StorkBytes: A Resource for What Not To Name Your Baby

[Ferret_Herder]

@Baracus

The trends in baby naming are strange. Our initial inclination for our daughter’s name was Lilly. We ultimately decided against it because we didn’t want it to appear that we named her after my wife’s annoying/absentee grandmother. Glad we did because like 20% of the girls her age we have encountered in daycare, etc, have been Lilly’s. I can think of one or two minor characters named Lilly on TV recently and no major celebrities, so how’d that happen?

If I recall the analysis in Freakonomics correctly, they said that typically (in white Americans), name trends tend to start among the upper classes and then over the years drift down, and are not necessarily fueled by TV/movies/etc. per se - though sometimes these names get used in TV shows, the trend seems to pop up in middle and lower classes before then. People hear of well-to-do folks with particular names, or naming their children those names, and copy those in hopes of making their children seem classy/important. (I loaned out my copy; another reader should feel free to correctly.) Considering that there’s a pricey women’s clothing store called Lilly Pulitzer, named after “a young, sassy New York socialite [who] had eloped with Peter Pulitzer, grandson of the Pulitzer Prize’s Joseph Pulitzer”, I think that may be a data point in favor of the trend.

[Colophon]

Fredvieve.

Fredvieve?

FREDvieve?

Bwahahaha.

Also: Anderw. At what point did that fuck-up occur?

I also noticed one girl named “Chaveleh” and another named “Chavelle”. I hope they never want to settle in the UK…

[Risha]

@Savannah

And that’s aNOTHER thing.

These poor children will never, ever be able to buy personalised pencils or magnets with their names on them.

Won’t someone think of the children?

I will admit that this was a source of mild trauma as a child.

[Beadalin]

@matt_mcl

Rogue (Rogue can date Logan, who was among the top ten boy’s names - or for that matter there were two girl Logans as well)

I believe that Rogue is destined to date Rouge, myself.

A friend of mine is a pediatrician, and she tells of a couple with the last name of Smith who gave birth to a daughter on Christmas Day. And naturally, named the kid Mary Chris.

[Ceejaytee]

@Colophon

Also: Anderw. At what point did that fuck-up occur?

That could have been a typo when the birth certificate was drawn up. The first birth certificate we got for our older son had his extremely common middle name misspelled “Geogre.” I referred to him as Gee-Ogre for a month until we got it fixed.

At least, that’s what I’m hoping for Anderw’s sake.

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

@matt_mcl

Anakin (there were five of these. That’s it, I renounce my membership in the human race.)

The given names of the baby in Un gars une fille were Anakin George Lucas. Of course, the writers intended it as a joke. You just can’t beat reality for humour content. (Note that both George and Lucas are legitimate first names.)

Aryan (there were ten of these. That’s just – I’m not even going to go there.)

Might be ethnic. I had a teacher named Arian; he’s Albanian. And of course Ariane is a legitimate female name.

Diezel-Blaze (I know I’m naming my kid after a tractor-trailer accident.)

This one made me laugh out loud for a very long time.

Maxxim (he’s the top, Alexx is the bottom)

Random

I can see that.

Rune (see patchouli comment before)

We have (had?) a SDMB member named that, and apparently it is actually his given name. He is a right-wing Dane.

If read out loud, this is a passable imitation of Rowan Atkinson’s schoolmaster sketch.

“Guenital? Oh, sorry, GENital! :rolleyes:”

Fredvieve (middle name: My Parents Wanted a Boy)

I once had a teacher named Sergine.

Mirabel (and her brother, Olympic Stadium)

Actually I know someone (from Spain) named Maribel. It’s a mix of Maria and Isabel.

Nevaeh (Heaven spelled backwards. 65 girls were named this. 25 girls were named Mary.)
Niveah (I can’t decide which is the more horrible possibility: that this is the preceding misspelled, or that she was named after the soap)

What, no Nineveh?

T’Angeline

I prefer T’Angerine.
Anyway, great list, matt!

[WishIHadACoolName]

My niece relates this story, and swears its true:

She’s in college. First day of this particular class. Prof is “taking roll” and saying names out loud. He says “I know this must be a typo, but work with me here… Shithead Lastname”. A girl a few rows behind my niece says quite loudly “It’s pronounced Shi-THEE-ad”

ugh. I was not there, and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the tale.

[Colophon]

@WishIHadACoolName

My niece relates this story, and swears its true:

She’s in college. First day of this particular class. Prof is “taking roll” and saying names out loud. He says “I know this must be a typo, but work with me here… Shithead Lastname”. A girl a few rows behind my niece says quite loudly “It’s pronounced Shi-THEE-ad”

ugh. I was not there, and cannot vouch for the accuracy of the tale.

See posts #22 and #24 in this very thread.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

[QUOTE=CairoCarol]

So are you going to tell the coconut crab story? You can’t just leave us hanging!
Yes I can…that would be thread hijacking! But so you don’t toss and turn at night, I’ll just give the synopsis: coconut crabs are scary - they eat coconuts so have pincers that can crush them, and we found one that we’d left in a box on the kitchen counter lurking in the motor of our freezer.

