Forgot two more good ones: Ruth and Naomi. Aside from the fact that “ruth” means “mercy” in old English, Ruth and Naomi are basically the lesbian equivalent of David and Jonathan.
?
Flypsyde has a good point, add to the list of names tests the initials test, i.e. be sure the initial don’t spell anything. Have a friend from New York whose initial spell JEB. I don’t think his parents realized this was a name that to many sounds southern. He does not like it. My parents informed me that they were always careful about the initial test.
I found out this morning that I am in the baby name game (for the second time), so this thread has been helpful.
Sorry, SoxFan. I think the names are lovely, but I did find the juxtaposition of “servant” girl and “free” boy a bit striking. Your definition of a free man is admirable, but it’s not necessarily the first one that would spring to many people’s minds.
SoxFan:
Am I correct in assuming that your wife wouldn’t let you name your children “Nellie” or “Luis”? 
How so? Jonathan was David’s mother-in-law?
Your Official Cat Goddess since 10/20/99.
Another excellent test to see if the name will work is stand outside on your deck/patio/backyard and yell the name ten times. Cause that is exactly what you will be doing to little Eulelie McKechnee Sheenan for the first ten years of her life.
I’m still considering naming The Baby To Be Named Later Murphy, then I have a 50/50 chance that either she or the dog will respond accordingly.
My cousin’s three daughters are Brianna, Sarah, and Taylor. We wanted to know how she came up with such an “unusual” name for the third one. Now I guess we know the ugly truth…
My own daughter? Thank you so much for asking.
Liberty
That’s GOT to be up there, maybe number 12? And it’s better (to my way of thinking) than Faith or Chastity. Passes the Madam Justice test, I think (!or fails horribly!), but, with Yvette, fails the initials-as-word test. 
Of course, we go with Libby.
yosemitebabe: You can have your cake and eat it too! IIRC, Jerry Rice’s wife (daughter?) is named Jacqui. Come on…you know you want to use it.
Izabella…say it with a German ‘z’ and it’s instant bad movie-Italian.
But clearly the “best” is Latrina. Wait’ll she enlists.
Or if they do, make sure they spell something cool, which is what my mom did. My initials spell “elm,” which I love. Of course, my nickname ruins that, but hey.
Not sure if I mentioned this before, but my nickname (for Elizabeth) is Libby. My mom calls me Liberty every now and then. I’d hate to have that (or any other virtue name) for a first name, though. I get the feeling that if I named my child a virtue name, they’d turn out to be the exact opposite. Grace would be a klutz, Chastity would be a slut, Charity would be a miser.
SoxFan:
Am I correct in assuming that your wife wouldn’t let you name your children “Nellie” or “Luis”? >>> PatrickM
Well, there is a funny story connected with my baseball allegiances and the naming of my son. Back in law school, in the days when Frank Thomas first came up to the Sox, my Sox Fan buddies and I joked how we would all name our first born sons "Frank Thomas <last name>, in the same light as “Willie Mays Aikens.”
In deciding what to name my son, using “Frank” was an easy choice because its my wife’s father’s name. I have a brother named Tom, so I suggested going with “Frank” as the first name, and “Thomas” as the middle name. It took my wife (who has no interest in baseball or sports whatsoever) about 15 seconds to catch on, and she chastised me for trying to be “too cute.” We eventually settled on “Levi” as Frank’s middle name. It was my Grandfather’s middle name, and means “connected to God.”
SoxFan59
“Its fiction, but all the facts are true!”
Perhaps parents who name their girls things like Madison, Alex(andra), Sam(antha), Tyler, Casey, etc., are doing it in order to try to give the kid a step up in what they see as a man’s world with an androgynous name: if the company/ college/ Nobel Committee didn’t initially realize from your resume that you were a female, they’d be more likely to give you an interview? As for things like Ashley and Brianna, who knows? I think I read somewhere that faux-landed gentry sounding names were a sure-fire way of seeming backwater.
I’ve decided that when I have kids, I want to try to avoid biblical and popular gael/celt names, which rules out a lot: Even things like Simeon or Tobias (ever wonder what happens to Tobys after 5th grade?), Ryan, Brendan (ugh, “Br” boys names…). So far we’ve come up with Soren Kierkegaard as the name for the first boy, and Imhotep perhaps as a middle name for the second, should one occur. Girls’ names are trouble, though. A friend and I used to play a game at work where we’d try to come up with ridiculous words which sounded like girls’ names: Credenza, Syphillis, Pestillence, Canteen, Camera, Mantis, etc.
