Candy not only sounds like a pole dancer, it sounds like a 50’s name. So the visual for me is a stripper my mom’s age.
ETA: I don’t think there could be a worse association to a name than “your mom as a stripper”.
Depends… what does she look like?
I once went out with a Candy. Very nice woman. Cute. Not at all stripper-like.
Around that same time I knew a Bambi. Being that she was a fairly butch lesbian and feminist, nobody really made the stripper association.
Hork…now there’s a name you don’t see too often.
Leslie - this is the name of a Scottish clan and there have been many men in my family who’ve had that name. It’s been used mostly for boys in England and Scotland. Girls are the ones who took it on recently in the U.S. starting about WWII (and of course it started waning in popularity as a boy’s name around that time too).
Adrian - a manly man’s name for centuries (variants include Hadrian, as in the Roman emperor). It refers to people who come from an area in northern Italy. The girl’s name is usually spelled Adrianne.
Jaime - you’re saying James is not good for a boy?
Kelly - this is another surname that turned into a given name. Like Duncan.
Frances - the boy’s name is “Francis” not Frances. It’s a more latin version of François. Sinatra’s first name was Francis. “Frank” is the short form.
I’m with you on most of those. Billie, I assume comes from Willie a variant of Wilhelmina, I think. I had a great, great grandmother Wilhelmina who was very strict about not being called Willie.
Jordan
Taylor - don’t like that as a first name boy or girl.
Bradley - I have never seen this as a girl’s name.
Bo
Ryan - yeah, that name means “king” and is a bit weird for a girl.
Toni - is short for Antonia/Antoinette
Billie
Corey - another of those pesky Gaelic surnames, for girls historically you tended to get Cora and Coraline more often than Corey.
Isn’t it short for Horace? My cat makes that sound when the furballs come too.
**Cat - ** “Gots a furball in my belly!” ::horace, agatha, agatha, horace, patooie!::
Unfortunately, your kid is going to be dealing with ignorant and cruel people like that in his or her life.
Like it or not, fair or not, if you give your kid a stereotypically ghetto name, he or she is going to have more trouble finding jobs as an adult. I would avoid such names for that reason alone.
The world ain’t fair or nice. Don’t pretend it is when you’re choosing a name for your kid.
If there are other languages that are commonly spoken in your area, I’d make sure that your kid’s name doesn’t mean something bad in any of those languages. I’d check for Spanish meanings, if you’re in the US. Don’t name your kid Puta if you know they’re going to come into contact with Spanish speakers.
I’d avoid the “poo” sound entirely. Too easy for kids to make fun of.
If your last name is Hunt, don’t name your son Michael.
Don’t name your daughter Bertha.
If you have the same last name as a famous person, don’t give in to the temptation to give your kid the same first name as the famous person.
If your last name is a common word, don’t pick a first name that sounds like an adjective that could modify that word, or a sentence using that word. If your last name is Law, don’t name your son Marshall. If your last name is Hogg, it’s child abuse (or it should be, if it isn’t) to name your daughter Ima. If you choose a first name that is a common word, like Misty or April, don’t choose a middle name that is also a common word, like Dawn.
If you name your kid after a song, movie, or book, use just the first name, not first and middle. The Clintons got this right. Chelsea Clinton is named after the song “Chelsea Morning”, but her middle name is Victoria, not Morning.
Don’t give a nickname as an actual name. Someone called Mike should have Michael as his actual legal name. If you don’t, people are going to assume his name is Michael, and he’ll have to explain that it isn’t. That will get real old real fast for him.
I don’t like names that end in the “een” sound. They sound redneck to me. Of course, that might be a positive association for some people.
I don’t like naming kids after parents, either. Because then the kid has one fewer option of what nickname or variant of their name they want to be called, because one of them’s taken by the parent. It would be too confusing in the family if they both went by the same name.
Siblings, first cousins, or a child and their aunt or uncle should not share a first name. Too confusing. First cousins shouldn’t share a first name even if they don’t share a last name. You shouldn’t have to use your last name within your family. Your first name should be a unique identifier within the part of your family that you regularly see and discuss.
There was a Candy Bahr in my school. Not kidding.
In her third-grade class, my daughter has classmates named Jaydon, Braydon, and two Caydens. Along with a Madison (obnoxious little girl!), two Olivias, and Kayla and Kyla. I detest these names!
In my own family, old-fashioned names seem to be the fashion. In the under-twenty set, we have:
William Russell (after two of his great-grandfathers)
Zachary Robert (middle name after his uncle and great-grandfather)
Erin Elizabeth (middle name after mom, grandmother, umpteen generations of great-grandmothers)
Lily Katherine (after grandmothers)
Alana Nancy (after her uncle - middle name Alan - and her two grandmothers)
Alexandria Jessie (middle name after her father, whose birthday she and Lily Katherine share)
Penelope (middle name Lane. Get it? “Penny Lane” Yeah, I don’t like it much either, but she’s my niece, so I didn’t choose the name…)
Chloe
Matthew
Olivia Renee (after her grandfather Oliver and her mother’s and great-grandmother’s middle names)
Hannah
Addie (a name I haven’t heard since my great-grandmother’s generation)
I mostly like all of the above names, although I personally wouldn’t have saddled a pretty little girl with the name “Addie.” But at least it’s not trendy, and there probably aren’t 367 Addies in her preschool class. However, I also have nieces, nephews, cousins, and other young relatives named:
Jonnie (not Jonathan, not John, but ‘Jonnie.’ Sounds like a Port-a-let to me!)
