Baby names

[Imogen]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/67950/

Can I just say, as a teacher, made up names are THE WORST!!! Mezmariah?! Really?!

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).

In mass on Sunday, my priest had a RANT, which included baby names. He'll refuse to baptize your child if you give it a stupid name.

Now, my name is extremely unusual in the States, but not in Iran (where my dad is from). 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.

[Unit of Energy]

I think that parents should be aware of the names they give their children. That said, I don't know that the names on the list in the question are quite as made up as the asker thinks. Makayla has been around (on the top 1000 names in the US) since the 80s. I think the key is to have it be easy to pronounce and pleasing sound.
A good friend of mine has two daughters that are named Makaylee and Brynlee. Neither of the names are particularly common, but I don't find either of them to be particularly unusual. They fit quite well into the current naming situation in our country.
No one would complain that my sister has a made up name being named Karen, but when it first made the charts it ranked the same as Brynlee is currently.
My mom still thinks of Lyndsay and Britney as made up names, although she thinks they are lovely names.

[UffishThought]

I've been doing a lot of indexing in the past week or so, and I keep finding names on the 1940s census that are kind of outdated. The more I do it, though, the more I like the names. But many of them would probably be a bad idea. Like Eunice. (Take that, Genuine!)

It's also given me a new appreciation for my grandma's name, Maude. How darling! But again, maybe not the best for a little kid.

[Imogen]

I know a 28 year old named Eunice. It's a great name.

GA, my character in the melodrama at our local community theatre is named Maude Lynn, so that made me laugh.

[Unit of Energy]

My grandfather's sister is named Eunice. I have a good friend who loves to hear the few stories I know about her just because he loves the phrase "Great Aunt Eunice"

Names are an interesting thing. I was indexing today and there was a 14 year old named Mildred. And I got to thinking about how dated that name is. But guess what, by the time my future children have kids, Mildred might be one of the faddish made up names of the time. Few names will never sound dated, especially girls names.

[NerdGirl]

I once met someone with a daughter named Melena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melena). And this was a white, English-as-a-first-language, American person, so it wasn't some kind of cultural name or something in another language. Please, people, if you're going to name your kids things that you make up yourself, at least google the name you've come up with to make sure it doesn't already refer to some kind of bodily excretion!!

[Katya]

I once met someone with a daughter named Melena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melena). And this was a white, English-as-a-first-language, American person, so it wasn't some kind of cultural name or something in another language. Please, people, if you're going to name your kids things that you make up yourself, at least google the name you've come up with to make sure it doesn't already refer to some kind of bodily excretion!!

As a child, my aunt wrote a story with a character named "Carrion."

[Katya]

I like names that have a history to them, but that's not the same thing as being a current top 100 name in the US. (Imogen and I are in the same boat here.)

[Digit]

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[Craig Jessop]

I really feel like I don't belong here. I think my name was #1 the year I was born. At least people don't mispronounce it...

[Marduk]

Having the same name as Mr. Craig, I can attest to its popularity. However, I'm one of those "wierd variant spellings" that are being lambasted, and I'd say unfairly. Although, (in perhaps a fit of hubris) I acknowledge my personality as fitting uniqueness (perhaps for uniqueness' sake.)

[Yarjka]

Steve Martin made fun of the crazy spelling phenomenon way back in '91 with Sarah Jessica Parker's character in L.A. Story, whose name turns out to be spelled SanDeE* (yes, with a little star at the end).

[Craig Jessop]

Having the same name as Mr. Craig, I can attest to its popularity. However, I'm one of those "wierd variant spellings" that are being lambasted, and I'd say unfairly. Although, (in perhaps a fit of hubris) I acknowledge my personality as fitting uniqueness (perhaps for uniqueness' sake.)

Funny story, my parents brought in a foster kid a few years ago and he tried to convince me that most people with our name spelled it the way you do. He would not give it up, so I finally just laughed at him and called him an idiot.

[TheAnswerIs42]

My oldest brother has a misspelling in his because my mom thought it looked better that way. When we talked about it one day, he said that sure, he agrees it looks better without that letter, but given how many things have been spelled wrong in his life, he wishes she hadn't done that.

Then the second oldest brother got one letter for his middle initial. She wanted to have a middle name that referred to her maiden name, but my mother's maiden name is too feminine. So she just gave him the first letter, and while he also admits that he is glad she didn't give him the whole word, he has gone crazy telling everyone that the single letter IS his full middle name.

I'm happy with the names we gave my first two children, but I have my misgivings on our last one. I'm just going to ditch anonymity on this- we named her Jasmine, which we loved, but I dearly wish it wasn't a Disney Princess. And now my family makes fun of me because "everyone outside of Utah knows that is a black person's name." Maybe the name is more popular in that group, but I don't see why that is such a big deal. We just thought it was pretty and feminine. And we liked that since it is a flower, everyone knows how to spell it and pronounce it without knowing 10 girls named that.

Picking names is hard.

[Craig Jessop]

And now my family makes fun of me because "everyone outside of Utah knows that is a black person's name."

Yeeeeah... that's what I thought just before I read that sentence.

[mic0]

I wouldn't have thought "Jasmine" was a black person's name. But, then again, I'm usually not aware of those sorts of things.

[Marduk]

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.)

[krebscout]

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

[Imogen]

My oldest brother has a misspelling in his because my mom thought it looked better that way. When we talked about it one day, he said that sure, he agrees it looks better without that letter, but given how many things have been spelled wrong in his life, he wishes she hadn't done that.

Then the second oldest brother got one letter for his middle initial. She wanted to have a middle name that referred to her maiden name, but my mother's maiden name is too feminine. So she just gave him the first letter, and while he also admits that he is glad she didn't give him the whole word, he has gone crazy telling everyone that the single letter IS his full middle name.

I'm happy with the names we gave my first two children, but I have my misgivings on our last one. I'm just going to ditch anonymity on this- we named her Jasmine, which we loved, but I dearly wish it wasn't a Disney Princess. And now my family makes fun of me because "everyone outside of Utah knows that is a black person's name." Maybe the name is more popular in that group, but I don't see why that is such a big deal. We just thought it was pretty and feminine. And we liked that since it is a flower, everyone knows how to spell it and pronounce it without knowing 10 girls named that.

Picking names is hard.

I am black, and have never known a black Jasmine in my entire life. Hispanic and Middle Eastern Jasmines galore, but no black ones.

[bobtheenchantedone]

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

I love names. I joke that one of the reasons I'm a writer is so I can use all of the names I love that I wouldn't give to real people. This does include a lot of stranger names (I went through a long nouns-as-names period), but also a lot of the most common names (when coming up with a new story, my most common placeholder name is "Sarah"). I have several baby name books and enjoy flipping through them and coming up with characters based on how I think someone with that name would look/act.

When it comes to actual children, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. There are a few names I want to pass down, but they'd be middle names. Currently I have a few off-limits names for various reasons, plus one rule: I will never name a child after one of my characters, or vice versa. I will also probably avoid names already used in the extended family.

Closer to the original topic, my mother made up the name for one of my sisters - Brekke. Rhymes with speck. I always add a y to the end of her name, or call her Boo. My mother also chose unorthodox spellings for my two youngest sisters - Camryn and Caitlyn. (Caitlyn is probably not too uncommon, though.) Those two also have two middle names each; Siri (Star Wars) and Marjorie (grandmother) for Camryn, and Marsi (SW) and Arlene (grandmother) for Caiti. The rest of us have normal names, though mine is spelled an less-common but also well-known way.

I'll... I'll shut up now.