Table of Contents
Name-inspired news and notes for your Sunday reading.
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Happy New Year!
Did you have to wait to use your favorite name?
A mom I know recently welcomed a daughter – not her first baby, or even her first daughter. The name they chose? Was the one her husband had absolutely rejected for their firstborn.
Somehow, over the course of a couple of kids and, well, life, he mellowed on the name. It went from a hard no to a maybe to a … yeah, this is probably our last kid. Let’s use your favorite name.
I love name stories like this. So often, we have favorites that got away, the choices that we’ll never get to use. But sometimes, every once in a while, the stars align and that oft-passed-over name fits our new baby exactly.
And who doesn’t love a moment when everything comes together better than we’d ever hoped?
Finds From Last Week
Any Nashville Predators fans out there? Ozzy Wiesblatt just made his NHL debut. His story caught my eye for SO many reasons. First, ice hockey. Second, Ozzy’s parents are both deaf. (My daughter just finished another semester of ASL, and we’re fortunate enough to live in an ASL-friendly part of the world.) And lastly? The family includes five children: sons Ocean, Orca, Ozzy, Oasiz, and daughter Oceania. Ozzy’s intro video is all kinds of amazing, and I’m adding their mom. Kim White, to my list of heroes. With so much to talk about, it seems like no one has asked about their wild, wonderful names!
Welcome Lyric, Paisley, Psalm, and Fallyn! What caught my eye about this story, besides the whole quadruplets-who-are-actually-two-sets-of-identical-twins thing? The couple chose four names, but rather than assigning them to baby A, B, C, and D, they wrote all four names on slips of paper, and chose randomly as each baby was delivered. I know parents of multiples struggle with how to assign names. Maybe random chance is helpful, even with twins?
I stumbled on this set of predictions from 2014. Friendly reminder that name trends are very, very hard to predict. Even statistical models with plenty of academic rigor were wrong about nearly everything. Adele and Lavinia? Nope. Not the next big thing.
Updating & Thinking About
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Sylvie is one of those names that makes all the sense in the world, and is absolutely catching on. I’ll never forget the first time I heard it IRL.
Lillian finally got a post, mostly because I was re-reading Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk for the New Year’s holiday.
Enoch fascinates me. It’s kind of like Ethan-meets-Knox, so it could catch on, just like Ezra and Ezekiel and Isaac and so many other Old Testament finds. But somehow? Enoch doesn’t quite roll off my tongue. And it remains in style limbo … which might actually be a good things for parents seeking something truly distinctive. (Plus Eno/Enno could be a fun nickname …)
Looking to talk over your naming decision? My calendar is updated through the end of January! Find a time to chat here.
That’s all for this week. As always, thank you for reading – and have a great week!
I just read an article about Ozzy Weisblatt and his amazing mom! Very interesting names indeed. I wonder if mom chose them based off of how nice they look when they are signed? Or maybe based off of ease to sign? Super interesting! I think Ozzy’s name is my favorite of the bunch.
I was thinking about that too! They seem way too close for me . . . Ocean and Oceania are practically the same name. But if their mom was born deaf, she might not realize how close they sound. It makes me really think about how someone who won’t hear their kids’ names would pick them.