Social media notifications of the future: Ranger tagged you in a photo with Tessadora, Wrenlow, Faelina and Graylen Choosing a name for one's offspring can be incredibly difficult. You don't want them to be the ninth Jaxon in class, but you also don't want them to be bullied mercilessly for the rest of their lives. Even so, parents are increasingly pulling appellations out of their arses, in some cases to give their child a "unique" …
Give your child the name of some sue-happy, lawyered-up corporate giant to ensure your children never get named on social media. Or maybe one based on legally or culturally prohibited slogans. "Disney, Heil, Prophet squeeze together for a photo, we'll see if Facebook will accept this one"
I foretell someone naming their child "Oracle"
Yea verrily, in the year of the rending of the 2nd Roman empire - and the re-election of the one who's name is like unto the breaking of wind - it shall come to pass that a child will be born unto the world. And his name should have been Damien, but the dark powers found that this was now too obvious. And so they shall name him Oracle. And his primary key shall be 666.
This
2 per cent even "made up" a name with the express purpose of their kid being easily found on social media
Poor sods. That should be grounds for and sprog to divorce their parents.
The sooner that people realise that being easily found on Social Media is not that desirable in the long run.
What happens when the 'influencer' bubble bursts eh?
You won't find me on any social media platform. Just not going there.
Grumpy of Edenbridge.
In Germany the Ministry actually has a list of valid names that parents can use.
Made up names cannot be used to register your child. You can apply for the name to be accepted, but it is basically there to ensure parents aren't complete muppets and name their kids Gonzo or the like.
There is a way to get around this issue - a bit elaborate, but done with our children - one German parent, one British parent, children born and registered in the UK.
Getting the children a German passport based on official UK birth certificate - no arguments about names, spelling, etc.
AC, because too much personal information...
I think France requires names to be those of Christian saints or national heroes.
There used to be an approved list, but that was dropped in the early 90s. French parents can now use any name that isn't considered to be prejudicial to the child. Even so, some names can be blocked. Last year a town hall took parents to court to prevent them calling their child Jihad, and another family were prevented from calling their daughter Nutella...
The same in Iceland. You can only have a name that uses letters in the Icelandic alphabet; it has to be able to accept the rules of Icelandic grammar which is terrifying and the product of far too many long winters' nights before the advent of electricity; *and* it shouldn't cause the child any embarrassment in the future.
Sounds sensible to me - and the list of acceptable names contains some serious awesome suggestions - who wouldn't want to be a Ragnar, Aðalvíkingur or Mjölnir?
mine only goes back a thousand years or so, to the Norse
Both my given names are based on Greek names. (much Anglicised). Two of my brothers have names derived from Greek or Hebrew names with their second names being of Germanic origin.
Our cats have various names - the oldest two are TP-inspired, the rest are Cornish or Welsh in origin.
I think the habit of slapping names together to produce 'new' names is something that has come across from the US - over my namy years of watching the NFL I've seen the names of the players gradully convert over to this pattern - firstly the black players, layer the white ones. So it's not a new thing and, like with most things, we slavishly follow the US, about 10 years behind.
Yes, "Brigham" is hardly of recent coinage. The same can be said of Charleston and Cedar, though those two are less commonly seen as given names.
Brigham Young was born in 1801, and presumably named not long after. A quick Google ngrams search didn't turn up an earlier use of "Brigham" as a given name, though of course it's been a surname and place name in English for quite some time.
One site claims "Charleston" has been in use as a given name since the start of the twentieth century, based on US SSA data. It looks like the SSA website doesn't support searching for less-common names via the interactive interface (presumably the other site is using a web API, which I can't be bothered to ferret out), so I haven't confirmed that. In any case, it seems to have picked up in the 1970s, so for the US, at least, it's not novel either.
I couldn't bear the thought of any further investigation into the question.
I would just point out that Brigham Young was the second leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, otherwise Mormons, and led them from Illinois to Utah. Brigham Young University is said to be an excellent school. I have to imagine that Utah has more than a few young Brighams.
I can't speak for their excellency, but whenever I got in touch with their librarians, a good few years back, they were well, just great. Unlike a few monkeys in the British Library, who affirm the truth in the good old saing: if you pay peanuts...
My peers who are expecting talk about possible names seemingly endessly but not having a child myself I don't really get it. Chose something sane and easy to pronounce and move on. Ideally chose a name that is 'normal' for the culture they are likely to be living in.
Some friends who are from the continent living here in the UK named their child something that is a common here and their home country so the child would fit in either place subject to where they want to live.
When our sprog was percolating, lo, these many years ago, She Who Must be Obeyed and I decided to pick one "normal" name and one more unusual one -- not totally weird, mind you, but something classical or mythological or some such that may have been common in the past but was currently out of favor. We figured that that way, when the said offspring got old enough, s/he could choose the arrangement that best suited his/her desires. It happens that, in the end, she chose the mythological over the mundane and preferentially uses it to this day, but she still has all of the options available, should she change her mind.
