names of your children..

348paul · Dec 14, 2003

darth550 said:

I once knew a girl named Sugar Cane. Her identical twin sister was named Candy. An acquaintance of mine dated a woman named Sue Veneer.

BUT I'M SORRY, YOUR STORY HAS JUST GOT TO BE BULL!!!!!! LOL!

DL
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Is it worth me telling you about my uncle who runs a transport business
His name - Laurie Driver Or my Father-in-law who is a Scotish cloakroom attendent - Angus McCoatup

Hubert · Dec 14, 2003

TimN88 said:

if you want to make your boy tougher, just name him sue.
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you listen to johnny cash too?

well, having a name like HUBERT all my life, I got the **** kicked out of me pretty regularly; not a bad thing -- a boy's gotta know how to brawl, but as you get older, the punches get a lot harder. so, if you're gonna give your kid an "interesting" name, make sure you show 'em how to punch, and be prepared to mend a lot of busted lips.

as far as my children? boy : jonas; girl: audrey

jordan747_400 · Dec 14, 2003

TimN88 said:

if you want to make your boy tougher, just name him sue.
.
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One of the greatest songs ever!! Good stuff

Doody · Dec 14, 2003

when our daughter was on the way, i spent a lot of time thinking about names.

one thing that was really important to me was to come up with a name that could be both feminine if she wanted that at various points in her life, and also unisex (in a shortened form) so she couldn't be judged on an initial not-in-person presentation (eg: resume) by her gender.

my son i just named the name i always wanted to be named

doody.

PeterS · Dec 14, 2003

Darth wrote: BUT I'M SORRY, YOUR STORY HAS JUST GOT TO BE BULL!!!!!! LOL!

No Lie! Thats her name!

MarkPDX · Dec 14, 2003

Doody said:

my son i just named the name i always wanted to be named
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Mark(study) · Dec 14, 2003

I was watching South Park and they made fun of Hooters
The four waitresses working there are named- Mercedes, Ferrari, Lexus and Porsche'

Pretty funny, I had a friend that spent the entire 9 months his wife was pregnant...teasing his in-laws that he was going to give his baby girl a stripper name

beast · Dec 14, 2003

I have a friend in NM his legal name is "Zipper"

all his friends call him Zip

wax · Dec 14, 2003

Worked with a guy named "Omen"
Dated a Korean girl named "Sunny Park"

darth550 · Dec 14, 2003

348paul said:

Is it worth me telling you about my uncle who runs a transport business
His name - Laurie Driver Or my Father-in-law who is a Scotish cloakroom attendent - Angus McCoatup

Click to expand...

How about when the doctor asks you to turn to the left and cough? Dr Lou Spauls.

There is a gynocologist here in LA named Dr. Benjamin Tush. Close enough to mention........

There is a dentist named Dr. Michael Payne.

There is a plastic surgeon named Dr. Nelson Brestoff.

DL

Bill Sawyer · Dec 14, 2003

My brother went to school with a guy named Harry Groth III. If you had that name would you pass it on...twice?

Once while browsing through the Detroit phone book I ran into someone named Ura Goofinoff--it had to be a prank.

But then, I have a brother named Tom Sawyer.

BTW, my real children's names are Laurabeth, Michelle and Danny.

darth550 · Dec 14, 2003

rcallahan said:

I always like Frank Zappas choice. Dwezzel and Moon Unit. He once said that his next child, if a boy was to be named Burt Reynolds, and if a girl...Burt Reynolds.
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His other sons' name is "Omit"

DL

DGS · Dec 15, 2003

A friend explained that he was named Paul Alan, because his father's name was Alan, and in keeping with family tradition, his son was named John Paul.

I pointed out to him that this use of patronymics is traditional for Russian families, which he didn't know. But it still annoys him when I refer to his son as "Ivan Pavelovich".

As for me, my current crop of "kids" are named "Alfa", "Ferrari", and "EVO". (Although "Alfa" would be old enough to be out on his own, if it were a son, instead of a car.)

Spasso · Dec 15, 2003

As my last name is Parks, there have been jokes about naming my children, if I had any, Amusement and Wildlife................I got stuck with Dana............almost as bad as Sue.

DJ

trevi · Dec 16, 2003

jordan747_400 said:

It will make them stronger

Trevi, I love Wolfgang...no worries! Besides Im thinking of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with regards to my childrens name.
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my fault, i forgot about your love for music, sorry for my misinterpretation

134282 · Dec 16, 2003

Bill Sawyer said:

How about Carbon Mc Coy?

Nah, on second thought, it sounds like a cartoon character...
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Yes, animated...
i like it, so that's all that counts, right...?

Bill Sawyer · Dec 16, 2003

That's right

134282 · Dec 16, 2003

Schnelles Fraulein · Dec 17, 2003

Robin said:

Worthless observation #532: Young single mothers always give their kids off the wall names like Destiny, Vykky, Nylira, etc. Nothing wrong with that, it's just that I've never seen one with kids named Bob or John... always wondered why that is...