A 70 year old professor in a seminar a couple of years ago, on the first day of class reading the roll-call, stopped in his tracks when he came to my name: “Mitzi? Really? I haven’t heard that name in a long long time… My first girlfriend was named Mitzi…” (I’m 27. Go figure)
A friend and I used to play a game at work where we’d try to come up with ridiculous words which sounded like girls’ names: Credenza, Syphillis, Pestillence, Canteen, Camera, Mantis, etc.
Messed that up.
“Camera” is the name of the late Arthur Ashe’s daughter.
Drain Bead: I guess if we’re lucky Libby will be a libertine???
Let me ask a question. Please don’t be offended (it seems reasonable)… Do you pronounce your screen name the way it ‘looks’ (like something I’d make of Plumber’s Putty), or like what it would be if you hadn’t switched the front letters (Drain Bed)?
Reading through this thread reminds me of one of my favorite jokes on this subject: In the pretzel episode of The Simpsons, Cletus the slack-jawed yokel has collected 300 coupons for free pretzels and summons his brood for dinner, “Caitlyn, Brittany, Brianna, Cody, Dylan, Mitchell, Taylor, Tiffany, Rumor, Scout…” ad nauseum. Cracks me up every time, especially since about 3/4 of my co-workers’ children have these names.
Myself, I have a kiss/curse of being names Katheryn and having it spelled Katheryn. People will tell me they think it looks pretty, and then promptly misspell it. Half my family can’t even spell it. My mom got cute when she shortened it, too, and spelled it Kathey. Teachers, relatives, co-workers, no one can remember that “e,” and since I’ve lived my whole damn life spelling it that way, I ain’t about to change. What the hell, what’s one more challenge at this point? 
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
I’m not offended…in fact, I get this question quite a bit. It’s the former.
Yeah. This applies to various desirable-attribute names. I wanted to name my (hypothetical) son “Swift” but I worry he’ll feel slower than his name–mentally or athletically–and unable to live up to it. I could use it as a middle name, though.
And no, I’ve never heard of anyone named Swift. I know Robins, Jays, and Martins, though.
In my high school graduating class (1993) there were 3 "Aimee"s. Never mind that there was also a “Myke” and a “Meeshell”.
On the subject of names, I had a friend whose last name was Brody. Her parents named all the children with a name that also ended in “y”, so that the entire name would rhyme. The children are: Mary Brody, Julie Brody, Amy Brody…then they had a boy…on his birth certificate his official name is “Johnny” Brody.
And what’s up with pronouncing names differently now? This was never a problem before. But my roommate had an intern whose name was Letitia. You’d think it was pronounced “letisha”, but no…
“la-titty-a” it was. What’s up with that?
My roommate says she’s big on family names for her children. I don’t know, I would never want to name one of my children after a relative. Even if someone else outside the family already had that name, if I named my child after a relative, I would feel like they wouldn’t have their own identity.
My roommate also insists on having her last name be her children’s middle name. I would never go for that. A middle name should be another first name that easily flows off the tongue when matched with the child’s first name. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.
I think people choose names by popular entertainment of the time. When I was born my Mother asked Father what the name of the heroine in his favourite book of the time. Unfortunately it must have been a popular book because there were no less than 4 Penelopes in my Prep class. Still it could have been worse; if I’d been a boy I would have been called Trafford (middle names Kingsley and William following family tradition). I would never have made it through school.
The current fad for extraordinary misspellings is I hate to say definitely prevalent amongst those of the lower socioeconomic classes. It doesn’t seem to be ignorance but rather some strange desire to make the child stand out. There’s been a rather infamous ‘Jaidyn’ around here, the son of ‘Belynda’. Perhaps it’s hereditary?
I should also say that our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit is full of Brittanys. Whenever a couple tell me that they’ve decided to call their child Brittany I order an extra CTG just in case…
I like the “justice” test, but I would like ot add one more. I call it the “porn box” test. Picture your child’s proposed name on the cover of “Delectable Debutantes 44”. If it seems to fit naturally then eliminate it immediately.
One of the best things about this rule is that it disqualifies nearly every Ashley, Madison, Brittany, and Kaitlyn.
The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
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