The subtitle – “For Pagans, Witches, Wiccans, Druids, Heathens, Mages, Shamans & Independent Thinkers of All Sorts” – sounds a little out there at first, but there’s an important point in that list.  We tend to embrace the names of the victors.  Powerful cultures, those with written records that were preserved and passed down, tend to also be the sources of most of our given names.  Sheard’s treatment of names like Katherine acknowledges both the dominant story – the saint, the meaning “pure” – but also delves into the murkier past.

I’ve seen books try to take a pan-cultural perspective before, but Nook succeeds where others have fallen short.  She includes Native American, Celtic, Saxon, Norse, Egyptian, and Hawaiian appellations, as well as modern word names and more conventional choices.  I stopped counting after I found the first dozen names that struck me as both novel and perfectly wearable – that was somewhere around the letter C.

But this give-away gets better, because not only do you get this fabulous book, it comes complete with a bookplate signed by the author.

There are three ways to enter:

• Go visit Nook’s site and come back here to leave a comment with your favorite name from the many she’s covered.
• Leave another comment reporting that you like AppMtn on Facebook – whether you just hit the like button today or did it ages ago.
• Then please do the same thing for Nook – go like Llewellyn’s Complete Book of Names on Facebook, then report back here.

The winner will be drawn at random from all eligible entries, and announced in next week’s Sunday Summary.  Shipping is limited to the United States this time.

Good luck!

Yesterday I unveiled my predictions for the coming year, and that was going to be all I had to say about the year’s close.  Except that I found myself hypnotized by a video of old-school clocks from Etsy’s Vimeo channel.  Time really does slip by so quickly.  (Next month, I’ll enter my fifth year of blogging here at Appellation Mountain.  What?)  And so here’s a quick look back at 2011.

January 2011

• I started writing a regular Monday post for Nameberry.  I still pinch myself every time I see my name on the site.  Thanks to Pam and Linda for their encouragement!
• Amoret was featured as Baby Name of the Day.  In September blogger Rubyellen of Cakies welcomed daughter Glow Amorette.  I truly do love this name.

February 2011

• I loved writing about Elsinore, which isn’t exactly a given name, but certainly could be.
• Then there’s a draft of an article I never finished, which I’ve dredged up to dust off and post in 2012, one about my personal experience naming human beings.

March 2011

• March Madness was a great run, with Louisa and Nathaniel claiming the top spots.
• I also wrote about the poetic, starbaby pick Tennyson, a choice that has really grown on me this year.

April 2011

• I adore the cowboy-cool and carefree Irish style of Callahan, and my obsession with The Hunger Games fuels by continued interest in the lovely Primrose.

May 2011

• We welcomed Nick and Mariah’s tots, Moroccan and Monroe, and it was official: sometimes celeb baby names are just too cool for their own good.
• And, of course, the 2009 Social Security statistics came out.  I had a few things to say about that.

June 2011

• I loved the chance to write about Adair, Elettra, and Antonella – three of my favorites for girls.

July 2011

• I always choose some of the names profiled during my birthday week, and 2011 was no exception.  I considered Clark, Katniss, and Coco. 
• Then came the birth of Kate Hudson’s baby Bingham – the kind of name I end up loving because it is so rich with significance about the family.
• My favorite post of the year probably goes to this one.

August 2011

• Tina Fey’s daughter Penelope Athena joined the world, as did lots of other little Penelopes.

September 2011 

• I was mocked on Gawker.  Turns out that this is great for traffic.
• Girls Gone Child blogger Rebecca Wolfe gave her daughters the memorable appellations Reverie Lux and Boheme Shalom.
• I launched the Fetching Names names series – and it quickly became the most-commented-on series here.

October 2011

• The talented Kate at My Kids Eat Off the Floor hosted a give-away from her Etsy shop.
• Tori Spelling welcomed a daughter named Hattie Margaret.

November 2011

• Reruns started, and while some comments lamented that I wouldn’t be moving forward, I’ve really enjoyed reworking those early posts.  Four years is a long time, and some of them have changed.
• I also started relying on polls to narrow down the names to feature here.  It has been a big help for me, and they’ll be returning early in the new year.

December 2011

• One of my favorite lists in ages has to be Fetching Names: The Hermiones, Part I. I still owe you a sequel!

And that brings us to today, the very last day of the year.  It seems impossible that this could be the case, but I can hear the kids getting the noisemakers ready downstairs.

Thanks for being part of the ride!  Wishing you a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2012.

Emily, look for an email later today with details!

If you’d still like to order bookplates, don’t forget to visit Kate’s Etsy shop, My Kids Eat Off the Floor.  A great big thank you to Kate for offering the give-away, and to each and every one of you for entering!

And then a Google alert tipped me off to the reason: Appellation Mountain was being mocked on Gawker.  Traffic stopped just short of the day Lisa Belkin wrote a (super flattering, still hanging in my office) piece about the site for the New York Times’ Motherlode blog.