-R
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i don't think it has anything to do with being young & single, but more to do with the fact that this is 2003 and things are obviously changing.. i personally always wanted my daughter to have a name no one else had.. instead of being 1 out of 1 million "jennifer"'s or "mary"'s. who could forget Nylira ? or Carbon McCoy ?

and secondly, i am not a single mother. so there goes your worthless observation !

DGS · Dec 17, 2003

Schnelles Fraulein said:

i personally always wanted my daughter to have a name no one else had.. instead of being 1 out of 1 million "jennifer"'s or "mary"'s. who could forget Nylira ? or Carbon McCoy ?
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Most college profs could. (They also can't pronounce anything more complicated than "John Smith".)

Individuality comes from within, not from external tags. After all, a 308 is "just another Ferrari" ... but tell that to the kids (and the young at heart) that light up when they see one.

The quest for "instant personality" is probably behind the current trend for kids to tattoo, pierce, brand, and otherwise mutilate their bodies -- an attempt at self expression in a post-verbal culture.

But "unique" names are probably better than misspelled ones. What message about the value of education do we give kids when we can't even be bothered to spell their names right?

(why yes, I am a curmudgeon. Why do you ask?)

MarkPDX · Dec 17, 2003

DGS said:

But "unique" names are probably better than misspelled ones.
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Absolutely right, strippers with oddball names have to come from somewhere.

Here is an interesting article from the Orlando Sentinel

Their trademark: Distinctive names
By Linda Shrieves | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted December 15, 2003

It ain't easy being a boy named Sue, as Johnny Cash once sang. But is it any easier being a boy named Del Monte? Or a girl named L'Oreal?

In what may be the strangest baby-naming trend in recent years, parents are turning to the grocery aisle, car dealerships and department stores for inspiration.

Cleveland Evans, a psychology professor at Bellevue University in Nebraska, analyzed the names of 4 million babies born in this country in the year 2000 and discovered a nascent and unusual trend: Parents naming their babies after products.

Talk about your material girls -- and boys.

Although there were hundreds of thousands of Ashleys and Emilys and Joshuas and Jacobs born that year, Evans was intrigued by the more unusual names. There were 55 Chevys, 12 Camrys, 7 Courvoisiers (named for the cognac), 17 Dodges, five Darvons and six Ronricos.

That's just the boys.

The girls' names included 298 Armanis, 164 Nauticas, 36 Cateras (a Cadillac) and six Cartiers. And there were an astounding 442 girls named Essence -- a name inspired, he believes, by the magazine.

"Everybody is looking for something different," says Evans. "So they are going out and finding names."

We're all products of our time. But some of us bear the trademark more than others.

Atari Bigby, for instance. The 22-year-old junior at the University of Central Florida says that in elementary school, he withstood lots of teasing about his name.

Even though his grandmother, who came up with the name, insists he wasn't named for the computer game of the 1970s and '80s -- the Xbox of its day -- he felt the sting of the unusual name.

"In elementary school, I didn't like the name," recalls Bigby, "but as I grew older and realized that no one else had it, I liked it." Besides, says Bigby, who is now one of UCF's star football players, "when you have an unusual name, it looks better on the back of your jersey. And my first name and last name are unusual."

DeLorean Winzens can relate. A 21-year-old English major at Stetson University, Winzens was named after John DeLorean, whose name was in the headlines in 1982, the year she was born. Her mother kept reading the name "and liked the way it sounded," says Winzens.

In school, teachers repeatedly tried to shorten her name, calling her "Dee" or "Dee Dee." Winzens resisted, even though she had mixed feelings about her unusual name.

"It kind of bugged me, because I didn't know anybody with the same name," says Winzens. She eventually came to embrace her distinctive name, though. And when she has children, she's thinking an unusual name might be just the ticket. "I wouldn't give my children a common name," Winzens says. "I'd want them to have something very creative and unique."

Of course, DeLorean wasn't the first child to be named after a goody that Mommy or Daddy saw in a store or in the news. "There have been girls named Chanel since I started collecting names 25 years ago," says Evans. "Chanel was just a last name in France before it was the perfume."

Likewise, Tiffany was a store before it was a name for girls -- and one of the earliest examples of product placement.

In the 1980s, some Americans turned to television for inspiration. For example, the name Ashley was a boy's name until 1983, shortly after the character Ashley Abbott appeared on The Young and the Restless. The name spread like kudzu across the country, immediately jumping to the top of the charts and holding forth there until 1997.

Similarly, in the 1990s, Americans began naming their babies after places -- witness the explosion of Austins, Dakotas, Savannahs and Arizonas.

But in a twist that surprised even Evans, he discovered five girls born in 2000 who were named Disney. That's right -- the perfect vacation destination.

Although American parents clearly have a history of seeking out unusual monikers, the concept of naming a child after a consumer product is, with a few exceptions, a new phenomenon.

But there appear to be some general guidelines that parents use. Above all: When naming children after products, select high-end, luxury goods. You don't run into many children named Hyundai. Or Kmart.

