Baby names

[Marduk]

Camryn and Caitlyn always just strike me as medieval. My family's naming conventions have usually been very familial (I have a brother, three cousins, an uncle, a nephew, and a now deceased grandfather named Mario) or traditional. Sometimes church related, as in both of my names, but I'm the only one that has that pleasure.

[Katya]

That.... sounds unusual to me. Every Jasmine I know has, in fact, been of some kind of Middle Eastern descent. (Of course, that puts the list at three, so not necessarily a huge indicator, but for what it's worth.)

According to Freakonomics, Jasmine is one of the top 20 "blackest" names. (Or it was in the mid-2000s, at least.)

Actually, "Jasmine" and three other variations (Jazmine, Jasmin, Jazmin) take up 4 slots in the top 20 names.

But I agree that it's a beautiful name and I don't see anything wrong with giving a girl of any race that name.

[Katya]

I think Jasmine is a beautiful name. The only Jasmine I've ever known was, um, what do you call someone from the Philippines?

Filipina (for a woman).

[NerdGirl]

I think the only Jasmine I've ever met was Chinese.

[C is for]

The only Jasmine I know is white, super-white. So don't worry too much 42.

[Katya]

It's weird that this is such an uppity topic in the world.

Well, it's easy to have an opinion about them without doing a lot of research or having some kind of specialized knowledge, and names change in popularity over time and vary significantly between different regions and different social groups, so there's a lot of variety to be opinionated about.

[Digit]

In Ghanaian culture there are seven boy names and seven girl names. Once you know someone's name, you know what day of the week they were born on.

[Defy V]

I only know one Jasmine, and she's Caucasian.

Come to think of it, my younger sister's name is supposedly a black person's name. I think she's dealt with really weird pronunciations her whole life.

As for me . . . my name is pronounced the Greek (real) way, the way the celebrities who spell it the same say it. But I have yet to meet anyone who both pronounces it and spells it the same (minus the girl who I was named after and the girl who was sort of named after me in that her parents liked my name). So I have spent my life being called the wrong name. It's maddening, but I guess it's understandable since everyone else says it the other (wrong) way.

[Unit of Energy]

My family has all relatively traditional names. And most of us spell them the normal way, as my mom hates creative spellings. My dad is French Canadian, so my sister Emilie spells her name differently than most girls. Although it isn't as uncommon as it was when she was born.

[Fredjikrang]

What I find funny is that if we use a name that has an obvious meaning in English, then it sounds weird, but this is actually really common in a lot of other languages.

[Katya]

What I find funny is that if we use a name that has an obvious meaning in English, then it sounds weird, but this is actually really common in a lot of other languages.

We have some names that don't (Hunter, Taylor, Rose, Summer), but I agree that it's less common in English.

[Marduk]

That's why I'm going to name my son Stonemason.

[Sparklebreeze]

Even if spelled in the normal fashion, "Chastity" should never be a name. Ever.

[TheAnswerIs42]

I just love that Katya even found a source. Classic.

I think Jasmine is a beautiful name.

Well, I'm glad someone is on our side. And Katya too. Thank you, everybody.

Like many of you mentioned, the only Jasmine I knew was white. I grew up in Cleveland, so I did know a lot of black people, but none of them were named Jasmine.

So maybe the better question is, why do people see this as such a problem? The top name on many lists right now is Sophie, which is about the most French name I can think of. Most of our names come from other cultures and ethnicities. Are we still so racist that black names are off limits?

And my people (the black ones) are the worst offenders of stupid baby names. I have a cousin named Sir Anthony Parker. SIR?!?!? WHAT'S WRONG WITH PEOPLE!! Or, Gynesis and Beautii (which I saw on TV).

Yeah, you can keep those. And Lafawnduh. But this is a pretty little white flower. So I don't see any reason why I can't name my white daughter Jasmine if I like the name. My brother (who likes to be as obnoxious as possible) refuses to call her by her first name because he is so upset that I would use a black name for my white child.

And I gravitate towards normal, but not over-used names. Things that are easy to spell, read, and say, but aren't top-100 names.

