like overly common names (John, Jennifer, Robert, Mary), but I don’t think they qualify for my HATE list. I’m not overly fussed by unique spellings, either, unless it’s one of those common names (e.g., Genifyr??).
Count me in with the teachers who have see 'em all.
I like the last-name-as-first-name if it actually is a family name (like mine is), but I know of several families with kids named Taylor, Morgan, and Madison, or Cameron, Stratton and Hunter (or whatever) and they have no family connection to the name.
I also hate the cutesy or different spellings. Jordyne, Misstee, Khrystyna, Miek, Dahvid, Rabekkah, Leesa, Emmalee, AshLee, etc. Learn to spell!
There are too many girls named Madeline, McKenna, Mckenzie and Ashley!
There are too many boys named Cory/Corey, Graham and Cole!
There needs to be a moratorium on those names for a few years.
A lot of the so-called “old-fashioned” names are coming back. We have several Lauras, Marthas, Olivias, Zoe/Zoeys, and others.
I hate annoying names that run in families… I know a Jeff and Julie who got together and spawned Jared, Jillian, and Jonathan. Puke on the lot of ya!!!
And I knew the Boyds, with their Osmond wannabes Bart, Brent, Brett, Bryce and Bobbi. Give me a small break please.
And for the record, as a teacher I am sick to death of the names Ashley, Dylan, Austin, Madison, Mackenzie, and Dakota.
[hijack]
I know a girl named Carmelle, and I sorta like that name. It’s kinda cutesy, but I like it anyway. Her sister is named Olivia, and they call her Liv. I like the name Liv, too. Seems sorta “hippie”-ish (for lack of a better word), but without the weirdness of names like Flower or Charity or whatever.
[/hijack]
Marsha, spelled Marcia. How the hell do you get “Marsha” out of Marcia?? Marcia should be pronounced mar-see-uh.
Vickie, spelled Vicki. It’s a horrible name anyway, but at least spell it right! I can say it’s horrible because it’s my name. I’ve never gotten over the trauma of “Icky Vickie” and “V-I-C…K-I-E…M-O-U-S-E” a thousand times a day. (Victoria, however, is cool. I wish I were one, but it’s Vickie on the old Birth Certificate).
Oh, and poor poor Beatrice and Eugenie. If they weren’t princesses they’d never survive those names.
Eq
Ok, I know the worst name of all: Tutulasewa. That’s my (female) cousin’s middle name. It’s pronounced Tutu (like the ballerina skirt) + la + sea + wee. My aunt’s husband briefly decided that he was part American Indian back when that was trendy, so the name is supposed to mean “little flower”. I guess they got it out of a book that real Native Americans sell to dumb tourists. Oh, and the first name is pretty bad too. Carsyn. <sigh>
I hate all the incorrect spellings that seem to be so popular lately. There are some names that really do have several well-established spellings (Katherine, Katharine, Kathryn, Catherine), and my second favorite name for a daughter would be Katharine. However, considering the current trend, I think I’ll just go with Katherine instead, so that people don’t think I was trying to spell it “creatively”.
I dislike quite a few boys names because they sound so old/weak (Percy, George, Arnold) or weak in a different way (Jeff, Evan). Then there are the over-trendy names (Max, Joshua, Michael, Keith). Once you consider nickames, it seems like there aren’t any good boys names.
Richard = Dick
Robert = Bob (sorry, sounds like a verb, so I don’t like it)
Neil = verb again
William = Bill (like you get in a resteraunt) or Will (like what dead people leave)
Henry = Hank (somehow sounds like rotting flesh to me)
Charles = Chuck (upchuck)
Edward and David are the best of the bunch, I guess. I like Elizabeth and Katherine for girls. But… I also kind of like the name Griselda. Not sure why, it just sounds kind of cool, like she’d be kind of goth, but not in an annoying way.
If anyone is looking for a name for a baby, I recommend a book called Beyond Jennifer and Jason. It tells you which names are too trendy (Max, Madison, Kayla/Kaylie/Halie/Bailey), and which ones are both pleasant and not too common (Laura, Cordelia, Lily).
Yeah, it is a good book. It caught my wife’s attention in the store about a months before our son was born.
We already knew what we were gonna call him, but when we saw the book, we both decided to give it a once over.
We then replaced it, pouting.
My wife’s name is Jennifer.
Mine’s Jason.
Bernice. Ick.