How important are the names we bestow on our children? It was once thought of as an opportunity to honor beloved ancestors, national heritage, religion, etc. I have made an amateur study of names over the years; their linguistic origins, their meanings, and so forth. What puzzles me in these modern times is when people approach the naming of a newborn like it was a new pet. They invent names phoenetically, purely for the way the sound; and often these names DO mean something in other languages that the parent is oblivious of. Then there are those who crush two names together to create a name that means nothing at all. When I find some examples, I’ll post them. For most of the planet, the idea is that a name MEANS something.
America is superficial, and that is reflected by our names. Even though the most common names remain the “traditional” ones we’ve retained for centuries, it is more acceptable to pull something from behind your ear. The allusion to pets is a funny one… but I guess accurate. It is about aesthetics of the parents these days. If they like “Cindi” better than “Cindy”, so be it. My grandparents named my mother “Cathy” - just Cathy, not Catherine or Katrina or anything. My other grandparents adopted the names “Emma” and “Morey” instead of their traditional Mexican names. My parents chose the names of my sister and I because they sounded good - my mom liked “Michelle” from the song that goes “Michelle, my bell,” so my sister got stuck with that. I hate my name, so I won’t even relate it.
I’d bet that most of the parents that name their kids “Mark” or “Gabriel” and the like don’t even think about the religious meaning of the name. It just sounds nice. In fact, I’m a lot the same. I have a little folder of names or words I ran across that I like the sound of, if the need should arise.
How important is it? It is a style.
How important should it be?
Well, what is the cultural marker? Personally, I think we are in one of those periods where the language and culture are going through subtle revolutionary changes, because of internationalization (er, is that a word?)… anyway, the massive exposure to a global village, cultural mixing, and more travelling and independent lifestyle. But names have to come from SOMEWHERE.
Hell, I respond to my screen names more than I respond to my real name. What is in a identity? 100 years ago, people have a name, period. I have a name, a e-mail address, a phone number, 3 or 4 screen names, nick names, etc. Which one is more important?
As technology goes on integrating, I kinda expect to see a merger towards our name as simply what we are called, not our identity.
My wife thinks she has a cool name. She is named for an aunt of her’s who died as a child. I am named after my dad and both my grandfathers. We are both about twenty years old. My daughter is named after one of her maternal great-grand parents. Not everyone has given up on “meaning” in thier names.
I named my children ‘Patrick’ and ‘Lukas’, but after a long deliberation. First of all we wanted names that could be used and understood in several languages (I’m German, my wife’s Brazilian). We were living in Germany at the time and these were ‘normal’, easy to pronounce names. They are also considered ‘normal’ names in Brazil (and can be pronounced by Brazilians also). We are now livng in the Netherlands, and no problems here either, nor would there be any problems in an English speaking country. We were also aware of the religious signifigance of each name.
Patrick comes from the Latin ‘Patricius’ and is of course the name of a famous saint who drank a lot of green beer and drove the frogs out of Ireland (although I have no idea what the French were doing in Ireland in the first place) or something like that. Lukas is the name of one of the apostles, and was a gospel singer (or something like that). Plus, ‘Cool Hand Luke’ is a really nice movie.
This question seems likely to elicit opinions than facts, so I’ll move this thread to IMHO.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
And I say that this is the best thread title of the week!
Honestly, how much of your child’s lifetime do you think should be wasted tring to explain how and/or why her/his name is spelled and/or pronounced? Save the cute naming for your pets.
I named my son Justin (which means, “The Just One”) because at the time it was pretty rare (believe it or not). Also because I thought it sounded good on a kid or an adult. His middle name is his dad’s first name. His last name is hyphenated.
My mom had well-planned “reasons” for naming each of my three (older) siblings. Me, she wasn’t expecting, so she was out of ideas (and, apparently, the energy to come up with any during the 9-month countdown). My name came from one of those baby naming books, which someone gave her in the hospital.
Dude, I lucked out.
My siblings’ names are totally dorky.
Mine rocks. 
Sorry but according to this article a recent study found that ‘white’ sounding first names on resumes got 50% more responses than ones with with black sounding names.
Boy, I’ll bet Adam and Eve got an earful…
I guess George Foreman got it right? :rolleyes:
I can understand wanting to honour someone who was/is very important to you as an individual, but shouldn’t you dedicate the forward of a book to them instead of giving your offspring their name? It should reflect the parents desire to give them a name that they feel would give their child their own identity.
My aunt had the name Louise picked out for her daughter before she was born, but when she first laid eyes on her she said surprised, ‘You’re not Louise, you’re Megan.’
We’ve named our twins with names that are unusual but not totally unworldly. Our daughters name is Matisse. It happens to be the same as the artist, but we merely liked the sound of the name. Most people who meet her (now 20 months old) think (or say) that it is a beautiful name and suits her. Our son we’ve given a Welsh name, Rhyd. Yes, we have to correct peoples pronounciation (Reed, in Welsh it is hreed with an aspirated h and rolled r), and I suspect that he will allow people to misspell it to make things easier, but that is happening frequently now anyway with more common names…is that Bradley with or without an e, is that Gail or Gayle, Cathy with K or C, Rhys or Reese or Reece? The fact that people may temporarily spell it differently does not take away his identity.
And don’t get me started on people who name their dog Bob…
(Our neighbours, the Reynolds, got a dachsund who they called Burp…)
I’m not sure how different it used to be…
We have a lot more cultures and heritages now to honor. So my son has a Korean middle name. Sounds strange to anyone who doesn’t know its Korean.
My daughter has an unusual spelling of a common name. But it isn’t made up - its an alternative spelling thats been around and used - just less commonly - since the 15th century (at least).
