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We have six more weeks before this kid is due, and still my husband and I have had zero progress on the baby name front. You can tell that this is our second kid because instead of stressing out and desperately searching for an appropriate name for this girl, our conversations over the last few months tend to go like:
"Oh hey, we should probably come up with a name for this kid."
"Yeah, we probably should."
*Tom and I fall asleep*
Other than general apathy or a belief that the right name will magically fall out of the sky without us having to do any work, I think part of the slowness are the four goofy rules that we have about picking a name which were created when I was pregnant with our son.
Our rules are this weird mixture of the... er... less than normal upbringings that Tom and I had:
1. No Bible Names.
Personally, even though I was raised by hard core atheists, I have nothing against bible names in particular. It's my husband, whose crazy parents tried every hard core fringe religion (and managed to get kicked out of their churches) that insisted on this rule. Unfortunately, this constitutes like 75% of western names in existence, including Tom's own name which I think he hates.
2. No Names of English Monarchs.
Another rule insisted on by my husband. This is because both of his crazy parents and most of his siblings have names like Charles, Elizabeth, Anne, William and Edward. And since his relationship with most of his family vacillates between amused tolerance and sheer annoyance, he feels pretty strongly about this.
3. No Names of Ayn Rand Heroes.
This particular hangup is mine because my parents believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they are some kind of hard core Randians. Of course, they aren't even remotely hard core Randians because my parents are actually loving, caring and giving people who put their kids first when we were growing up, are extremely generous with their family and friends and pretty much live their actual lives as normal people instead of being complete and utter assholes.
They insist upon this for some reason, to the point that I was almost named Dominique after Howard Roarke's fucked up love interest in The Fountainhead. You know the complete and utter crazy bitch who gets raped by the hero... and likes it? Yeah that one. *facepalm* Luckily my mom decided at the last minute that she liked a different name better.
Still, the scars of dodging that bullet have lasted 32 years and I refuse to name any kid of mine with a name that any of her characters have. However since women seem to be rare in her books in comparison to the men, this isn't really that much of a restriction since I wasn't planning on naming this girl Dagney, the only other female Rand heroine of consequence.
4. No Names in the Top 25.
This is just a goofy desire to make sure our own precious snowflakes won't be confused with other people's obviously inferior precious snowflakes.
So any suggestions that follow these rules?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
plutospawn has been particularly helpful in her suggestion of Xochiquetzal (she insists that it's pronounced "Sharyl"), and I just know you all will come up with something good...
"Oh hey, we should probably come up with a name for this kid."
"Yeah, we probably should."
*Tom and I fall asleep*
Other than general apathy or a belief that the right name will magically fall out of the sky without us having to do any work, I think part of the slowness are the four goofy rules that we have about picking a name which were created when I was pregnant with our son.
Our rules are this weird mixture of the... er... less than normal upbringings that Tom and I had:
1. No Bible Names.
Personally, even though I was raised by hard core atheists, I have nothing against bible names in particular. It's my husband, whose crazy parents tried every hard core fringe religion (and managed to get kicked out of their churches) that insisted on this rule. Unfortunately, this constitutes like 75% of western names in existence, including Tom's own name which I think he hates.
2. No Names of English Monarchs.
Another rule insisted on by my husband. This is because both of his crazy parents and most of his siblings have names like Charles, Elizabeth, Anne, William and Edward. And since his relationship with most of his family vacillates between amused tolerance and sheer annoyance, he feels pretty strongly about this.
3. No Names of Ayn Rand Heroes.
This particular hangup is mine because my parents believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they are some kind of hard core Randians. Of course, they aren't even remotely hard core Randians because my parents are actually loving, caring and giving people who put their kids first when we were growing up, are extremely generous with their family and friends and pretty much live their actual lives as normal people instead of being complete and utter assholes.
They insist upon this for some reason, to the point that I was almost named Dominique after Howard Roarke's fucked up love interest in The Fountainhead. You know the complete and utter crazy bitch who gets raped by the hero... and likes it? Yeah that one. *facepalm* Luckily my mom decided at the last minute that she liked a different name better.
Still, the scars of dodging that bullet have lasted 32 years and I refuse to name any kid of mine with a name that any of her characters have. However since women seem to be rare in her books in comparison to the men, this isn't really that much of a restriction since I wasn't planning on naming this girl Dagney, the only other female Rand heroine of consequence.
4. No Names in the Top 25.
This is just a goofy desire to make sure our own precious snowflakes won't be confused with other people's obviously inferior precious snowflakes.
So any suggestions that follow these rules?
plutospawn has been particularly helpful in her suggestion of Xochiquetzal (she insists that it's pronounced "Sharyl"), and I just know you all will come up with something good...Tags:
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I'm sure you don't need to read it, but I thought site was amusing. (http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/this</a)
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Maybe Jocasta Anima Medea Electra Prestin. It has a ring to it... rofl. Actually that almost sounds like a Mary Sue name - she can be an evil Sue with violet eyes that falls in love with the good hero.
(Also love the link. Someone linked me that a few years ago, but I haven't seen it in a long time and am now wasting my afternoon reading through all the very bad ideas that people have had for naming their spawn. So hilarious and sad.)
