Image via Wikipedia
He’s a famous fictional newscaster’s mother – and son.
Thanks to Kelly for suggesting Avery as our Baby Name of the Day.
Baby Name of the Day: Avery
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Tag Archives: Christopher
Baby Name of the Day: Corinne
c32 by Too Far North via Flickr
It’s one of those names that seems perfectly ordinary, expected even – but you probably don’t know more than one.
Thanks to Carey for suggesting her daughter’s name as our Baby Name of the Day: Corinne.
Baby Name of the Day: Montserrat
Starbaby News: B is for Bowen
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees crowd-sourced the name for his second son via Twitter. His requiements? The name had to start with B, as in wife Brittany and firstborn Baylen Robert. And, preferably, it had to be different – not in any baby name book.
The name they picked? Bowen Christopher. New baby arrived on Tuesday. Congratulations to the family.
My reaction to the name? Bowen appeals to me far more than Baylen, and I can see it catching on. What are your thoughts?
Baby Name of the Day: Newton
Sir Isaac Newton, Image via Wikipedia
He was fairly common in the nineteenth century. But today, with surnames and place names so in favor, why is no one using this brainy choice for their sons?
Thanks to Sara A. for suggesting Newton as Baby Name of the Day.
Sunday Summary: 8/22/10
Please tell me that I’m not the only person who watched My Fake Fiance, the first pairing of Melissa Joan Hart and Joey Lawrence? It was raining, the baby was fussy … wait, never mind. Someone else must’ve tuned in – enough of us for ABC Family to greenlight a new original series called Melissa & Joey. The series premiered this week, and this time I didn’t watch. But I did Google enough to learn that Joey is a manny to Mel’s orphaned niece and nephew. The boy is called Ryder and the girl? Her name is Lennox! The actress playing Lennox is named Taylor, so maybe Lennox isn’t so outrageous. Plus, there’s the china. And a very minor Agatha Christie character was a girl called Lenox Tamplin. But if this one starts appearing embroidered in pink, it’ll be a surprise.
Speaking of character names:
- Jason Bateman plays Wally in The Switch. The cute kid answers to Sebastian, but that’s a solid Top 100 pick these days. Will Bateman breathe new life into Walter and Wallace?
- The Nanny McPhee sequel gives us kids called Norman, Megsie, Vincent, and their London cousins Cyril and Celia. The young actors’ names are interesting, too – Asa Butterfield played Norman, and Eros Vlahos played Cyril. Aggie – the baby from the first Nanny McPhee flick – also features in the plot, though she’s all grown up. In the 2005 movie, Aggie was played by twins named Hebe and Zinnia. That’s quite a pair!
While we’re on the subject on sibsets:
- This month’s issue of Real Simple featured an office makeover for a mom of five girls: Tabatha, Mabel, Annabelle, Evalyn, and Rachael, plus baby boy Leo;
- Babynamelover brings us a great set of TWELVE from the Telegraph: The birth announcement for Florentina Emilie revealed that she’s a sister for Georgina, Christopher, Charlie, Clementina, Gabriella, Montgomery, Cordelia, Angelina, Seraphina, Decima, and Delphine. I love that they used Decima for baby #10;
- Nameberry explored celeb sibsets that tend towards the quirky and creative. Tamerlane, Kansas, and Judah for a girl make the lists.
Elsewhere online:
- Names for Real spotted a Prairie Taylor. Muppet aside, I stand by my comments from the post about Meadow – this is one nature name I thoroughly enjoy;
- Here’s an intriguing smoosh: Sebastiane spotted a Hannabeth in Alabama;
- There’s a fascinating analysis by Nancy on Strong Names/Weak Names for boys, backed up with mucho data from 2009. It’s a much more productive approach than insisting that Kelly is a boy’s name. (Except that I still think it is. In fact my new hair stylist is a guy called Kelly from Texas. But I did hair stylist, not auto mechanic or lion tamer.)
- Leelee Sobieski calls daughter Louisanna by the nickame Louie – that’s no surprise. Except that she spells it Lewi, which I don’t get.
And lastly, the name was released for Paz Vega’s third child, son Lenon, a little brother for Orson and Ava.
But here’s the important news: next week is re-run week here at Appellation Mountain. I periodically try to update posts from 2008 because, you know, time marches on. But I’ve never done so in a systematic way. So instead of a new post, look for a week’s worth of revamped, revised, and re-invigorated names.