A few notes for those who are visiting for the first time as a result:

1. Brian Moylan – the author of the Gawker piece – is right.  He challenged the idea of referring to baby names – “It’s not like baby names are like baby teeth and they eventually fall off and are replaced with something more mature and robust. It is just a name—no qualifier necessary. This is what an adult human will one day be called.”  I agree.
2. Except that there’s no such thing as a normal name.  I’m going out on a limb and assuming that Brian and I are of an age – his name peaked in the 1970s, and I know plenty.  Brian probably answered to Brian M. at some point in his life, or corrected someone who spelled his name Bryan.  If he’d been born in the 1920s?  Brian would be downright strange.  Harold and Doris would’ve been the cool kids.
3. I quarrel with the idea that our names are our destinies.  Our names do reflect our parents’ histories and choices, and those have a tremendous impact.  But Nevaeh can grow up to be an agnostic, and Misty can grow up to be a successful district attorney.  Sure, they might answer to Neve and M. Marie by then, working with the raw material of their name to find something that fits their new identities.  But plenty of us object to receiving common names, too.  (Though it is worth noting that Nevaeh ranked #25 last year, and Misty peaked at #40 in 1977.  They’re both Normal Names.)  Oh, and so are Aiden and Jayden.  Some day my dentist or the mechanic for my zero-emission flying car will introduce herself as Kaydence, and I hope I will have the grace to smile.
4. There are hazards to choosing an unusual name.  I don’t discount them.  But neither do I think that an unusual name is the ticket to a lifetime of misery.  We don’t suggest that parents ditch their surnames if they happen to contain a mock-worthy syllable.  (I went to college with a nice guy surnamed Butkovic, who gamely insisted that the “t” was silent.)  Even giving your kid a Top Ten name doesn’t guarantee that it will be trouble free.  (Think Brian/Bryan.)  The pool of given names is deeper than ever before, and that’s not a fleeting trend.  Even the absent dad in “A Boy Named Sue” had his reasons.  No parent thinks, “What will set my precious new child up for a lifetime of unhappiness?  Floyd?  Okay, I’ll call him that.”
5. I don’t do snark.  I’m no saint, but I’m really not comfortable with a certain dismissive tone that assumes I’m right.  The world is vast, and my experience can only ever be my own experience.  You can choose a name that makes my toenails curl up in my All Stars, and you can still be a perfectly decent person.

Back to the article that started all the kerfuffle: do I think you should name your daughter Florida?  Not especially.  I think there was a moment when Florida glittered with all sorts of attractive qualities, just like Georgia and Carolina do today.  But I do think that dismissing it is equally foolish.  It’s a real name, worn by real people – for perfectly valid reasons, the same reasons that put names like Brooklyn and Savannah in the Top 100.

So thanks for the traffic, Gawker.  And if you’re really into names – either because you’re naming a kiddo/fictional character/ficus of your own, or because you have an irrational obsession with all things onomastic, stick around.

Image via Wikipedia

If you’ve emailed me lately, you might have been disappointed to hear nothin’ but crickets in response.  I’ve been quiet because, frankly, my email is at fail.  Wait, make that flail – I am officially at the point where the number of Baby Name of the Day requests far exceeds my ability to respond.

At the same time, the content at AppMtn is aging – I wrote about Harper, for example, in June of 2008 – before the explosion of celebrity kids named Harper.

Add in an urge to write different kinds of posts – more lists, more articles – and it was starting to feel like a perfect storm.  I’d just about scheduled myself right into the last page of my day planner – January 2012 – and it just didn’t feel quite right.

So, a few changes are ahead between now and the end of the year:

• A new series debuts this Thursday.  They’re short lists of names focused on a particular category.  I’ve usually profiled some of the names in the past, but others are likely to be new.  Tune in later this week to see.
• Beginning in November, I’m going to revise a previously posted name every Thursday.
• I’m going to take new names requests – pretty much everything from July 2011 forward – and put them into polls for you, lucky readers, to select the Monday and Wednesday names going forward.  I’ll probably still choose most of the Friday names directly from requests, based on the requested names that seem to be getting a lot of attention.  The first poll will appear on October 8.

It sounds like an awful lot of change, and in some ways it is.  You’ll still see a Baby Name of the Day post 4 out of 5 days of the week.  The Sunday Summary stays as is, at least after I’m finished with this lengthy explanation.  And who knows?  I started writing Baby Names of the Day on a whim and I remain astonished at how it has grown, so I’m open to the idea of change and growth.

Now, just a few irresistible notes from around the blogosphere this week:

• Isadora mentioned Carnelian the other day – I love it, especially with the nickname Neely;
• Mer de Noms profiled the names of all five Duran Duran members’ kids.  Then noted that she’d gotten the idea from her dad’s CD collection.  Je suis old, but I still love John Taylor’s daughter’s name: Atlanta;
• Could the baby in this picture be any cuter?  Better yet, her name is Enid, mentioned in Waltzing More than Matilda’s series about babies born on (Australian) Father’s Day;
• Nancy mentioned the Morlok quadruplets – Edna, Wilma, Sarah, and Helen.  At first glance, they just seem like four names current in the year 1930, but it turns out their initials honor the hospital where they were born: Edward W. Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan;
• Alcide and Godric both made Nymbler’s Top Five debut names in August.  I kind of love that medieval legend hero vibe for a son.  It could be a lot to wear, but with Tristan gone mainstream, maybe not.

