Image by origamidon via Flickr
This week has flown past! I’ll save the celebrity baby name news for my column at Nameberry tomorrow.
Here’s what caught my eye this week:
- Nook of Names reached the letter L on her surname list. There are a few here that I think could really catch on, more likely for girls: Langley, Larkin, and Linley/Lindley;
- Then there’s Amasa, the kind of name you’ll stumble across in baby name books, but that no one is using. Or really ever has …
- Nancy mentioned a couple who named their son for the many destinations they’d visited on their honeymoon. Including Newark. I like the idea of using a name from a honeymoon location well enough, but maybe there’s something more subtle than just putting the place name on the birth certificate;
- Speaking of a lack of subtlety, could an English footballer actually be considering the name Haribo for a child? Haribo, the German candy company best known for Gummi Bears, is a global powerhouse. The brand name comes from the father and son Hans Riegel of Bonn.
Now, since I’m leaving the celebrity babies for Monday, a comment on a controversy: Dorcas surfaced the idea of claiming names, as previously discussed on Nameberry. In general, I tend to think the idea of claiming names is pointless, save for a very few specific circumstances – like, your name is Amasa Gilroy Buchanan III and passing down your unusual name is a long-stated desire. But I also think a lot of good can come of openly discussing your name choices – at least once you’re expecting, and it is no longer about claiming your most favoritest name in the world, but ordering embroidered baby blankets.
And so I’m curious: did you tell others your child’s name ahead of time? If so, do you regret it? If not, why did you choose to keep it under wraps – or was it because you weren’t quite sure?
I’d love to hear your thoughts! Please leave a comment, and as always, thank you for reading and have a great week!
How is Amasa pron.? Like (ah MAY suh) or (ah MAH suh)? I have a friend who is Persian (Iranian) named Mahsa pron. (MAH suh) which means moon in persian. I’ve always thought her name was very pretty. If Amasa is pron. like Mahsa then it should be used more 🙂
The second one – MAH, not MAY. And yes, it should be used more!
We shared short lists both times – just with our parents. With our second (boy), Oliver and George stayed on our lists from beginning to end, but we were also considering stuff all over the map, searching for more inspiration – so I don’t think anyone much knew what was going on with it (even us)… We got some pretty unique reactions to sharing our daughter’s short list (just with my folks and my in laws) and that made me think twice about saying anything more to anyone else. We did get some great insight here (thanks to Abby and everyone who left a comment on names we suggested) with some of our list of names for Oliver, but then we didn’t really decide 100% on his name until he was almost 2 days old. And with Imogen, we were pretty certain we’d call her Isadora until a few weeks before her birth. So perhaps indecision was just as much a reason for not sharing as a desire for other people to keep their thoughts to themselves.
The only name we claimed was when my sister was pregnant. I reminded her that my DH would not look kindly at her using DH’s father’s name as a baby name. Since it wasn’t even close to being on her list, it wasn’t an issue.
We didn’t share our names with friends and family before our twins we’re born. Partially because I wanted to see the girls before confirming the names. (I did ask Nancy for some name suggestions, though.) We called the girls Merry and Pippin in utero and suggested some outrageous (for us) combos whenever pushed about names (Filomena and Fatima; Marilyn and Virginia). When we named them “normal” names, everyone was relieved, although my mother still wasn’t keen on our choices. She wanted Emily and Claire.
We went to Madison on our honeymoon. It didn’t make our baby name list. 😛
Our first two children weren’t named until after they were born. We didn’t share our top picks beforehand. All worked out well.
Third baby was a different story. I know you can’t really ‘claim names’ but at the end of my pregnancy we wished that we’d made it known earlier on what our chosen names were. We were having a gender-surprise baby and so were our good friends at church. We were due the same week. We had decided on a boy name and a girl name early on in pregnancy, but didn’t share them with anyone. At the end of the pregnancy I knew that our girl name fit the criteria that our friends were using for a girl name – ends in the “ee” sound. So I gave them a ‘heads up’ that “we have picked this name.” Turned out they liked the same name and they went ahead and used it.