Things get back to the normal – meaning new posts – on Monday, August 30.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
Sunday Summary: 8/16/10
Can the end of summer really be so near? It feels like just yesterday, Washington DC was digging out of the February snowstorms.
Speaking of the February snowstorms, we were at the city’s summer concert series on Friday night and we’re anticipating A LOT of November babies. One expectant mom was kind enough to tell me they’re naming their baby-on-the-way Maxwell, but mostly I’m looking forward to a pre-Thanksgiving wave of birth announcements.
Speaking of waves of BAs, there were so many Hollywood births in the past week that I’m putting them first:
- Annie Wersching, of 24 fame, welcomed a son, Freddie;
- Songwriter/producer Ryan Tedder and wife Genevieve are new parents to son Copeland Cruz;
- General Hospital’s Rebecca Herbst is now mom to three. New son Emerson Truett joins Ethan and Ella Bailey at home;
- Singer Luke Bryan also announced the birth of a son, Tatum Christopher, called Tate. Tate joins big brother Bo – Thomas Boyer;
- And the sole girl to make her debut this week was Chaplin Haddow, a daughter for Ever Carradine.
Is it me, or are gender-neutral names truly staying neutral? Conventional wisdom was that once a name had “gone girl” it would never be considered for a boy. But many of these celeb names are solidly ambiguous – and still used for sons.
Which reminds me:
- For Real Baby Names spotted a boy named Addison Alex;
- Nancy uncovers the true story of Johnny Carson’s name-changing sons: Christopher kept his name, but Kim Arthur, distressed that he was meeting so many girls with his given name, became Richard. Son Barry became Cory, apparently just because he liked it better;
- Legitimate Baby Names gives us Laine – a two-syllable feminine appellation in Estonia, but this side of the Baltic, inevitably mistaken for a respelling of single-syllable gender-neutral Lane;
- The Name Lady weighs in on whether you can honor a beloved brother by naming his niece Jacob. Well, not exactly – they want to put Jacob in the middle spot. The Name Lady says yes, and for once, I find her answer absolutely wonderful and agree completely;
- But if you want to be sure your son is all boy? For Real reports that Georgia parents went with Remington Colt for their little gunslinger. In the same list you’ll find Dusty Phideles. Could it be a play on “Adeste Fideles,” better known in English as “O Come All Ye Faithful” – could it!?
- Equally unthinkable, brought to us from the Yahoo! Answers community – is Twitter a good name for my daughter? – via That’s Crazee;
- Babynamelover has a sweet little list of less common girls’ names that end in -a, from the exotic (Svea, Raja) to the throwback (Ida, Flora) to the new (Gala, Vega) and everything in between;
- I spotted a tweenager reading one of these books the other day and kept meaning to Google it, but Laura Wattenberg beat me to the punch – check out her post on Theodosia.
I dragged a very reluctant Aly to shop for school shoes today and was delighted to overhear a father calling out Hasting. It was in the Nordstrom’s at the Annapolis Mall – you sort of had the impression the kid might’ve been Something Hasting Something IV. It’s possible I misheard, and he was Hastings, as in the Battle of, raising the possibility that his parents are experts on the Norman Invasion.
That’s all for this week. As always, it wouldn’t be worth writing if you weren’t here. Thank you!
In Reserve: Possible Names for a Second Son
Even before the pregnancy test came back positive, I had a strong sense that our second child was a girl.
Intuition didn’t stop me from discussing boys’ names with Arthur. So much that he finally insisted that we wait until the ultrasound, at which point it was moot. Claire Caroline Wren – Clio – was on her way.
Our firstborn is Alexander Arthur, after my father-in-law Alexander, my grandfather Arthur and, of course, Arthur. There just wasn’t a clear choice for a second boys’ name. Plus, I always feel like we flubbed his nickname – though he wears Aly fine. Our list for a second daughter is well thought out, but a boy?
We would have figured something out. I think.
Sunday Summary: 3/7/10
First, thanks to Pam and Linda at Nameberry for running my guest post on Movie Award Names: Looking beyond Oscar. Lilia, Magali, Denholm, Tahar … I could’ve gone on for pages.
Speaking of winners, whilst channel surfing earlier this week, I caught an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras featuring BFFs turned rivals, Jacee and Mayce. I like Macy, but find Jaycee a touch too civic to wear. But here’s the thing – neither of those spellings immediately suggests the correct sound. I think I’d say JAH see and mace, like the weapon, except that I can guess what they’re meant to be. Maycee, sure. Jaycie, okay. But Jacee and Mayce, IMHO, fail some essential test about phonetic transparency.
