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

[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.