Granddaughter required a name which worked in Portuguese, German, English, and Hebrew. Complicated. She ended up with at least one Icelandic name... (Until she was born, she was just plain Sophie Charlotte).
My wife has a family name containing letters which just don't exist in the script of the country where she was born.
My Navajo uncle gets by on his initials; he claims his name can't be written down at all (and I've never heard it!)
name which worked in Portuguese, German, English, and Hebrew
Friend of mine is English and married to an Italian - so when they came to name their daughter, they wanted something that worked in both languages. They ended up chosing Matilda.
(We did suggest Boudicca but that suggestion wasn't well received :-) )
If you're going to insist on a link, at least make it an actual link.
You react against what your parents did I guess.
Mum is still bitter and twisted that her older sister got a middle name, and she didn't. Such that when she set up a new email address ten years ago, even though her name is unusual enough that she could have had it on Gmail, she still had firstname+invented_by_herself_middle_name@gmail.com.
Also when I was born, being the 4th boy, Mum and Dad had run out of all the names they could agree on. But she refused to allow me to suffer for lack of middle name, so recycled one of my older brother's middle names.
Mum is over 80, and should have got over it by now...
Before settling on a name, think about what it sounds like together with the surname (both spoken as name, surname and surname, name). Something that the parents of "Wayne Kerr" and "Justin Thyme" forgot to consider. Also when spoken as initial, surname and surname, initial.
Then ensure that the initials do not spell something meaningful. Your child will regret you naming them "Andrew Sebastian Smith" or "Doreen Olive Grant"
With girls it's even harder, because her surname could change to almost anything after she marries.
Dave Gorman's TV show, he had a name generator website as part of a gag for one of his crew
guys surname was Fidler, he and his wife were looking for names for their soon to arrive son
the website threw out Adil as an option ........................
now say it out loud, and repeat until it clicks
Adil Fidler - Adil Fidler - Adil Fidler
got a tuetonic swing to it :o)
Had an acquaintance in college -- Jack N. Box. (Nice fellow -- a little jumpy, but who wouldn't be...?). When people commiserated with him over his parents' naming proclivities, he pointed out that at least they'd had the decency not to hyphenate their surnames when they married. His mother's maiden name was Hatt, you see.
decency not to hyphenate their surnames
We briefly considered this when we got married until we realised that this would further complicate signing our names since my surname is already pretty long and didn't fit into most signature boxes and hyphenating our names would only make it worse..
Problem being, it spelt out the first name
My parents, upon deciding what to call me, realised that my initials spelled out the name of a well-known tinned dog food. So they changed the order of the first and middle names.
The problem was that now my initials were the sames as my dads. Which lead to all sorts of awkward silences when he opened by post while I still lived with then post-college..
No 1 son called HIS second Barnabas Arthur M.... (surname starts with M), so he is know in the family as BAMBAM. The D-i-L's family all have nicknames, ie one of the girls is known as Tiiki . Another is Kunny (I kid you not - "Cute as a Bunny") and it makes my skin crawl to hear favourite No 1 grandson, age 3, call his aunt "Kunny"
Mavis "Titty" (Altounyan) Guzelian said in at least one interview1 that she wasn't too happy about Ransome immortalizing that nickname, which she acquired as a child for her love of "Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse".
Alas, she died some 18 years before the BBC decided to change the character's name, so we don't know what she might have thought of that controversy.
But then the relationship between "Uncle Arthur" and the Altounyans was complicated in a number of ways.
1Alas, I don't have my references at this house to find and cite it precisely.
With girls it's even harder, because her surname could change to almost anything after she marries.
Or, you know, it might not, because these days, when a woman marries, she doesn't become her husband's chattels.
I know of at least one man who took his wife's surname, and when I married, my wife kept her name (which she had previously changed to her mother's maiden name for other reasons).
But hey, let people do whatever they want to do. However, the expectation that a woman should take her husband's name when she marries is a relic of a cultural attitude towards women that doesn't have a place in modern society. Well, shouldn't, anyway.
In the small town in Louisiana where my mother grew up, about 100 years ago, there was a man named Pigg (don't know his first name). A magnificent human being, while his wife was in the hospital maternity ward, he was drinking in a bar. Someone came in and told everyone that his wife had just delivered twin girls. One other bar patron bet Mr. Pigg that he wouldn't name his daughters "Ima" and "Ura" (pronounced your-ah). Mr. Pigg won the bet.
Some names should be considered child abuse.
never been another royal child called John
And Prince Charles is proposing to take a different regnal names if/when he becomes king since the first two King Charles didn't exactly have a good time..
(One had his head chopped off and the other died childless. Not brilliant role models to follow)
Choosing baby names seems easy until the moment your child is born. Even some of the sanest and most normal parents seem to have a meltdown and come up with something idiotic.
There used to be a very long and hilarious thread on usenet about it. I think it was called alt.babynames.faq or something like that but I can't find it any more. It was basically parents asking what people thought about particular names, and everyone would take the piss out of them mercilessly. I remember somebody wanted to call their son "Scatman" (cue diarrhoea jokes) and another person wanted to call their daughter "BJ" (she'll be a popular with the boys).