Not that that’s anything new.
And of course, I watched the two-part special episode of The Office just to hear the baby’s name. Pam and Jim Halpert are now parents to Cecilia Marie. Cecilia ranked #270 in 2008, and seemed to have plateau’d. I suspect she’ll rise in 2010, because even though Nancy’s advice to Turn Off Your TV When Choosing Bad Names is sound, pop culture is powerful.
Elsewhere online:
- Momlogic posted their list of 8 illegal baby names. Most of them are international violations of various codes – I suppose you could name your baby Metallica in the US. Heck, someone probably already has;
- Speaking of illegal names and heavy metal, a bitsy Québécois baby gets to keep her umlaut. New mom Kriystal – not a typo – decided that she wanted to make #19 name Zoé more unique with a gratuitous diacritical mark. So she called her newborn babe Zöé and ran afoul of those crazy Canadian authorities who think that diacritical marks should indicate how to pronounce a name, not simply be strung on like so many Mardi Gras beads. Kriystal won, and can look forward to years of explaining to the insurance company and school registrar precisely how to spell Zöé;
- Also in Canada, parents settled on the name Porsha, but insist it isn’t for the Shakespeare or the car. The spelling Portia was dismissed because “it looked like a witch name.” Here’s hoping Porsha grows up to be a lit major and discovers that Portia is actually the quick-witted woman who saves Antonio’s life when everyone else falls short – and a worthy namesake if ever one was;
- Nancy asks how similar should twin names be? I voted, then visited the Social Security Administration’s Top 100 list of twin names. Most strike me as on the edge of being too close: Jacob and Joshua, the #1 combo, are fine. But #5 pair Taylor and Tyler, #25 pair Christian and Christopher and #75 duo Heaven and Nevaeh all seem much too much. I prefer sets like #33 Benjamin and Samuel or #35 Abigail and Emma - the names have similar styles, but it is clear that each child is an individual, not one half of novelty salt’n'pepper shakers;
- For Real Baby Names spots a lot of interesting names, but here’s one that baffles me: Gossip Anthony. There must be a story there. The girl name Loyalty Justice – also spotted this week – seems tame by comparison;
- If you prefer meaningful names with a more subtle style, Sebastiane brings us the lovely Honorine. Also the Russian Lara;
- Road trippers might appreciate this one – For Real spotted a boy saddled with the name Soul-Ryder Prescott, to be called Ryder, which isn’t so unusual. But his brother’s name? Truck;
- All of a sudden, I love Aidan. At least for this couple. Dad Daniel and mom Ailene settled on Aidan because it combines the first syllables of their names. Clever;
- Nymbler stats are out for February 2010! No surprises in the Top Ten favorite names: Charlotte, Ava, Amelia, Grace, Ella, Audrey, Oliver, Jack, Benjamin and Henry. But the four brand new names quite eye-popping:
- Siri – An intriguing twist on Sigrid and Signe, but where did she come from? I’m missing something!
- Baylor – Are there really that many Bears alumni out there? Or is this a riff on Taylor?
- Emersyn – Okay, this one isn’t a shocker. She fits with Addisyn et. al.;
- Wednesday – As in Addams?
Here’s the starbaby news, via Celebrity Baby Blog:
- Country Music’s Little Big Town Band members Karen Fairchild and Jimi Westbrook are new parents to a son, Elijah Daniel;
- Jenna Elfman welcomed a second son, Easton Quinn Monroe, a little brother for Story Elias;
- Joey Lawrence welcomed new daughter Liberty Grace, a sister for Charleston;
- Keyshia Cole welcomed a son named Daniel Hiram, Jr.;
- Christina Milian and The Dream welcomed their daughter, Violet Madison;
- Jamie Oliver and wife Jools are expecting baby #4. With three daughters called Poppy Honey, Daisy Boo and Petal Blossom Rainbow, well … let’s just say I am eagerly expecting their new arrival!
Drumroll please! It’s time to enter the 5th Annual Baby Name Wizard 2009 Baby Name Pool! Guess three fastest rising and three fastest falling names and win bragging rights. Serious bragging rights. Entries are due April 15.
That’s all for this week – thanks for reading!
Name of the Day: Christian
Nevaeh strikes many as too religious. Ditto old school Biblical picks like Hezekiah or extreme virtue names like Prudence. But this choice is surprisingly mainstream.
Thanks to Shannon for suggesting Christian as Name of the Day.