That’s all for this week!  I hope you’ll stick around as I change and re-arrange things.  And if I owe you an email response?  I’ll do my best to get to you soon.

Referee by Avinash Kunnath via Flickr

As some of you have noticed, the Boys’ Semi-Finals have been riddled with controversy.  It’s due to pure human error on my part – somehow, I jotted down the wrong winner in a Quarter-Finals match:  Nathaniel won, but I advanced Tobias to the next round.

I’ve been puzzling over what to do ever since Patricia alerted me to the problem.

The two obvious possibilities are:

1. Retract the original poll and issue a new one, pitting Archer against Nathaniel, as it should have been, even if it means that occasional visitors’ original votes are discarded;
2. Continue as is, with Tobias remaining in the Semi-Finals.  After all, referees make bad calls in sports all the time, and once the game is done, well … the game is done.

The first case requires rejecting hundreds of votes already cast, while the second scenario shortchanges fans of Nathaniel.

But then I thought of a third option, and it is the one I’m going to take.

While basketball is, necessarily, limited to two teams, March Madness Baby Names is not bound by court size.  So I’m going to let both the Semi-Final polls continue as they are, but the Boys’ Finals will have three, rather than two, contestants: the winner of Archer v. Tobias, the winner of Finn v. Cian, and Nathaniel.

It’s an imperfect solution – the perfect solution is, of course, a souped-up DeLorean and a healthy supply of plutonium.

My apologies for the confusion, and thank you for your patience.  March Madness has been great fun for me, and I hope one bad call by the ref doesn’t put you off the idea entirely!

The Boys’ Finals will post around 1:00 AM my time on Saturday morning, and I do hope you’ll come back and vote for your favorite of three!

Moving Boxes by loyaldefender2004 via Flickr

If you read Namberry Picks: Twelve Best Disney Names, you’ll have heard the Big News.

Starting Monday, January 17, part of the Appellation Mountain Sunday Summary is moving to Nameberry, zipping through cyberspace to arrive on Monday.

The Sunday Summary will still appear here; in fact, if you check them out here on Sunday, you’ll get a sneak preview of what’s coming up on Monday at Nameberry.  Think of it as Part I with a cliffhanger and a can’t-miss Part II.

Thanks to Pam and Linda, as always, for the opportunity, and for creating such a welcoming space for name junkies everywhere.

Peace dove graffiti in Madrid, Spain; Image via Wikipedia

I am endlessly fascinated by baby names, probably because I am endlessly fascinated by people – by our history, our beliefs, our cultures.  We reveal an awful lot in the names we choose for our children.

Despite the initial sense that baby names are a light and fluffy subject, at least once a week I pause and realize that I’m on thin ice.  Do I mention that Claus has Nazi overtones?  Do I declare that Marisa is hopelessly passé?  (I did, and I regret it.)

But I hear the ice crackle when I talk about race, religion, and ethnicity.  How to address the fact that Dante, a classic Italian heritage name, has been adopted by African American parents, often respelled to Donte or Dontay?  And let’s not even start with the complexities of Cohen.

Message boards and comment sections turn ugly – sometimes really ugly – when terms get thrown around.  From WASPy to ghetto, it doesn’t matter if the term implies that you’re a have or a have-not; when it comes to comments, we all have thoughtless and thin-skinned moments.

It would be absolutely false to deny that our choices of names aren’t impacted by race, class, religion, and dozens of other lifestyle factors, all of which can be difficult to discuss.  In the real world, no one will dare tell you that Mal’a'Kyhi is a needlessly tortured name for your son.  (They’ll wait until you’ve left the room before declaring that your son is doomed to life as a fast food fry jockey.)  Or that your daughter Gertrude will hate you by grade six, beloved grandmother’s name or no.  (Couldn’t you spell it the right way? Why wouldn’t you choose a normal name?)

It’s not fun to hear, but I do think it is better to know than not.  If you Google your child’s name – here’s a Sunday Summary that mentions Zaphyn that I think of often -  chances are you’ll find the good, the bad, and yup, some of the ugly.

All of this is a round-about way of saying this: I don’t have a formal comments policy.  I don’t delete comments because a descriptive term will potentially be offensive.  (There’s a line, but I’ll defer to the Supreme Court’s definition of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”)  Most of the time, I think we all do a good job of recognizing that we’re discussing real people, and that real people are often giving their honest, top-of-the-head reactions.

To sum up: comments are great.  I’m always delighted when I see a first-time comment waiting for approval in the queue.  And I notice when the regulars are not around for a while.  Please comment with a generous spirit, and please read the comments with a degree of generosity towards our fellow man.  Er, moms.

You can find this on my About page as “A Comment on Comments.”

Or I thought I did.  When I counted up the list, I came up about a dozen short.  If you spot an omission, please leave a comment!