Carolyn Hax: I don't like the name my sibling chose for their baby

[cereta]

(Note: This is originally from 2005, reposted today, but it's short and sweet and I do so love the answer. And huh: we already had a names tag!)

Dear Carolyn:

My sister is pregnant for the first time, and I'm excited to become an uncle. The issue: The names she has picked out are so soap opera-esque that I want to ask how she could name her kid that. Any advice?

-- Va.

Buy her a few of those stuffed terry cloth rattles. Babies love them, they're washable, and, whenever you're about to criticize your sister's taste in names, you can stuff one in your mouth.

Comments

[cereta]

There is literally no name you can choose for a child that someone won't hate. Too plain, too ornate, too new, too dated, too hard to pronounce, spelled "wrong" (as if names actually have a "correct" spelling), too many nicknames, no nicknames, too "ethnic," not ethnic enough, inspired by a book/tv show/whatever,* named after the wrong relative, your cousin claimed that name when she was 12!, oh, a flaky celebrity named their baby that...So take Carolyn's advice and put a sock in it.

*I gather named inspired by GOT are the new thing to look down on. While I admit to some puzzlement over how "Khaleesi" became a name (no lie), I will happily take a few Aryas and Sansas on my roster to balance out the endless parade of Megans and Abigails. Of course, you can name a son after a GOT character and still have a perfectly common name.

[rmc28]

There was always at least one other Rachel in every school & university class I took.

The time I worked with two other Rachels and they sat us on the same set of desks was entertaining. For everyone else.

[cereta]

I was forever hearing that Rebecca was one of the most common names in the US, but I only knew like two others. And all of us had sisters named Rachel ;).

[torachan]

I've seen a lot of outrage/mockery about Kahleesi being a name people give their kids, but as an outsider it doesn't surprise me at all. It sounds namelike and it sounds pretty. The people who named their kids that probably didn't give it any more thought than that. And a quick google tells me it means "queen" so if they know the meaning they probably like it for that reason, too.

[minoanmiss]

I think he should have gone ahead and asked the sister, so she could have exorcised her stress by punting him into orbit.

[cereta]

Well, pregnant women are advised to get moderate exercise.

[dorinda]

Hahahahaaaa, this is a beauty. Thanks for posting it--I hadn't seen it before!

[lemonsharks]

I'm torn on situations like this one. On the one hand, there's respecting parents. On the other, there's "why am I friends with someone who would name their child after Ronald Reagan? Oh right, I'm not, anymore."

And on a third tentacle I am not going to be able to physically keep a straight face if my friends of family name their offspring Moon Unit, Diva Muffin, or similar.

[beable]

I think "I have tried not to involuntarily react but failed my will save" is probably inevitable in such cases and are in a different category of behavior than the letter writer.

[lilysea]

99% of the time, you should not criticise what parents name their children.

The parents who proposed calling their twin children Jaime and Cersei [after the Game of Thrones twins who had an incestuous relationship] however, should be sat down and Spoken To.

[beable]

I love this answer so much.

Also while there are some people in this world who should not be allowed to name children (e.g. the person that caused whatever country it was in the article I was reading on Scary Mommy a week or two to ban the name "Anal") there are too many others who lose their shit about names for dumb reasons, like the parents of a friend of mine who got really upset because she gave the kid a mainstream middle name and the first name Eowyn (her theory was that the kid could use whichever she preferred in terms of blending in vs uniqueness and also huge LOTR fan). Apparently having a normal "find on keychains in every tourist trap" middle name that could be used was not good enough for her parents so she heard about the weird name for a while.

[cereta]

Indeed. And while we keep talking about geek names, there is almost always a racial element to the Great Names Debate. Hells, I saw someone on a forum label "Liesel" weird and fake, and I was just, "...you haven't seen The Sound of Music?"

[ysobel]

My mom pulled a "that isn't even a *name*" re my nephling, who has the ~so bizarre omg~ name Miles.

I stared at her and rattled off the examples I could think of, both fictional and not. There were more of the fictional ones (Vorkosigan, DS9, Spiderman) than RL (Davis and Standish), but *still*.

[shirou]

I love this answer too. CH is my favorite advice columnist.

Neither my first nor middle name blend in or can be found on key chains, not because they're from LOTR, but because I'm from an immigrant family and have distinctly un-American names. It's not so bad.

[ysobel]

My first and middle names are both Biblical... and I've never seen keychain versions.

Somehow I survived to adulthood anyway ...

[cereta]

The small fanperson has a not-unusual Biblical name, although admittedly with a slightly less common spelling (I went with how the Dark Tower series spells it, because why else was I choosing that name? Oh, right, we liked it), and we have found exactly one thing with her name on it in 12 years. Hells, I don't even see "Lucy" that often.

[beable]

Also, I love watching would-be parents troll people with fake naming ideas.

Like the friend who almost managed to convince his wife that James Tiberius would be a fine name for their upcoming son (unlike his other suggestions, which were bad enough for her to veto immediately, this almost worked until she got suspicious at his unbridled glee and used the power of google to find out why)

Or the acquaintance who used to come up with awful (but funny) name ideas (of the I.P. Nightly school of humour) but his kids all got normal names because he's not actually sadistic.

[cereta]

I wouldn't even let my spouse name our cat "Tiberius." Well, he was named "Augustus Tiberius Kittius," but he was very wee, so we called him Gus.

[beable]

What a great name for a cat!

The friend in question has always had a hobby of trolling his wife with really bad ideas (in the geeky funny sense, not in the mean sense). He started off with much worse SF reference-y names , got to James Tiberius, and she was initially "oh, that sounds wonderful, my great-uncle was named James" until she decided that his glee - like the proverbial silence of a toddler in an adjacent room - was suspicious and she looked it up.

I like to imagine that if he hadn't essentially cackled with glee when she said yes, the kid probably would be Kirk to this day, but I also think really he got much more joy out of her catching on and refusing the choice than he would have ever have gotten from the name itself.

[rosefox]

A friend really had her parents believing for a while that she was going to name her daughter Luke Skywalker. It was beautiful.