My friend has a son named after his cultural tradition - just happens to be the name of a 12th century German. Not made up - just unusual - and historical from perhaps a little father back than most people would choose. (The common biblical names have been common forever, but names of 12th century German warlords - less common).
Remember the Puritans? (I really should link to that thread, but I’m not going to) Now, they had some made up names.
The first name shown on my birth certificate is unusual. I’ve met one other woman with the same name, and her story was that the person filling out her birth certificate could not understand what her thickly-accented immigrant parents were really trying to say.
Anyone who sees my legal name written cannot pronounce it; anyone who hears the name cannot spell it. My parents do not pronounce the name the same.
I despise the name and for more than half my life have gone by a more common name. My parents know my feeling about my legal name, but each continues to call me by his/her own version of the hated name. I probably should get my name legally changed, but there are few problems with that.
I’ve known people with unusual names who didn’t seem to mind. Mine has always made me feel like a freak. So I would urge parents to show some consideration in naming their children.
When we named our daughter we wanted to give her a name that would carry her into adulthood with pride. We took our job as parents seriously and thought beyond the birth announcements about the effects your name has on your life.
Will she like her name? I don’t know… she so far hasn’t said much only being 20 months old. Lots of people tried to help us name her but we managed all by ourselves to pick Cara Elizabeth.
I didn’t want the pressure that comes from being named after a relative and I didnt want to give her a name that every kid in her class will also have (I’m a Katherine so I know - when I cashiered for Shaw’s in high school there were 11 Kathys as cashiers/baggers) On the other hand I didn’t want her to have a name so different that she spent forever trying to explain it or was ridiculed for it.
I feel we’ve done fairly well except we can never find anything personalized in the store that says Cara.
Well, I am Indian, living in Britain, with a Scottish name.
My grandparents gave me my first name, which I loathe and have never answered to.
I like my middle name, which is what most people call me. I used to hate it for being unusual, but then I grew up…
People quibble about how to spell it, but I have met a couple of other people with the name.
Yes, I will say what it is.
Iona.
I have a relatively uncommon name myself, and have always been grateful for that. Especially in school when my class had 4 Jennifers, 3 Lisas and 6 or 7 variations on Elizabeth.
When I had my son I named him after my father, because although he had six children of his own, he had never gotten a son. I never thought about there being “pressure” involved, it just seemed like a good way to both show my father my gratitude and give my son a name with meaning–at least within our own family.
IMO, made up or unusual names are just as likely, if not more likely, to be deeply meaningful to the parents as some traditional name that gets plucked out of a book or family tree. As long as it’s not something that’s begging to be mocked, and they can tell their kid someday “Hey, we named you _______ because _________” I don’t see the problem with it.
Cool names! I’m curious, though–did you deliberately avoid giving your twins “matchy” names (i.e., Sara and Samuel, or Kimmy and Timmy), or did you just think, “Here are two names we like, and we’re having two kids, so there you go.”
When my sister was a child-psych major in college, she always swore that if she had twins she’d never give them matchy names. 20 years later, she had twins. Guess what she did? I know it’s not fair to expect her to stick to something she said over 20 years ago (God knows I’d be in trouble if someone did it to me . . . for one thing, I’d be married to Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran), but it’s just interesting how things turn out.
I think it sucks how some names are so fad-like that you can guess the approximate age of the bearer. Is there anyone in existence who currently knows a 60-year old woman named Tiffany? Or a teenage girl named Myrna? Ludicrous just to think about it, isn’t it? Or a Debbie or Sharon who is not late-thirties to forties at this moment? A Mark who is not in his thirties or late twenties? A Justin who is older than, say, fifteen?
On the other hand, a Julia, Michael, James, Timothy, Elizabeth, just to name a few, could pretty much be any age. Personally, I prefer the classics to the fads. And the artificially made-up names? Get outtahere! It should be considered child-abuse to give your kid one of those.
In Germany, a name must be approved by the office of vital statistics or some such animal as a “real” name. Can’t even be ambigious about the gender of the child (Personally, I happen to like some of the American gender-neutral names.)
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Justin is an old family name. My grandfather (now deceased) and a cousin who was a contemporary of his both had the name, and Aaron is named for them.
I agree wholeheartedly, which is why Aaron is named Aaron. It’s a good name for a child, and for a man. There are also no good nicknames for it, so he won’t have to contend with a teacher calling him something he doesn’t like and won’t answer to.
Robin
I have two nieces, without a doubt the cutest little girls ever seen, named:
Summer Sky and Winter Storm.
Mom and Dad live on a farm where they, not surprisingly, milk goats and turn the product into organic leather products. Or something like that.
Not made-up. Just very different from what people had been used to.
The Puritans were, fiorst and foremost, profoundly anti-Catholic. The very name “Puritan” refers to their desire to purify England (and, in particular, the Church of England) by ridding it of all remaining traces of Catholicism. And in their zeal to avoid any trace of Catholicism, they sometiems went a little crazy.
Traditionally, Catholics had named their children after saints, so English Puritans went out of their way NOT to give their children the names of saints! It’s not that they thought ill of the Virgin Mary or St. Peter, but they avoided giving their children names like “Mary” or “Peter” precisely because they sounded like the kinds of names Catholics would give their children.
As an alternative, Puritans gave their sons names from the Old Testament (Joshua, Jeremiah, Daniel, Isaac, Jacob, etc.) or secular English names (Oliver, Richard, etc.). As for girls, they were named after Old Testament heroines (Rebecca, Sarah, Ruth, Esther) or after Christian virtues (Faith, Hope, Constance, Felicity, Prudence, etc.).