Fun With Names

It’s an interesting exercise, trying to come up with a name for another girl, in case that’s what number three happens to be.  We have had a boy name in mind forever, but it seems like we’ve exhausted ourselves of names for girls.

The problem is all the rules and prejudices that disqualify names.

First, we want to be careful about, if not absolutely exclude, names with trailing soft vowel or L sounds, or that fit funny, like Alice or Elsie.

Then there’s the list of names already used in the family, or close derivatives of same, that you naturally avoid.  Amanda, Brittany, Jalenie, Melissa, Michelle, Alicia, Emily, Katherine, Kathleen, Julia, Kate, Sarah, Deborah, Lynn, Esther, Pamela, Laurie, Laura, Noel, Kim, Barbara, Margaret, Peggy, Hazel, Jean, Jeanette, Rita, Helen, Jody, Emma, Sandra, Sandy, Wanda, Casey, Jennifer, Amy, Elizabeth, Diane, Beatrice, Joyce, Beverly, and all the others I am forgetting offhand are all off-limits or at least far less likely.  Valerie was as close an overlap with a living relative’s name as we’d want to get, in the form of a distant cousin.

Dead relatives it depends.  One of my original choices of name, which would still go great and be for someone who was special to me, has the weight of suicide associated with it.  It’s not the only one I would hesitate to use.

Then there’s the anti-popularity angle.  Can’t go choosing names that are too popular these days!  We did pretty well that way with Sadie and Rose and Valerie and Ruth.  What’s weird is which names are out of popularity.  I wouldn’t use Jean, between it being so common in family and friends, but among people being born these days it’s highly unusual (not even in the top 1000 names).  For checking popularity and just plain finding inspiration, the Baby Name Voyager is great fun.

Speaking of friends, there’s another pool of “maybe this name is too much someone else’s already” reluctance.

Then there’s the matching of first and middle names by sound, syllables, and the same kind of rules, if less stringently so.  For instance, with two syllables in first and last, the preference, but not absolute requirement, is to have one or three syllables in the middle.  One thing I’d forgotten until just now is the option of family surnames (hey Paula and Randy: “surname” means last name) as middle names, as happened with Langley and Washburn for a nephew and niece.

Then there’s not sounding too close to a celebrity name.  For instance, the horrible accident that could happen when you realize that “Rae” is a potentially short and sweet middle name that would keep up the run of “R” middle names, and then you ponder the merits of Rachel or Bonnie as a first name.  Or confluence of names.  Take Bonnie, again, and consider that it is also a word.  It can too easily sound like an adjective for the middle name.

Then there’s names with negative connotations, too easily made fun of, or that spell initials you wouldn’t want.

Jokes about Zephram (and random use of Scrabble tiles) aside (Sadie was jokingly “Zephram Rose"), you don’t necessarily want a completely weird or off the wall name.  I’m not completely opposed to something nobody has ever heard before, but it’s a direction to tread carefully.  We’ve been musing over virtue names.  Hey, if we used Prudence, we’d have two kids with songs by the Beatles, and one with a song by the Monkees.

This name thing is tough!  It’d be so convenient to have another girl; sharing a room forever, all the clothes are the same.  But for ease of naming, a boy would be just the ticket.  We’ll know soon enough.

1. Boy, can I relate to that!  As a general rule, I tend to like boys names better.  You can imagine how difficult it was to come up with girls names!  Ryun was actually pretty flexible with the whole thing (the only opposition he ever voiced was when I suggested one of my favorite boy names, Brian.  He had nothing against the name per se, just that it sounded too much like his own).  My mother actually suggested Emily and we loved it.  We had orginally picked Rose as a middle name for Em, but my grandmother (who’s name is Terese) jokingly said one day, “ I think Emily Terese sounds great” and we were like, “Hey, so do we!” Katherine Elizabeth we came up with on our own.  Julia was a name that we liked(and after we had picked it, I found out it was my great, great grandmother’s name) and “May” was Mum’s middle name so it was in honor of her.  This was one heck of a long comment, when really all I was trying to say was, “I can realte!”

   Posted by Sharon  on  03/13  at  09:19 AM  from 

2. If you were thinking about going for virtue names, other names that fit well with them are flower fruit or jewel. For instance names like poppy, daisy or lily are really cute flower names or if you wanted virtue names grace, faith and hope are wonderful and then there is the jewel names like Amber, Jade, Ruby or C/Krystal.

   I have 4 children (2 boys and 2 girls) and it was extremely hard to pick names so i went with different names my oldest is called Brooke Moriah then my oldest boy is called Paden James and my 2 youngest are called Logan Reese and Ellie Mai.
   So i say good luck to ya in picking the perfect name.

   Posted by  on  03/14  at  08:06 AM  from 

3. Here’s the other essential baby name site.

   Posted by triticale  on  03/14  at  05:59 PM  from  the you know house
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