Baby Name of the Day: Azalea

Flowers of the George Lindley Taber variety of...

Image via Wikipedia

It’s another botanical option from the ever-expanding list of Nature Names parents are considering for their children.

Thanks to Elizabeth for suggesting one she’s considering for her baby on the way.  Our Baby Name of the Day is Azalea.

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Sunday Summary: 7/24/11

Number 24

Image by Thristian via Flickr

We’re having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave, here in Washington DC.  It is my birthday week, which means I’ll exert slightly more influence over the name choices than usual.  Happily, many of you were good enough to request names that I was longing to write about anyhow … definitely, the greatest gift!

On to the name news:

  • I loved this list at Nameberry of clunky cool names: Agatha, Ruth, Otto, Leon.  I’m hearing these in metro Washington DC, and many of you are considering using them.  Something tells me a few of these are ready for their comeback moment;
  • But maybe the best part of the post was a comment from Jenny, borrowing a term from J.K. Rowling to suit our purposes – if we are “name nerds” then surely the rest of the world is made up of “name Muggles” … right?
  • For Real spotted a boy named Kelci.  And a girl called Collins.  Interesting;
  • Waltzing More Than Matilda caught an Australian morning show spot on a family with three daughters: Lily, Scotia, and Sappho.  I’m especially intrigued by Scotia, the Latin name for Scotland;
  • Back to 1840 with British Baby Names!  Elea unearthed a boy called Story, and a girl called Arthurina, plus another girl named Crisany.  Actually, the entire list is just plain fascinating;
  • Swistle asks about the name Cozette, with the possible nickname Cozy.  My take?  I agree with many of the comments.  Cosette is surprising and stylish, no matter what nickname you use.  Cozette is a little much;
  • This list at Daddy Types of kids’ names spotted at the Enterprise, Utah Rodeo has me fascinated.  Want to raise a kiddo who knows his way around a horse, or who takes top honors at the chicken chasing contest?  Kanton, Kelby, Larami, Brek, Tanzee, Ramzi, Macardi, and Carli Jo all seem like safe bets.

Over on my Facebook page, I raised the question of whether there are certain traditional male names that you only like in their full, not-nicknamed forms.  A long list of replies followed.  I was thinking of Douglas, but also Stephen/Steven, a name that appears in my Monday post for Nameberry.

On to news from the famous:

  • Maternity concierge and reality star Rosie Pope dished on her own kids’ names to Name Candy.  I love that both boys’ middles reflect streets where they’ve lived – Roderick and Reade.  Should they have a future child that means that their current address – Madison – is in the running for a middle;
  • Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner welcomed the regally named Arabella Rose;
  • Maya Rudolph welcomed son Jackson Wright, a little brother for Pearl Bailey and Lucille.

One last note for this week: I have a long, long list of unanswered requests for Baby Name of the Day posts.  I’m been looking at my Fall/Winter calendar carefully – the truth is that the number of requests now far exceed the number of days in the year, and at the same time, I have a few different kinds of posts I’d like to add into the rotation.

So … not quite sure how it will all shake out, but I appreciate your patience.

As always, thank you for reading and have a great week!

Baby Name of the Day: Heather

Heathers

Image via Wikipedia

She’s a botanical choice from a few decades back, once so popular that Winona Ryder went to high school with three of them.

Thanks to Kelly for suggesting Heather as our Baby Name of the Day.

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Baby Name of the Day: Violet

Violet pansies

Violet pansies; Image via Wikipedia

She’s a vintage botanical in full bloom circa 2011.

Thanks to Heather for suggesting Violet as our Baby of the Name.

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Baby Name of the Day: Linda

Linda McCartney

Linda McCartney; Image by Antoon's Foobar via Flickr

She skyrocketed from obscurity to the #1 spot in the US.

Thanks to Kelly for this suggestion.  With a happy birthday to Nameberry co-founder Linda Rosenkrantz, our baby name of the day is Linda.

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Sunday Summary: 5/15/11

Door Number 15

Door Number 15 by cogdogblog via Flickr

Since I’ve starting writing AppMtn, I’ve learned that I can usually tell you why a name rose – hindsight is 20/20 – but I cannot tell you, with any certainty, which names will make the US Top 1000 in the year 2020.

I can say, with some confidence, that the majority of the names in the Top 100 will likely still be there in another decade.  It takes years for popular names to wane: Jennifer reached #1 in 1970, but didn’t leave the Top 100 until 2009.  Jason reached #2 in 1972, and he still came in at #69 last year.

