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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   2271 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 22, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What is your theory for choosing baby names? Generally it seems the reason for picking one falls into a few categories: family name, celebrity name (including historical, religious or fictional characters), unique name, “I like the sound of it”, meaning (in a literal sense, like naming your daughter Chastity). Obviously you can choose a name for multiple of these, but I think this covers most common reasons.

Feel free to answer even if you don’t have children.

As for me, I only have one child and I went with my father’s name. I had no strong attachment to any figure I wanted to name him after. I felt chasing uniqueness was pointless, and too difficult to predict. I still can’t believe we live in a world where the commonly thought-of common/generic names like John are less common than things like Ezra. With no strong direction I figured at least I could make my dad happy if nothing else. But for a second child? I have no idea what I would do.

I have the slight (common) problem of having an ethnically Italian last name while my children will be 1/16 Italian. I can’t choose an Italian first name or it would give the impression of being 100% Italian. But non-Italian first names feel somewhat aesthetically incongruous with the last name.

I think name trends are interesting to observe as far as what they say about our values and social classes. The departure from traditionally common names like Mary/John/Peter in my lifetime obviously has a lot to do with falling religiosity, but I think it also speaks to declining respect for family. Without those anchors it seems most people are left chasing the phantom of uniqueness or trying to stay ontop of trends associated with social class.

I went with an associative approach - the name should maximize positive associations while minimizing negative ones. The wife just wanted whatever sounded good to her, which would've been a bunch of fashionable but meaningless names.

In the end we settled on names that sounded acceptable to her, held no negative associations for me, and had a connection to our ancestors. So it ended up being a bunch of biblical names after all.

I'm a great fan of "meaning" names - especially ones evoking natural beauty (Brooke, Cliff, Dawn, River..), months/seasons (April, May, June* Summer, Autumn..), animals (Bear, Fox, Raven..). I feel they have a certain metaphorical upside. They're ripe for wordplay, poetic double-entendre, etc.

You're safe to pick from a huge number of respectable options, but on the other hand, someone has to blaze trail and name their son Marmot first. It's going to weird the first time. Everyone hears it, rolls their eyes, doesn't like it. Then someone "does it well", owns the name, normalizes it and gives license for future use.

*June is kind of a double reference, if you think about it

For all 3 of my kids, my wife and I made a big list of names we liked, made it into a short list, then didn’t decide til after the baby was born. For some of them it took a day or two til we decided.

I don’t think you should try anything too systemic or algorithmic. Do a bit of it to get an idea and to narrow down the range. But at the end of the day, pick a name that you can say over and over and not hate. Trust your gut.

Something not mentioned in this thread that we considered fairly important, that we see some other people not do, was to choose a name that works both as a name for a child and as an adult. Some people pick names for their children that only really work for young children. They're more like a pet names than real names.

This is not necessarily a wholly modern phenomenon and some older names are like this as well.

'Pick a saint's name and spell it normally'. I've noticed a bit of a revival of names that were last in fashion in the twenties; I think these are best as middle names, which can just be omitted if they stand out.

I have an ethnically distinctive(although often mistaken for a different ethnicity) last name. I suppose this rules out going with conspicuously Mexican first names, but I don't particularly want to use one anyways. It doesn't seem to clash with old-style southern names.

'Pick a saint's name and spell it normally'

This one. Middle name is often an ancestor, which is also a saint's name but sometimes in a language from the old world. For example my middle name is Tomasz, after my great x2 grandfather. You get another saint's name on confirmation.

edit - the Twilight movies inspiring a wave of Edward and Isabella saved a lot of kids imo.

Well, here’s a few of them:

  • Spell correctly and unambiguously. Assigning a name like ‘Mychael’ might be cute, but I don’t want my kid reminded his parents are literal retards every time someone says his name. Asking how things are spelled is for last names, not first ones.

  • No meme names. Again, Abcde might make you smile, but I don’t need others making the perfectly reasonable assumption it’s parents are selfish and/or easily-influenced.

  • Pattern should compliment or at least not clash with your last name. This is part of the reason names get recycled in the first place; Bible names tend to go with everything (at least, the ones that don’t violate the above rules). Probably a non-trivial factor in marriages, too. Middle names can be as weird as you want, though.

  • A name that doesn’t easily abbreviate is better than a name that does, but you may be limited to two syllables that way. Come up with the invectives ahead of time, remember your middle school self and choose accordingly.

We went with a moderately common girl's name from my ethnic background, a variant of a common girl's name that is itself uncommon in the US from my husband's background that we like the sound of, and a fairly common boy's name associated with a historical figure we like. Middle child will have to tell everyone how to say her name, because it isn't obvious from the spelling, but it's only two syllables so I don't expect a problem. There are names we ruled out because we don't like the sound, for instance Olga. Their last name is Polish, but short and easy enough to not sound notably foreign.

We did not consider any names that the same as immediate relatives for first names (though we do have some middles). We're both very high in personality trait openness, and generally don't like anything to be the same; we like visiting new places, moving, making things we haven't before, new foods we've never tried, and are more attracted to names that are new to our respective families. We didn't consider anything like John, George, or Mary because they were overused in our parents' generation. I think there's some kind of cycle there, and maybe someday we'll have a grandchild named Mary and it will seem right again. Baby boy has a common enough name he could conceivably end up in a class with another boy of the same name, but apparently that's a risk we're willing to take.

The departure from traditionally common names like Mary/John/Peter in my lifetime obviously has a lot to do with falling religiosity

I'm not sure they're related. The very religious people I know are naming their kids things like Euphrosynos or Xenia or something.

Xenia

Warrior princess, or Onatopp?

Of St Petersburg.

Wikipedia indicates that "Xenia" is Greek for "hospitality".

Yeah, the opposite of xenophobic.

I'm not sure they're related. The very religious people I know are naming their kids things like Euphrosynos or Xenia or something.

I see lots of David, John, Mary, Sam, etc from the children of very religious people I know, although I live in the south where very religious normies are still a thing.

That makes sense. American Orthodoxy selects heavily for people with Byzantine preferences. When I was Evangelical, some that stood out are Peter, Christian, Bethany -- the Johns that spring to mind are from my parents' generation

I felt chasing uniqueness was pointless

At least a modicum of uniqueness is desirable in a name. Using suffixes like "Jr." and "II" is highly inadvisable, as too many software systems do not play well with them. The child may be annoyed if he is unable to buy a domain name that matches his legal name because somebody else with the same legal name has already purchased it. And confusion between people with the same name can occur.

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