That was exactly why we picked this. I just hope she likes it. It's funny - coming into this, we knew about the Disney Princess and the black "issues", but I thought the Disney issue would be the bigger problem.

And by the way,

Camryn and Caitlyn always just strike me as medieval.

Caitlin is the original Welsh spelling. But the name was pronounced "Kathleen". So when the name came to America, people started either spelling it the way it sounded, or saying it the way it was spelled. And eventually the spelling shifted to Kaitlyn (though, of course, people come up with new ways to spell it every day). But that's why it sounds Medieval to you. My father's heritage is Welsh, and unfortunately that's how my cousin ended up named Gruffydd instead of Griffith.

In Ghanaian culture there are seven boy names and seven girl names. Once you know someone's name, you know what day of the week they were born on.

That is fascinating. Isn't the point of names to tell us all apart? That seems not very productive on that front, but maybe I am missing something.

[Genuine Article]

I had a lot of fun going to this site:http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/#ht=2
I plugged in my family's names and found out that my name, and two of my sisters' names haven't cracked the top 1,000 for the last 100 years. My other siblings are ranked #43, #199, #159, #890, and #25 in their respective gender categories. My dad's name has consistently been in the top 20 since he was born, but my mom's name has dropped from #5 the year she was born to #781.

[Katya]

I had a lot of fun going to this site:http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/#ht=2
I plugged in my family's names and found out that my name, and two of my sisters' names haven't cracked the top 1,000 for the last 100 years. My other siblings are ranked #43, #199, #159, #890, and #25 in their respective gender categories. My dad's name has consistently been in the top 20 since he was born, but my mom's name has dropped from #5 the year she was born to #781.

Here's another site that presents the same basic data in a different way:

http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager

[Katya]

I just love that Katya even found a source. Classic.

[Laser Jock]

Closer to the original topic, my mother made up the name for one of my sisters - Brekke.

I've actually read this name before; Anne McCaffrey used it for one of her important secondary characters in the Dragonriders of Pern books. A little searching turned up that it's also a village in Norway and means "slope" in Old Norse.

Is there any chance your mom either read Anne McCaffrey, or got it from Norse?

[Yarjka]

Isn't the point of names to tell us all apart? That seems not very productive on that front, but maybe I am missing something.

I don't think easy identification is the only point of names, otherwise how do we explain all of the Jr.'s named the same name as their father. For most cultures, I think there's a sense of honor and tradition in a name. The reason for a name can be as important as the name itself. I was always told I was named Joseph after the biblical prophet, so that's who I connected myself to. It never occurred to me much to think of my name as being the same as the prophet Joseph Smith, since I was not named after him. But someone else might have the name Joseph and be named after Joseph Stalin... that would make a significant difference. Same name, but a rather different meaning.

In Russia, we always joked about how few names there were. Sasha, Vanya, Katya, Vera are all a dime a dozen. And since Russian is mostly a phonetic language, you can't misspell things no matter how much you try. You could double up the consonants, I suppose, but that's about it.

Although they did get creative during Soviet times, naming kids Ninel', which is Lenin backwards, or even Traktor and Traktorina, meaning Tractor of course. I kind of like the name Median, which is another one on the list. I've never met anyone with these names though, so I'm not sure how widespread the phenomenon was--and they seem back to traditional names now, sometimes going for Old Rus' names to mix things up. Foreign names seem to go through phases as well, but I think they're not so popular at the moment.

Then there's my daughter's name, Octavia, which also turns out to be very popular among blacks. We didn't know that before we named her that, but I don't really mind. I like that the name is historical and interesting, and not on the top-100 list.

I like my name, because depending on mood and context, I can go by Joseph, Joe, Joey, or Jo-Jo (alright, I never go by Jo-Jo, but I could).

[krebscout]

What I find funny is that if we use a name that has an obvious meaning in English, then it sounds weird, but this is actually really common in a lot of other languages.

We have some names that don't (Hunter, Taylor, Rose, Summer), but I agree that it's less common in English.

Or how about Christian, Mason (sans the stone), Grace, June... Or we could go with the "What do you call a paraplegic who...?" jokes: Mat, Bill, Frank, Bob, John, and so on.