Baby Names

[prisoner_24601]

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? 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...

Comments

[midnight-hawk.livejournal.com]

To make sure she can fill out her personality complexes bingocard as early as possible I suggest Anima or Jocasta (I was going to suggest Judith as well because decapitating people is awesome, but Bible name... *sigh*). Seriously, there are lots of great names, I'm sure whatever you pick will do her fine.

I'm sure you don't need to read it, but I thought site was amusing. (http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/this</a)

[athenaprime.livejournal.com]

Weird that you should post this today. I had a dream about you last night and woke up and thought, "I need to send Pris a poke or something and make sure she's doing okay." Actually, the dream wasn't scary, it was just very...odd. You volunteered to be a test mom for a new stroller combo from Hyundai that ran on hybrid power, had it's own motor, and for some reason, a defense system with spiky wheels. I was dreaming and thinking, "I didn't think she lived in that rough of a neighborhood." Anyway, in the dream, you were soliciting input from your internet buddies about the style of upholstery.

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...)

[plutospawn.livejournal.com]

So Detroit Prestin and Porntape Prestin are out? You know me and my own particular hang ups about names. If I had my way, I'd place a 100 year ban on the name 'Jessica' simply because I have several Jessicas emailing me and sometimes I get confused over which Jessica I'm talking to in particular. In the crowd of minus 4 that I'm familiar with, there are two Charlottes, a Penelope, a Norah and an Audrey. If it's a female name, chances are, I'll hate it anyway, I don't like names that have more than two syllables and if you're going to call her a shortened version of the name, like Tom, you should name her Tom and not Thomas.

Naming names

[singblueeyes.livejournal.com]

Man, I am SOOOOO the wrong person to comment on this. *MY* parents were/are complete theatre hippies. So, my name is a long hippy-rant like Moon-Unit Earth Harvest Shining Light Sunbeam ... except it's in Gaelic, thank god, so most people can't tell. EXCEPT, my folks thought it would be a real lark to give me the first name "Moggy" ... a British slang for unwanted,stray cats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moggy
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*

[mizanchan.livejournal.com]

Really wanna mess with people? Name her Myfannwy. It's an old Welsh name that even I have issues pronouncing. (I think it's "My-fan-we", but I could be wrong as I've never heard it pronounced.)

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. :)

[winterfox.livejournal.com]

Lucrezia, middle name Borgia, please.

[kosiah.livejournal.com]

I am currently being boggled that aaralyn (91)beats out Nicole (100).

But, okay, what about co-opting Kim's family tradition and going with a nice tv character? Darla!

[rimwalker.livejournal.com]

No Bible names, but I see nothing excluding other religions!

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.

[rose70.livejournal.com]

I plan to name my daughter Clara, but you are welcome to steal it if you want :)

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.

As any writer knows...

[nivenus.livejournal.com]

...naming is the bane of life ;).

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.

[crystalviora.livejournal.com]

Hey there, congrats! I had no idea you're having a baby, congrats!!

On a side note, this is Crystal001 from KFM--may I add you as a friend? *makes puppydog eyes*