"They choose names partly because of the luxury attached," Evans says, "But they will also select names that sound like other first names that are popular."

Camry sounds like a feminine version of Cameron, while Lexus sounds like a variation of Alexis. Chevelle, he notes, sounds a lot like Danielle or Michelle. And Catera "sounds enough like Catherine that it could be a girl's name," says Evans. "Plus it's a fancy car."

Celica may not be a fancy car, but perhaps the parents of the five Celicas born in 2000 don't have champagne tastes -- surely what led the parents of 15 daughters to name their children after the bubbly.

Still, social scientists are pondering this question: Why do parents bend over backward to give their children names like Infiniti, Guinness and Rayon?

Blame it on the incredible diversity of choices Americans face every day, says names researcher Herbert Barry III from the University of Pittsburgh.

"There used to be three major TV networks; now there are five or six networks and a lot more cable channels," says Barry. "There used to be a single-screen movie theater; now there are a dozen screens. We're not only more ethnically diverse, we have more diverse hobbies, we play more diverse sports."

It just makes sense that Americans won't settle for the same plain-Jane names anymore. Indeed, when Barry studied the most popular names for girls and boys from 1900 to 1999, he discovered that girls' names started becoming more diverse in the 1950s -- during the Nancy, Karen, Deborah, Susan era -- while boys' names were pretty predictable until the 1980s, when names like Justin, Jason, Brandon and Nicholas reflected parents' desire for unconventional boys' names.

Although there are still plenty of Hannahs and Emilys, Matthews and Christophers, the top 10 baby names are given to a far smaller number of children.

"The intrinsic purpose of a name is to distinguish people from others," says Barry. "But in previous years, people wanted to avoid a name that was too unusual. They wanted a name that would be popular, wouldn't be ridiculed."

Today, however, parents don't want their little Ashley to be the 22nd Ashley in kindergarten. So they're scouring the Internet to find the most popular names -- and working hard to avoid them.

What they're coming up with is definitely uncommon.

Take the 29 babies named Skyy, for instance. Although Sky has been popular since the 1960s, the spelling of Skyy gave away its origin -- Skyy vodka.

"One of the names that surprised me was the number of Evians, the bottled water," says Evans. "There were 10 boys named Evian and 15 girls. That was one I hadn't quite thought of before."

Nautica was no surprise to Evans, who'd seen that one gaining ground. But the name has become almost exclusively female. Armani, by contrast, still seems to be a unisex name -- perhaps the Dana of its time. In 2000, he found 273 boys named Armani and 298 girls.

But Evans recently discovered that he'd overlooked one category of brand names -- guns. Scanning the 2000 list again, he discovered 14 Rugers.

Still, that may be better than one child name Evans ran across in 1998: Buckshot.

And though he found five children named Darvon in 2000, Evans thinks it's unlikely that naming children after drugs will become popular. So don't expect to see a spate of Viagras, Celebrexes or Nexiums.

And before you shed a tear for poor little Timberland (as in the shoe) or the 6-year-old twins Camry and Lexus (whom Cleveland Evans met recently), consider the tale of DeLorean Winzens.

Even though the luxury car with the stainless steel body and gull-wing doors was long gone by the time Winzens was a teenager, all of her friends knew what a DeLorean was -- thanks to the car's prominence in the movie Back to the Future.

The car itself was very cool. And over time, Winzens has come to think her distinctive name is pretty cool too.

"As a child, I thought it was a weird, unique name," she says. "Now I think it's a beautiful, creative, unique name. Very few people I meet don't have something to say about it.

"And people never forget my name."
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urraco · Mar 10, 2004

if it's aboy : ENZO girl: MIURA I'm serious.

sherpa23 · Mar 10, 2004

benedict said:

Not too far off from yours. We named our daughter Arianna. I had heard the name many years ago and it just stuck in my mind as exquisite. It also works well with my 355, my license plate says FOR ARI since I promised the car to her eventually (she's only five though but loves it).

Ben
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Benedict, I had a girlfriend named Arianne for a long time. To this day, she is the most beautiful woman that I have ever laid eyes on. Somehow, I always knew that Arianne or Arianna was the only name for someone that beautiful. It's a great name.

lesterm · Mar 10, 2004

If I have children, I am going to use the naming system that my parents used: pick a name at random from a book of baby names.

I suppose I got lucky, it could have been much worse.

P.S. I'm glad my dad wasn't whipped. My mom wanted to name me Marvin. *shudder* No offense to anyone named Marvin...

TigerAce · Mar 10, 2004

All 4 kids we have are either named after someone we love, or grandma/pa named them. English & Japanese.

In Japan, one couple reported "Akuma" for their son's name, it means devil.
It was turned down by the Birth Certificate office (well, not exactly BC, but closest to equivalent in the US) I didn't get why it was turned down, and most of all, I didn't understand the parents intention for naming own kids like that, too.

Whatever the name you pick for your kids, you as parents picked the name w/ some wish/hope, and I think that's what counts.

Yoshi

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