Amber (stripper name!)
Bayleigh, Hayleigh, and Kayleigh (sisters. All spelled like that. Bleurgh!)
Taylor (a girl. Not a family name.)
Hunter (a boy. Again, not a family name.)
Before our little one was born, my husband and I easily chose a girl’s name: the aforementioned Lily Katherine. We standardized the spelling of Lily, but that was my grandma’s name, and the name of two of his great-grandmothers. Katherine is after my husband’s mother and grandmother, who died only about a month before her namesake and first great-grandchild was born. I know that people who hate the name won’t tell me that straight out, but most people who hear it comment on it being pretty AND traditional - which is what I wanted.
We had a much harder time choosing a boy’s name, though, which was awkward - prenatal scans indicated with 95% certainty that we’d have a boy. My husband wanted to honor his stepdad with a namesake, and I agreed - my father-in-law is the person who raised my husband, and he is a terribly lovely man. However, his given and middle names are pretty awful - old-fashioned in a bad way. We finally agreed that a boy would be named “Stewart Henry,” “Stewart” being his dad’s last name, and “Henry” after my late father. In a way, it was kind of a letdown to not bring home “Baby Stewie” last weekend!
ROSEMary…
For the record, I don’t have a problem with made-up names. Particularly with black Americans, there may not be any ‘history’ that they know of to choose a ‘historical’ name from. If you want to make something up, go for it. I mean, in my case, I decided to just name my daughter an African word, but I had to randomly choose an African culture. I have no clue where my family even came from.
Still. No excuse for that Rolexus shit. That is bananas.
Any name that would prompt someone to say “Get it?”- no. It will be funny the first few times, but the kid is going to be hearing about it for the next 70+ years, assuming an average life expectancy. It will stop being amusing or clever or cute way before then.
This makes my day. I don’t have anyone in real life who gets my How To Succeed references. 
There seems to be a newish tradition in african-american naming to use “De-” added to the father’s first name. I like it in an “everything old is new again” sort of way. However, “Lil’-” used in the same manner is just silly. For example, “Lil’Earl.”
Heh. We named our son Emerson (middle name), after his maternal grandfather.
Many names get on my nerves, but the worst one is Barbara.
Or Barbie.
Or shudder Barb.
Sorry to you Barbaras out there, but I just hate that name.
There are a few combinations that sound OK. AJ is OK with me, Hampshire, you may continue calling him that. But most initial names sound dumb - TL. HR. SC. BL. They sound like initials, for crying out loud, and they aren’t euphonius. They sound stilted. Like late middle-aged Susan on Desperate Housewives calls her kid MJ. Don’t like it. I’m surprised she didn’t give the kid the trendiest name in the universe (fill in trendiest name here________).
I would also like to say anyone who gives their kid the middle name of Wayne is assuring their future profession as a serial killer.
I disagree with you. In fact I would say your above comments are quite ignorant themselves. I HAVE an unusual name that lends itself well to taunting. I’ve heard a lifetime’s worth of toilet paper jokes and potty humour by those “ignorant and cruel” people and I am still damn proud of my name. I would much rather fight ignorance than dumb down my name in order to assimilate with ignorant yokels who have blinders on to every culture but their own. It’s also a fantastic way to weed out the stupid from my life. IME, people who refuse to listen or who refuse to say my name correctly are generally the kind of people who are casually disrespectful. I don’t mind if people try and fail to get pronounce my name correctly, but those who just decide “Uh, yeah right. I’m just going to call you by your initials.” tend to be jerks. It’s a handy social yardstick.
It has certainly never hurt my job prospects at all and has only been minimally inconvenient for things like birthday cakes and trophies being sent back to correct the spelling of my name.
“The world ain’t fair or nice. Don’t pretend it is when you’re choosing a name for your kid.” Seriously? So I should just cave in and pick something ordinary and bland, devoid of any non-mainstream cultural heritage, because it’s more palatable to the general masses? Why bother with any unique identifiers at all then? I can give my daughter a number, 24601, or is that too closely associated with a boy’s identity?
Your child’s name should at least be more associated with your child’s gender than it is with the opposite sex in most people’s minds. If most people (or some very famous people) who have a name are male, don’t choose that name for your daughter, and don’t choose a name that most people think of as female for your son. Kids can be incredibly cruel to people who don’t conform to gender stereotypes. Don’t force that on your kid. I say this as someone who does not conform to gender stereotypes, and who would wave a magic wand and make all gender stereotypes disappear from everyone’s mind tomorrow if she could. I don’t like gender stereotypes, but I wouldn’t inflict the pain I dealt with from not conforming to them on my kid. Don’t assume it will make them tougher. That doesn’t happen to everybody who gets teased.
No characters other than the letters A to Z in names. No capital letters except as the first letter of the name. In other words, all names should match the regular expression [A-Z][a-z]+. You are making some poor programmer or database administrator’s future life miserable if you don’t follow this rule. You’re also ensuring that your kid will feel like they spend their whole damn life explaining how to spell or pronounce their name, or dealing with people who get it wrong.