The Art of Baby Naming
This article in USA Today states that researchers have found that parents respond quickly to baby names that are on the rise in popularity, versus names that are waning in popularity.
Now, as someone who is still currently wrestling with a name for her impending baby girl, I find that odd. It is a sort of lemming-like mentality that I find actually somewhat disturbing. Where is the ability to think for oneself? Just because everyone is naming their kid Brittany, why would someone feel that they have to as well?
You see, I don’t want my daughter to have a name that everyone else has. It’s not that I must have some quirky, arty name that sets her far apart from the mundane masses. I actually quite like some of the really popular names. It’s just that I don’t wish for her to be Samantha J. along with Samantha G. and Samantha W. in her classroom.
I’ve spoken to many people who said that was their biggest peeve about their name, that they had to share it with someone all through school. I didn’t have that problem, but I could see how it would be annoying to always have your last initial tacked on to your identity.
So to latch on to a name that everyone else is using is counter-intuitive to my way of thinking.
But then again, no one has accused me lately of thinking in a particularly straight manner.
There were a couple of names in the top 10 that we really, really liked (Jack and Jacob, specifically), but we deliberately eschewed them because of their popularity. We must have spent hours on babynamewizard.com looking at popularity trends — you don’t want something ridiculously popular, but you don’t want something that is on its way out, and will be considered hideous in 20 years, either. We finally settled on Samuel, and have received a lot of positive comments about it.
I’m really hoping that Madeleine drops a bit in popularity in the next few years, though. I’ve always loved that name, and would really be pissed off if every second kid was named that.
My names for my imaginary children… Elaina and Jonathan
When I used to teach, I would have three different Taylors or Jordans in my class, male and female.
I think a lot of people who don’t already have kids, and don’t have a lot of contact with small children, don’t really know what’s getting popular, and when they hear a name they like, they choose it, not realizing that the reason they heard it is because it’s popular. I have a friend who did just that when he and his wife named his daughter Chloe. When we were growing up, that was a very cool, uncommon name, and that’s why they chose it. Now they live on a street where there are two other little Chloes under five.
When we were looking for a name for our daughter last year, we wanted a name that wasn’t on the top 10 list–or even top 50 or 100–but one that is familiar to most people, and one that most people can spell. We also wanted a name that was pretty, but not just pretty, one that had literary or other intelligent connotations. What we didn’t realize until after we had decided on a name and it had become her name to us (even though she wasn’t due for some months), was that it was also a Disney Princess name. We love our little Princess Aurora.
I taught swimming to kindergartners when I was in college. Those were the Brooke, Crystal and Alexis years. I suspect the Britney years were about five years ago. I saw a Mallory in a college production the other night.
But who am I to talk? I was named after a Mouseketeer myself.
When I was in college there were two other girls that had my first AND last name. It was a nightmare for the office people they were always mixing up paperwork. I tried to name both my kids names that were less common but as soon as I did I started hearing/seeing them places.
I have heard of one other person with my soon-to-be-born daughter’s first name, and none with the spelling of her middle name. I did the gauche “kreate-ur-ohn” spelling with her middle name, but it is a combination of her two grandmother’s middle names (Ellen + Lynn = Ellynn) so I thought I was being clever. Then I caught up with the rest of the world and read the Twilight series and realized that the heroine did the same thing with her daughter. Oh well.