In general, giving your child a nickname as their name (e.g. formally naming your son ‘Billy’ instead of ‘William’) is something that is much more common among people with fewer years of education, at least according to the last chapter of Freakonomics. IMO, I think it’s handicapping your child to do so, because there are situations in life when one needs to be formal to be taken seriously.
One of my personal rules of baby-naming has always been that you shouldn’t give your child a name you can’t see on a CEO or a senator. (This is especially true for girls, who seem to get saddled with stupider/cutesier names overall.)
I also thought it rhymed with piano, which is not tragic on the making-fun front, but does mean that your son will go through life correcting the pronunciation of his name. As somebody who does that routinely (‘Gila’ has a hard G, and a long E for the first vowel), it’s not tragic, but I don’t have to do it within my own community, where Gila is a perfectly normal name, and I don’t have to resent my parents for sticking me with a weird name just because they thought it sounded cool.
I also don’t think it ‘goes well’ with Darcy, any better than Estevao (or another Portuguese boy’s name) goes well with Turner (another English last name). I do think that that most of the time, the matching-sibling-name consideration is a little silly, the sort of thing worried about by people who can’t imagine their little darlings ever growing older than 10 or so.
I agree with RickJay that it won’t age well, and will mark your child as being of the kre8tive turn of the century, although that’s not an intrinsically negative thing.
I thought it was a very common thing - turning nicknames into regular names and has been happening for centuries. Currently in Australia ‘Jack’ is the most popular baby name.
I know what you are saying, but my name is a very traditional and common Indian name, (like Jennifer over here) and I’ve spent my whole life explaining how to pronounce and spell it, too. I don’t think parents should have to bow down to Michaels and Johns just because those names are familiar in the West…I’d not name my child a Western name, either (though I admit, it wouldn’t be an Indian name.)
I think Tiano is actually kind of a nice name, FTR. I like names that don’t show nationality, though. The only thing I think is stupid is when people do take those traditional names and spell them in new and interesting (read: bizarre) ways.
If you’re quoting Freakonomics, doesn’t that same book also claim to demonstrate that having a so-called ‘less educated’ name has little if any effect on the child’s long-term prospects?
Not that I disagree… actually it seems highly counterintuitive to me that a child will not at some point pay a professional penalty for being named “E’Clair” or “Ameba”, unless they are a baker or microbiologist. But then, unfortunately, disadvantaged circumstances of birth would probably prevent many of them from ever getting far enough in life where it would actually matter.
For me, it creates bias toward the parents, not the child. I tend to think “oh, so you’re the people original enough to choose Megan when everybody else was choosing Megan. No wonder Megan always has some strange thing following her home from rehab.”
Yep, she did. Her success didn’t keep you from calling it ridiculous though, either.
I don’t see a whole lot of Oprahs out their either, and that doesn’t seem to have stopped Ms. Winfrey from being successful.
(Also, the OP is in Australia, and I recall from her “Darcy” thread that names that sound rather silly to my American ear seem to be far less silly there.)
Melbourne is one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. A classroom of 30 kids would have 5 kids named Jack, 5 called Jessica and 20 kids with unusual names like Shakira, Mikayla , Jai, Levi. Reynong, Skye, Srey Mien.
Call me ol’fshioned but I like the name Jack (I even have a pet scorp on WoW named Jack).
A friend of mine is named Garon - never heard the name before so it ws different to me.
I also like the name(s) Francis (Frank) Xavier.
For girls - Mary Anastasia (call her Mary Ann or Asia)
Cliodhna, and Thvia.
Tiano… not my preference but it does have a certain ring to it.