Wewere frantic to get it out, both for the safety of our cats, who were hissing at it and would be no match for it if they decided to attack, and for the wellbeing of our freezer (no repairman for 800 miles, literally, and those pincers were all but wrapped around some important-looking cables). But as stupid foreigners we had no idea what to do and were terrified of the crab. So we called in our neighbor Louis Louis, native Micronesian, figuring he’d have some knowledge of crab behavior that would help (you know, gather bark from a tree where a lady crab has nested under the full moon, stick it in a trap, and the crab would scuttle right to it.) But no fancy maneuvers: He casually reached in and grabbed the crab for us, obviously thinking we were pathetic.

We ate him for dinner. The crab, not Louis Louis.

Sorry about that hijacking.

Bolding mine.

Ooooohhhhhaaaaaayyyy ahwegottago.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

@olivesmarch4th

If I had been born a boy, my name would have been Orley Richmond Hill IV-- after my father. :eek:

is glad she’s Christina Marie

gonzomax WANTED to name me Angus or Helmut. If I was a girl, I’d have been a Veronica.
I’d better have been hella hot to pull that off.
…the name, not the clothes.

[TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW]

“Black people craaaaaaaazay!”

[matt_mcl]

@VCO3

“Black people craaaaaaaazay!”

Considering that black people make up about 1% of the population of the province I quoted names from, I really don’t think we can lay this one at their feet.

[Velma]

@Ferret Herder

If I recall the analysis in Freakonomics correctly, they said that typically (in white Americans), name trends tend to start among the upper classes and then over the years drift down, and are not necessarily fueled by TV/movies/etc. per se - though sometimes these names get used in TV shows, the trend seems to pop up in middle and lower classes before then. People hear of well-to-do folks with particular names, or naming their children those names, and copy those in hopes of making their children seem classy/important. (I loaned out my copy; another reader should feel free to correctly.) Considering that there’s a pricey women’s clothing store called Lilly Pulitzer, named after “a young, sassy New York socialite [who] had eloped with Peter Pulitzer, grandson of the Pulitzer Prize’s Joseph Pulitzer”, I think that may be a data point in favor of the trend.

Yep, I just got done with this book (and was talking about it in the other baby names thread actually!) The upper classes do seem to start the trends, with Hollywood mostly following them just a bit ahead of the main masses. So it looks like TV and movies are starting the trend when really they are just at the beginning of it. TV writers are good at spotting upcoming names. Hence the “Addison” in Grey’s Anatomy and the like.

They give a list of names that are predicted to be popular in 2015 based on this theory, but I can’t remember most of them. Many I have never even heard of. I do recall Harper, Atticus, and Asher just because those are becoming popular already. I thought it was an interesting read and a different way to look at baby names.

[Cemetery_Savior]

@Mindfield

I think this is where American dialects come into play. “Donna” and “Dawna” would be homophones in Ontario and probably most of the rest of Canada that doesn’t have an inflected dialect. “DAH-nah” strikes me more as a kind of northeastern American dialect (Boston, Brooklyn/Queens, New England, etc.)

Count in the Midwest on that DAH-Nah vs. “DAWN-uh”. Chicagoans would all likely say DAH-nah.

-Cem

[zweisamkeit]

@Cemetery Savior

Count in the Midwest on that DAH-Nah vs. “DAWN-uh”. Chicagoans would all likely say DAH-nah.

-Cem

The Midwest is a big place; you can’t speak for all of us. Everyone I know of in the Detroit area would say DAWN-uh.

[interface2x]

@Savannah

And that’s aNOTHER thing.

These poor children will never, ever be able to buy personalised pencils or magnets with their names on them.

Won’t someone think of the children?

“We are out of BORT license plates at the gift shop. I repeat: we need more BORT license plates.”

[Taber]

@Cemetery Savior

Count in the Midwest on that DAH-Nah vs. “DAWN-uh”. Chicagoans would all likely say DAH-nah.

-Cem

That 70’s show, set in Wisconsin, would agree with you
I went to a high school with a guy named Ben Doing. I bet he wishes he had a nickel for every time someone asked him how he’s been doing wink wink nudge nudge get it? I just said your name. Hilarious.

[LorieSmurf]

Regarding the name Shithead:

I’ve seen this name and a child to whom it belonged with my own eyes. I’ve even seen it on my hospital’s website a couple of times (the newborn nursery pages with new baby pictures and their names…). It’s a genuine name. It’s Eastern Indian. It shouldn’t be that hard to believe.

[LorieSmurf]

Or maybe it’s Arabic. One of those.

[sturmhauke]

My brother-in-law knows a guy with a name sorta like Shithead. It doesn’t look like a swearword on paper, but it’s pronounced like “Fuck” or something, I don’t remember exactly. The guy ended up using an Americanized name for most purposes.