The Freakonomics 2015 predictions at Baby Name Garden reflect the power of momentum.  It is easy to imagine that Avery and Jackson would rise, but nearly impossible to guess which names would enter the Top 1000.  They identified stylish choices like McGregor and Eleanora – not bad for baby naming rookies – but it takes more than that to make a popular name.  There’s also this Business Insider article, suggesting that Griffin and Adele are among the ones to watch.

So I’m always in awe of the annual po0l winners at Baby Name Wizard.  They seem to have a crystal ball, or maybe just a really sharp sense of how trends impact statistics.

Elsewhere online:

In starbaby news:

  • Alicia Silverstone almost managed to take the focus off Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon’s twins by issuing a birth announcement of her own.  Alicia’s cub was named Bear Blu;
  • Except not really, because Nick Cannon gave an interview explaining the names and insisting “I think we did a good job on the names. They ain’t gonna be mad at us when they grow up.”  Okay.  I hope so, too;
  • Kings of Leon’s Matthew Followill is a new dad to son Knox Cameron Patrick;
  • How did I miss this?  David Boreanaz and wife Jamie had everyone talking when they named their daughter Bardot Vita.  Only they never called her Bardot.  They call her Bella, and apparently have made the change legally, too.  (Though it looks like they added Bella, so she’s Bella Vita Bardot.)  Hat tip to M for mentioning it on the Nameberry post about Modern Hero Names.

Last week at Nameberry was all about names borrowed from the labels of kids’ designers.  This week I’m off in a different direction.   Think fjords + comic books + popcorn + the ancient world.

That’s all for this week.  As always, thanks for reading and have a great week!

Reader Baby Name Story: She Picked Her Own Name

Sasha LilyMy name is Courtney and this is the story about my daughter who is now eight months old.  Her name is Sasha Lily.

I had a girl’s name picked out years before I even got pregnant.Adelaide Helena. It’s so completely regal and seems like she could be a character in Canterbury Tales or a busty role-playing woman at the yearly Renaissance Festival. I was dead set and often found myself doodling the name Adelaide on pieces of paper absentmindedly. The boy name that I had picked out was Oscar Seamus, but that became irrelevant.

I found myself pregnant about three years before I was planning on trying to conceive a first child, and for the first few weeks, I thought of the baby as Adelaide. I tried it out with her last name, Adelaide Brown. It sounded good enough, but suddenly I couldn’t get past the ‘laide’ at the end of the sentence (it means ‘ugly’ in French.) Then I thought my boyfriend wouldn’t like it. Then I thought it sounded too weird. Then I didn’t think it sounded like my baby. Then I just plain didn’t like it at all.

So I went months without a baby name picked out. If you combined all of the hours that I spent on baby name websites reading and re-reading the top 1000 lists (I wouldn’t pick anything in the top 100 names for 2009), editing my favorites, asking questions on message boards, tossing and turning in bed trying out different combinations, trying to convince myself that Violet Brown didn’t sound too bad.. it would probably equal out to an entire week without sleeping.

My criteria were difficult to work with. Her last name, Brown, limited my first names to nothing with one syllable, nothing that is a noun, nothing that is a color, nothing that could be an adjective, nothing starting with B. As her middle name, I was dead set on Alanna to honor her late paternal grandfather, Alan, because I thought it would be extremely important to my boyfriend even though my grandmother, Glenda, had just passed away when I was about 20 weeks pregnant. I changed Alana to Alanna because the word ‘anal’ just stares at me whenever I look at the name. Alanna as a middle name also limited first names to nothing ending in ‘A.’ Between the no color/nature names, and nothing ending in ‘A,’ 3/4ths of my favorites list had been nixed before even consulting with my boyfriend.

Ultimately, I had narrowed down my list for first names when I was about, oh I don’t know, 9 months pregnant:

  • Ivy Alanna (I loved this so much!)
  • Noelle Alanna (Too much ‘L’)
  • Coralie Alanna (Boyfriend pronounced this as Cor-AL-lee.. nixed)
  • Juliette Alanna
  • Lorelei Alanna (also too much ‘L’)

Around the time that I was 36 weeks, my boyfriend suggested a name. “How about Lily?” I was horrified! I have always LOATHED and been disgusted with my first name because it is overly-cutesy, trendy, and over-popular.

Alas, the only two cents that baby daddy had to put in was suggesting a name in the exact popularity slot as my first name. Ugh. Besides that, Lily Alanna was just way too much ‘L’. I seem to have that problem a lot.

