Posted on 11/22/2011 12:29:09 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
I’ve always been fascinated by name trends. It’s interesting to see how certain names ebb and flow in popularity.
The name game is tough to win. If you hop on a trend, it could be cool for the first few years but, chances are, that name is going to feel dated when your child is reaching adulthood. That’s why I’ve always passed over fads for classic names. However, when naming my son a classic name I inadvertently hopped aboard a Hollywood trend. A twofer! Rare!
If you’re looking ahead to 2012 wondering what names are going to be all the rage, look no further. The creator of nameberry.com, Pamela Redmond Satran tells Huffington Post what the hottest trends for 2012 will be.
1. Combining Favorite Names. Most parents try to avoid super popular names. That can be tough when the great names surge up the list and your left between picking a name you love and having your daughter be one of four Avas in her class. The new trend, altering popular names slightly. As Satran says “Number 1 girls’ name Isabella gives rise to stylistically-related choices Arabella and Annabelle; Olivia, the top name in Britain, spawns spelling variation Alivia; Emma and Emily promote brother name Emmett.”
2. A slew of parents are looking to the animal kingdom to give their kids fearsome names. “Bear, Fox, Wolf, Lynx and a range of names from Leo to Lionel that mean lion, and then there are the perhaps-even-fiercer names like Breaker, Ranger, and Wilder.”
3. Sweet vintage names make a comeback. Especially names ending in ie. For example: Lottie and Hattie, Addie, Nettie and Nellie.
4. Modern hero surnames. Satran says Mariah Carey nailed it when she named her daughter Monroe, to honor her heroine, Marilyn Monroe. Other examples of surnames or heros in movies, life and literature used as first names: “Landry (as in football coach Tom), Gatsby (as in fictional hero The Great), and Palin (yes, as in her).”
5. 2012 will be the year of M names, Satran predicts. Examples: “Maeve, Magdalena, Maisie, Marguerite, Marlo/Marlowe, May, Mila, Millie, and Minnie, and for boys, Magnus, Micah, Miller, Milo, Montgomery, Moses and MONICA!
I know a guy whose last name is Sidebottom...no kidding. He was in the Army, and said they tortured him about his last name. “What are you? Some kind of military equipment box or something?”
Yes, she can--and will--thank me later.
As I do whenever I see a baby-naming thread:
http://notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/index.html
“Baby’s Named A Bad, Bad Thing.” Enjoy.
From what I hear, his boys kind of liked that...:)
My wife is a spec-ed teacher. She had a 5 year old in her class one year named Neosynephrine Nyquil. His mother had hazily seen the label and thought it would be a “majestic” name. Wife has a large collection of totally odd names from her 35 years in the classroom. Many would leave you sort of stunned on hearing or reading them and- “what were they thinking?” There are lots of Females and even a Male or two because ignorant or drugged mothers thought that word on the BC was the name the hospital had given the child and it was necessarily final. Seegar Stubbs was named for his father and grandfather. In the South it is a traditional name that goes back a l-o-o-o-ong ways in several Stubbs families. The really weird names for girls often happen because so often Daddy doesn’t care what the girl’s name is. He cares about his son. Mom is ignorant and or drugged when she fills out the BC or it is filled out for her.
The lady that runs the site to which I linked also has a “Bottom 25” for least-favorite baby names:
25: Cierra, Makynzi and Quinlynn, Quinylin and derivatives
24. “Cool names” (Vadan, Jaykyn)
23. Kakinston and Creighton
22. Scatman
21. Ruger
20. Bubba
19. Flower
18. Dacoda
17. Kaytaquana and others
16. Random Welsh Nouns
15. Irelynd
14. Oleo
13. Brooklyn
12. Blaze
11. Kryslyn
10. Laken
9. Cinsere
8. McKaty
7. D’Artagnan, Quillon, Griffon and Bayne
6. Abeus
5. Any name that has been changed by the parent after the child has been born
4. Taira Rose
3. Tierrainney
2. Toolio
1. Dusk
As for me: “Nevaeh”. Not even close.
I also remember Paul Harvey talking about silly names one time. He mentioned a guy named Hunter H. Hunter. Yeah ... the H. stood for Hunter.
One more ... I used to wait tables at a restaurant on Lake Travis. One of my coworkers was named Jingle Bell.
My sister worked as a nurse in a similar demographic hospital. One parent told her that her little girl’s name was “Pay-Ja-May”
“How do you spell that”?, my sister asked.
“Pajama”
:-)
Especially if her last name is Hans.
My most hated would be Brianna, or Britney, or any derivative of those.
“I saw a cashier once with a name tag that said Vendetta.”
I was waited on by a cashier in a market in Charleston, SC
whose name tag identified her as “Pepperoni”.
It puzzled me, until I realized that it is probably pronounced "Irony".
LOL! I actually saw the same name, Latrina, when watching an episode of Say Yes to the Dress/Atlanta. I told my hubby, and he looked at me like I was nuts. How do you look at a little baby girl and name her something that will always make people think of a place to take a ----.
I must get in on this thread!! :-)
A school administrator SWORE he had encountered a student whose name was pronounced Shu - theed.
However, it was spelled SH*THEAD.
BWAHAHA!!!!!
I had a distant cousin in the 19th century whose name was Parshandatha. The name came from Esther 9.7 where it is the name of one of the sons of Haman--but the name was given to a girl. I figure they opened up the Bible at random and took the first name they saw.
I’ve worked with a Tequila and a Cinderella.
Mark my words, they’ll be some Levitras growing up in the ‘hood soon.
My next door neighbor in Jeddah told us that when she was in grad school somewhere in SC, one of the girls in her class was named “Bo-Peep.” She swore it was true!
My first name is that of a famous Revolutionary War battle, my middle that of a Dutch painter. (yea, I know, “WHAT WERE YOUR PARENTS THINKING?”) [I’m a “Junior”] My first name has two vowels together and, to those unfamiliar with it as a place name, looks like it might be pronounced in several different ways.
We moved a lot when I was a kid, so I was always in a new school, labeled either a Yankee or a Redneck (depending on which way we had just moved) and stuck with an invariably mispronounced first name. Not quite “A Boy Named Sue”, but you get the picture. I was a runt, to boot!
My surname is very, very common, but a Google search shows only about a dozen folks with my first and last names. None with my middle initial, let alone middle name. So, I guess there are some benefits to having a strange name.
My half-sister was an administrator in a dental office. A woman came in with a baby named “First Time In.” I kid you not.
Le-A is pronounced LeDashA. Or food stamps for short. Or for sure.
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