As someone that has to spell out both my first and last name I can relate. The problem was my ex-wife had a penchant for everyone to have 5 letter names this means both my daughters will also have to spell out both their first and last names. Her 3 children also have to spell out their first names as well as her. She also is a fan of Love Island and all the other trash on TV how I ended up with her in the first place is still a mystery. Such is life.
As someone that has to spell out both my first and last name I can relate
Who doesn't? "Michael" was one of the most common given names for boys in the year I was born, and has remained popular, yet half the mail I get is addressed to "Micheal".
And while it's a bit more of a stretch, "Wojcik" is so common in the area around the Stately Manor that I can reasonably expect to see it in our local paper at least once a month. And an Internet search for "Michael Wojcik" returns a great many hits. (I am a former Chicago alderman known for my appearance on "Dancing with the Stars", don'cha know.) Yet most people I have to spell it for act baffled, like it's an inconceivable string of letters the contemplation of which invites a Lovecraftian descent into madness.
I went to school with a guy named Armour of God. One of his sisters was Shield of Faith. Seriously. We called them Armie and Faith. Neither of them have set foot in a church since escaping their parents. Armie changed his name to Arnold George, to keep the initials, and Faith changed to Susan Faith, same reason. A brother was named Sword of God. He changed his name to Sayf Allah, the same thing in Arabic. For some reason the parents haven’t spoken to any of them in years.
Leave Quakers out of this.
For one thing, they didn't start till the 17th. century. For another, the ones with the funny names weren't, generally, real Quakers but evangelical Protestants who called themselves Quakers. In the US, Quakers when they were not being persecuted were infiltrated and taken over to the extent that barely 11% of the people who call themselves Quakers today practice anything resembling original Quakerism.
Original Quakers were not strictly Protestant in that they were not a reaction to Catholic abuses but an attempt to return to New Testament practice.
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Here in Oz my Irish parents spoke Gaelic at home and my name is difficult for most Aussies to pronounce so I gained the name 'Doc' for my troubles.
Was always handy if pulled over by the local constabulary. "What's your name, sport? Oh, really? Spell it for me." It would need to be spelled out complete with several of the síneadh fada ('accent' marks) that marks the lingo.
Usually too hard for plod, so only a warning the two times I used it in my life.
Guinness, of course ---->
Notice the growing trend of double-barrelled surnames? Even in instances where only one parent is evident.
I'm looking forward ( not really ) to what happens when such as Tessadora Underbrow-Pocklington* breeds with Wrenlow Thompson-Smythe
Who knows : Timothy Ian Thompson-Smythe-Underbrow-Pocklington could make an appearance one day.
* Obviously, all names made up for illustrative purposes.
There is a Grace-Groundling-Marchpole in one of Evelyn Waugh's books.
The double barreled names are simply a way of retaining the surnames of both parents. In the past it was a way, when Mr. Smith married above him, to keep in with the in-laws by naming yourself Frefflyporsh-Smith, and ignore the plebeian Smith. But today that isn't the reason.
Incidentally, you are going to be hearing from the Underbrow-Pocklington's solicitors. Neither Tess nor her sister Dora are amused.
Yes and no. Names, like other words traditionally had origins. Some personal names related to personal appearance or other personal attributes, some came from religious sources, some came from foreign sources, but in almost every case, although (often hugely) distorted in transit, they can be traced back to their origins, which is interesting if nothing else, and they all therefore at least originally meant something. But Wendy (invented for the Wizard of Oz) had no origins at all, it was just a noise thought up by a Hollywood executive. And the names suggested here suffer from the same problem - meaninglessness. This is not a very good basis for either their permanence or their utility.
Wendy (invented for the Wizard of Oz) had no origins at all
Au contraire - J.M. Barry (writer of Peter Pan) made that one up after the noises made by a little girl with a speech impediment and used it for his female lead character in Peter Pan.
My brother was named at my suggestion (and the toss of a coin) on the way to the registry office, after a character from Knightrider, my daughter is named after a Dungeons & Dragons character, and my son's name is a portmanteau-style corruption of an old Gaelic name with its English translation. Oh, and my children's surnames *are* double barrelled, even though neither mine nor their mother's is.
named after a Dungeons & Dragons character
Our first two cats were named after features of Dartmoor.. Our first dog was named after one of my wifes' D&D characters..
Our latest cat is *almost* named after an LOTR character with just enough changed (Anwen rather than Arwen) - Anwen happens to be a Welsh name (my mum was half-Welsh).
My great-aunt's family realized too late that "Iva Price" had certain connotations in the late 19th century, so Iva Elizabeth was thereafter known as Beth or, sometimes, Babe (long before Babe Ruth or the famous pig). I've always thought her name was worthy of inclusion in "John Train's Most Remarkable Names" or "Remarkable Names of Real People" (also by John Train).
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