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As for naming...don't sweat it. For some reason I knew H-bomb's name as soon as the stick turned blue and nothing I did could summon up a boy's name even though I didn't confirm she was going to be a girl. D-man's name came to me partly because he was going to be named after either my grandfather or my great-grandmother. But her name didn't feel quite as right.
Sometimes you just have to get a look at the little bugger before you can name 'em. FWIW, I was going to be a Dominique, too, but since my folks are all but illiterate, it was for completely different reasons.
(PS - if you really *are* testing out the Mad Max Hybrid Baby Buggy, go for a soft camel interior. It's stylish and easy-clean and I know the green's going to look so dated in two years...)
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Agreed that sometimes you have to see the kid to name them. That's what happened with our son. We had like three names we weren't sure about until we saw what he looked like (although since he's a carbon copy of my dad, perhaps we should have named him after my father, but three Hughs in the family would have been way too confusing I think.)
I thought about naming her after grandparents or great-grandparents, but unfortunately they either have super ethnic old school German names (Fredricka for example) or names that were really popular in the 20's and 30's that sound kinda weird nowadays (like Doris). So that's kinda out, although I will say if we did that, her name would definitely stand out lol.
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I agree that I'm not really a fan of nicknames. By a random quirk of fate, I've never gone by the nickname Nikki but that was because my parents already had a dog named Nikki before I was born (and goddamn did that dog suck ass - it was the meanest, stupidest poodle/peakaneese mix ever - which meant, of course, that it lived 17 miserable annoying years). My mom apparently liked the name Nicole so much but thought she'd never have kids and so named her dog that name.
So I guess you could say I was named after the shittiest dog ever, but at least I was never called Nikki (which I hate). And really, being named after the bitchiest dog in existence is still better than being named after a crazy ass Ayn Rand heroine.
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Naming names
Needless to say, I haven't used that name since I got out of the torture that ensued in Jr. High School. Luckily I had so many other names to choose from and am, for the most part, known as 'Ileiren' ... which seems to be working just fine. (Although I chould have choses Talamh of Ceol, I suppose *facepalm*)
My sister, ten years younger than me, is Nelle.
*sigh*
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Re: Naming names
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How about Hindi/Sanskrit names? I'd suggest Padma, but too many people find that's too close to Padmé. If you're interested, search for Hindi or Sanskrit names; there are a lot that are very pretty.
Some others I like:
1) Sabrina
2) Athena
3) Jillian/Gillian (#90 on the names list)
4) Serena
5) Diana (Though I know of Princess Diana, so this could count as a royal name if you so chose.)
6) Margaret/Maggie
If I think of others, I'll drop you a line. Best of luck picking out a name. :)
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But, okay, what about co-opting Kim's family tradition and going with a nice tv character? Darla!
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I have to say that I've never even heard the name Aaralyn before. I have to wonder if it's one of those crazy welsh names that end up being super hard to pronounce.
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Zarathustra is pretty awesome. That way, whenever it cries, you can roll over and whisper into your husbands ear: "Thus spoke Zarathustra."
This is a good plan.
There's also the Aztec Sun/War god: Huitzilopochtli (witsiloˈpotʃtɬi). It is said to literally mean: "Left-Handed Humming Bird." Haha, those Aztecs. They must have been a hoot at parties!
No English monarchs, but I see nothing excluding other nations!
Ozymandias is awesome. Is more widely known name is pretty good too, Ramesses The Great.
There's also Zhu Yuanzhang, founder if the Chinese Ming dynasty, from where all those vases that break in movies come from.
I'm so totally helpful.
EDIT: I forgot, you're having a girl.
... Actually, I still stand by my choices.
EDIT 2: One day, I will learn HTML.
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I am a bad parent, I realize.
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You can check out international names? I like to play with the lists at babynamer.com and see what people worlds away are socially allowed to call their children.
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I like to check out international names as well, because it's really interesting what people name their kids in other countries.
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As any writer knows...
If you're not going to go with anything that's popular, trendy, famous, or well-known but don't want to get stuck with foreign or fictional names (not that I'm saying you can't go there) your best bet would probably be to go with older English names that haven't been used in a few centuries. They sound right and are easy to pronounce but aren't necessarily well-known.
For a girl you could get something like Ida, Luella, Rhetta, Arlene, or Ethel.
Or if you prefer you could go for mythological names (I know others have suggested that). And of course, Greek names might be too well known so Media might not be so good but Norse names like Sif, Iðunn, Frigg, or Freya might be good (or their Anglo-Saxon equivalents Sif, Idun, Fri, and Frea). Celtic names, if you're avoiding popular, are probably not a good choice however. At one point they were rare and that's how I and my brothers all got our names. But Aidan, my brother, now resents the fact that his name is very common - in spite of the fact it used to be incredibely rare.
Of course my name, Arthur, used to be very popular. Now it's next to unheard of.
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Re: As any writer knows...
We went Scandinavian for our son, just because there were so many Aidens out there. I can see why, it's a cool name, but there are like three or four Aidens in my son's pre-school right now. Your poor brother lol.
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On a side note, this is Crystal001 from KFM--may I add you as a friend? *makes puppydog eyes*
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