While half-way fuming about the only name he suggested and half-way trying to find a way to make it work somehow in her name, I googled lilies to see what they looked like. The first picture that popped up was a beautiful bright orange lily, my late-grandmother’s favorite color and coincidentally the same flower that I had picked off of her casket at her funeral before we buried her. It made me cry.

As I thought about it, all of the perks to the name Lily kept flowing. My 9-year old sister had suggested lily, my boyfriend had suggested lily, Lily is also a Harry Potter name, it’s a nature name, and it would balance out whatever crazy first name I eventually would pick, assuming my boyfriend would let me.

Lily became her middle name and a whole new universe of first names opened up to me! Mostly just names ending in a: Tabitha, Cora, Nora, Matilda, Alaia, Isla, Cambria, Leyna, Nona, Clara, it was mind-boggling. It was also mind boggling to my boyfriend why I couldn’t just picked a ‘regular’ name, as in something in the top 10 most popular.

I have never been a fan of the name Sasha on a girl, but for some reason it jumped out to me and for some reason I knew my boyfriend with his limited taste in names would approve it.

I never talked to him about the name and suddenly at 37 weeks my water broke and the baby was born that night. We sat in the hospital for 2 days without a name because I was too afraid of having Sasha rejected. I worked up the guts and surprisingly, we both agreed on it. Sasha Lily. It isn’t the kind of name that I would like at all. I wouldn’t have picked this. My boyfriend wouldn’t have picked this. I’m convinced that my baby named herself from the womb, because her name fits her to a ‘t!’

Afterwards, I did have name regret. I saw the looks on people’s faces when I announced her name and couldn’t stand the questions like, “So what made you decide on Sasha..?” I went back over my lists thinking about what I should have chosen. Something more common like Audrey, maybe Caroline. Something that actually fits my taste in names. I felt it necessary to add that I don’t really like her name when talking to people about names. I was embarrassed.

I’m finally warming up to it now though. Actually, I  love it now. The look on Sasha’s face when she answers to her name makes everything make sense. She picked her own name.

Thank you for sharing, Courtney!  You’ve done a great job of illustrating the differences between the names that we love, and the names that we actually use.  It can be surprising what a gap exists between the two!  And Sasha Lily is a great name – feminine and sparky, unexpected but not in an outlandish way.  And what a cutie!

Baby Name of the Day: Humphrey

Screenshot of Humphrey Bogart from the trailer...

Image via Wikipedia

From a ninth century monk to a 21st century television show, with pit stops in Hollywood and the White House, this name has history aplenty.

Thanks to Paul for suggesting our Baby Name of the Day: Humphrey.

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Sunday Summary: 2/13/11

Clio + Aly, February 2011

I took the kids to get their hair cut at our local Cartoon Cuts, which isn’t local at all – it requires a drive on the Beltway to Rockville Pike.  While the kids were being coiffed, I flipped through a rack of personalized hair barrettes.  The selection included the predictable Emma and Elizabeth, but also some out-there picks like Ayriel, Divany, and DarleneAriel has been in the Top 100 as recently as 1992, so okay.  But Ayriel?  Are there faithful salon customers with those names who buy a set every six weeks?

It was a good week for unusual name spotting.  Over on the Facebook page, I mentioned seeing a boy called Sovereignty in the local media, and Sarah spotted a bride-to-be on Say Yes to the Dress called Duvae.  Get this: the parents chose it so she “would be a comfort in their lives.”  Hokay.

Beyond Sovereignty and Duvae, there’s been another round of chatter about unusual names – are they over in Hollywood, are they anything new, and so on.  I’ll round up a few of the articles at Nameberry tomorrow.

In the meantime:

Amongst the fashionable and famous:

One more thing: from time to time, I have a question about the site’s direction, and it would be really helpful to get readers’ opinions before I make a decision and put anything live here.  So I’m forming a tiny little AppMtn Advisory Board.  (Dare I call you the Mounties?)  If you’re willing to get a VERY occasional email from me, please let me know by sending me a message at appmtn (at) gmail (dot) com.  I truly value your feedback, and it would be fun to get it before I try new things every once in a while.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a diehard lurker, occasional visitor, or regular commenter – just drop me a line, and you’re in the club!

That’s all for this week.  As always, thanks for reading, and have a great week!

Baby Name of the Day: Lucinda

L21

L21 by Too Far North via Flickr

She’s a literary elaboration of Lucia.  In the Age of Isabella, here’s one that would wear quite well on a daughter.

Thanks to Jennie, aka British American, for suggesting Lucinda as our Baby Name of the Day.

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