Thanks to everyone who has submitted their Baby Name Stories. Keep ‘em coming! They’ll be found here on Saturdays starting in June. And I also appreciate all of you who de-lurked to suggest a Baby Name of the Day. I’ll be scheduling the lurker posts tomorrow, so check back and you’ll know when your name is going to be profiled.
Summer movie season is just beginning. Aly and I have plans to see Toy Story 3, but what I’m really wondering when I walk past the multiplex these days?
Will Russell Crowe’s Robin Hood revive interest in the name? He did wonders for Maximus. And, of course, there’s Jake Gyllenhaal’s upcoming turn as Dastan in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. If parents can embrace Daxton and Zayden, will Dastan be far behind? Oh, and Ellen Page plays Ariadne in the new Leonardo DiCaprio thriller Inception. Adrianna is fine, but Ariadne is stunning.
But the theme for this week seems to be more about those Really? name moments. Gracing the front page of my local paper Thursday morning was a pair of cute little girls at a community festival. Their names? Cashay and Lashay. Not twins, but sisters just a year apart.
Along the same lines, there’s:
- Nameberry’s Most Hated Baby Names was another of their ask-the-readers columns. Nevaeh and the -aidens featured prominently, but also perfectly conventional picks like Emily and Hannah;
- Creative spellings featured large on the Nameberry list, which reminds me of this news story about an Australian family. All four kids have a -y in their names: Tayla, Mitchyl, Harrisyn and Samuyl. The only one that strikes me as really beyond is Samuyl. I’m just not sure that -uyl can substitute for -uel;
- For Real spotted a Happi Star Evelyn Rose. All of a sudden Cashay seems like Margaret;
- The Stir gives us a little girl called Syren. After an evil mermaid/human on supernatural soap Passions. And her dad is a firefighter;
- But hey, unusual names are nothing new, as Nancy proves in her story about the first baby born in flight, back in October 1929. And get this: the parents chartered the flight just so mom could give birth! Nancy does some digging and determines the baby’s name very appropriate name was Airlene;
- Baby Name Pool winners were posted at Baby Name Wizard. Jill was the high scorer. She picked Bentley, Bristol and Bradyn to rise; Joseph, Jessica and Diego to fall. Laura Wattenberg’s comment on the winning ballot was priceless: ”Of all of the cultural memes shaping name trends, ‘pregnant teenagers’ hardly springs to mind. Yet the sudden rise of Bentley was spurred by a baby featured on the MTV reality shows 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom. Bristol Palin, meanwhile, emerged as a naming force not in the year that her mother ran for vice president, but in the year that she became a single teenage mom.”
- Proof that you can put anything in the middle spot, especially if the first name is a classic: For Real’s post on the Best of Grace: From the classic-with-a-classic Grace Catherine to a more current pick, like Grace Harlow or Grace Presley.
Let’s turn to Tinsel Town, where the biggest starbaby news was the arrival of Aviana Olea, there’s also:
That’s all for this week. As always, thanks for reading!
