Friday OT - Names

Angie

Tugboats and arson.
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Mar 27, 2006
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Do you like your name? If so, what is it? If not, to what would you change it?

If you are ever to have a child/already did, what would you name him or her, and why? What are your criteria for picking a name?
 
I like my name because for people my age its not all that common. People assume its biblical but I wasn't named for that one, also certain pop culture jokes are unfunny. I like the name Maya for a girl. For a boy maybe Joseph for my dad.
 
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I really dislike trendy names. I am more of a fan of traditional names or names that have meaning (named after family, role models, etc). I mean, seriously, if you meet a boy born in the past 10 years, there is probably a 50/50 shot his name is Aiden.

On that note, my name was a fairly trendy name in the early 80's. So while I don't hate it, by principle, I should.
 
I also like my name because it's somewhat unique, according to SSA.gov it's ranked in the 100-125th most popular name over the last 30 years.

Picking a name for my son was very difficult, we found ourselves with an abundance of girl names but no boy names that we could agree on. We finally found the one we loved by about month 8 of the pregnancy. I really prefer names that aren't crazy popular, every time I see someone on Facebook or whatever name their kid a name in the top 5 most popular I just imagine how awesome it'll be when they're one of 7 with the same name in class.
 
Really interesting article on fivethirtyeight.com about age ranges associated with different popular names. Like Nate Silver a lot and this new site has a lot of interesting stuff:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-someones-age-when-all-you-know-is-her-name/

I really like that article! There's a site called The Baby Name Wizard that will look at the Social Security's ranges and see how popular a name was by year if you do a search.

With the name "Angie," you can pretty much tell I was born in the late 70s/early 80s. There are Angies outside that range, but I have a name that just really isn't popular anymore.

For children, we use classic names that aren't super-popular, but we try to focus on names that will work at any age. For example, my favorite name for the longest time for a girl was Elizabeth, but there are too many already in our families. If this baby had been a girl, our names would have been selected from names like Eleanor, Rose, Charlotte (although that's really popular right now), Cecilia, Margaret, etc. I've always loved Holden for a boy, but we'll be using a family name for our son-on-the-way.
 
My 2 kids both have family names for both first and middle names. I think I'm lucky that there are some good names in my family so we could use the older generation names without them being too​ old fashioned.
 
We asked my FiL one time for baby names, he came up with Rastus and Pugsley in about 10 seconds. We're still not sure which he intended as a boy's and which as a girl's name.
 
I really dislike trendy names. I am more of a fan of traditional names or names that have meaning (named after family, role models, etc). I mean, seriously, if you meet a boy born in the past 10 years, there is probably a 50/50 shot his name is Aiden.

On that note, my name was a fairly trendy name in the early 80's. So while I don't hate it, by principle, I should.

I also like my name because it's somewhat unique, according to SSA.gov it's ranked in the 100-125th most popular name over the last 30 years.

Picking a name for my son was very difficult, we found ourselves with an abundance of girl names but no boy names that we could agree on. We finally found the one we loved by about month 8 of the pregnancy. I really prefer names that aren't crazy popular, every time I see someone on Facebook or whatever name their kid a name in the top 5 most popular I just imagine how awesome it'll be when they're one of 7 with the same name in class.



Yep to all of the above. There are a few "it" names for boys the last few years: Aiden, Jackson, Liam, Mason, Nolan, Landon, Colton. Lots ending in an "n." We try to steer clear of names that are really popular because there will be 5000 of them. BUT, we don't make up a name or spelling, and have the child be asked "and HOW do you spell that again?" every day for the rest of their life.

Not that there's anything at all wrong with either of those routes, it's just not for us. By total coincidence, all of our names are the names of royalty from Great Britain, and also names that are in classic literature. Totally unintentional.
 
Speaking of names, does anybody else hate when to-be parents tell you the baby's name before the birth?

I don't mind if the family has a name picked out but I find it very annoying when the baby is referred to by name before birth. I have no logical reasoning behind this. It is just something that annoys me that I should not find annoying.
 
When in doubt you can always name them after a car, preferably with a creative spelling. Mersaydees, Porsha, Phord, the possibilities are endless and they'll never have to come up with a separate stripper name.
 
Speaking of names, does anybody else hate when to-be parents tell you the baby's name before the birth?

I don't mind if the family has a name picked out but I find it very annoying when the baby is referred to by name before birth. I have no logical reasoning behind this. It is just something that annoys me that I should not find annoying.

It does me, too. We try to keep our baby names a secret until birth. Of course, we have a 3-year-old this time who knows the name, so she's slipped it out a few times on accident in front of people, but we don't refer to him by his name to people at all because we just don't want to hear any opinions.
 
My name hasn't ever really been that popular, which I like. I am usually the only one around. It was much more popular the year I was born, except spelled different. You know the way were it makes you look greedy and you need multiple Ts in your name.


I had a great grandpa Jack, so I want to name a boy Jack.
 
We definitely kept both of our sons' names secret until birth, the last thing I want is a bunch of opinions from people on that decision. Best case scenario they like it and they tell us as much, worst case they hate it and say something stupid about it. We didn't even tell our 7 year old his brother's name before hand because we knew that secret wouldn't make it very far.
 
My name hasn't ever really been that popular, which I like. I am usually the only one around. It was much more popular the year I was born, except spelled different. You know the way were it makes you look greedy and you need multiple Ts in your name.


I had a great grandpa Jack, so I want to name a boy Jack.
I would have gone with 3 T's personally, but maybe it's a pay by the letter thing.
 
If we ever had a boy, I'd like his name to be of Irish heritage like mine. I'm thinking of something like: D'Brickashaw
 
We definitely kept both of our sons' names secret until birth, the last thing I want is a bunch of opinions from people on that decision. Best case scenario they like it and they tell us as much, worst case they hate it and say something stupid about it. We didn't even tell our 7 year old his brother's name before hand because we knew that secret wouldn't make it very far.

Yeah, in retrospect we probably shouldn't have told our little girl what the baby's name is going to be. It was the only way to reconcile her to the fact that she wasn't getting a sister, but we should have thought through it more.
 

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