So we had a week of upset and trying to decide if we should still use the name, right after they did. We decided we still would, but hated to think of all our mutual friends thinking “Wow, they totally stole that other couple’s baby name, right after they just used it first!” When really we had decided on it much earlier than they had. (They didn’t decide until their baby was born.)
Two other families were pregnant at the same time and they had started referring to their babies as *Name* in Facebook statuses and ultrasound photos. So we wished we’d started doing that and then perhaps the other family wouldn’t have used that same name. In the end, it turned out to be a non-issue as we had a boy, so we didn’t ‘need the name’. Though 7 months later I still feel weird using the name to refer to the other family’s baby.
We don’t have children yet but as 3 out of 4 of my siblings are married, we’ve had conversations and all agree that cousins can share names and it won’t kill anyone; one of my sisters wavers but she’s at least 5 years away from kids so there’s time 😉 I have cousins on both sides of the family named Sarah and it’s actually pretty cool. I personally feel the idea of claiming a name is kind of ridiculous. If DH and I liked a name and had important reasons for using it, it really wouldn’t matter who else in our lives had the name – neighbor, friend, nephew, etc.
I’ve had friends go in every direction with announcing the name ahead of time. One couple announced their first son’s name to friends and family before and got horrible reactions to it, so with the second son they kept mum until after he was born. Then I have friends who announced the name on Facebook (!) mere days after they found out the sex. I personally wouldn’t ever do that because I wouldn’t want to feel boxed in.
I did mention to my mom casually that we kind of like the name Lena and her reaction was “I hate all those -eena names: Regina, Lina, Wilhelmina”. Um, thanks…It’s obviously still on our short list, but it does stink knowing that one of the few names DH and I can agree on is a name my mom hates.
My in-laws did this with their first: Baby gender and name announcement like within a week of each other, on Facebook. They’re style is very trendy (it’s an -ly, -lie ending name, scheduled to arrive in December). Family has received it well. My DH and I steer more toward the traditional, even grandma style that’s gotten booed by many in the family, so there will be no early sharing when we go down that road.
I’m all for the choosing something horrible style that was poked fun of on the TV show Chuck: call the baby Grunga and everyone will be thrilled when you actually name it something normal.
P.S. I love Lena – had a wonderful neighbor named Lena growing up who took great care of me! Good luck!
We’re expecting our first child and have so far not shared our likely favorite, Conrad with anyone except as part of our “short list” that I’ve shared with friends who honestly enjoy discussing names and are way too polite to say anything negative. My mother and MIL are both very opinionated and I worry that any negative comments might make me even more wishy-washy. Until we’re settled on the name and love it 100%, I don’t feel great about sharing it. If that’s not until after he’s born, so be it.
I LOVE Conrad! Congratulations on your impending arrival 🙂
I know a boy named Landry, he would fit right in with those names.
I also met a little Havana (girl), quite like it as far as place names go – hope I’m not making a mistake, it might be a proper name. Just how I roll my eyes when people lump Paris and Milan as place names, they aren’t, at least as boy names they aren’t.
We did NOT share our baby name choices with anyone, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. We have close friends who had a baby before us, and they didn’t share her name until she was born, and I realized the value of it and decided to do the same. Before you have a baby, you could pick the most innocuous name in the world, say, Michael, and people will give you some idiot story about how their cousin’s best friend’s dogwalker once had a boyfriend named Michael who was a total douchebag. But then after you have a baby and you say his name is Michael, it belongs to a PERSON, it’s not just a hypothetical, and so people remember all the other wonderful Michaels they’ve met.
We also didn’t choose a name for her until she was born. We had a short list, and a frontrunner that ended up being her name, but we reserved the right to change it if we looked at her when she was born and it wasn’t “right.” I didn’t want a lot of stuff embroidered/painted with a name that we didn’t end up using, and I didn’t want to constantly explain that once she came out, she was less a Christine than a Rebecca or whatever, so no sharing!
I don’t believe in “name stealing” either. There are thousands of names, and thousands and thousands of people use them. Funny, the people who usually cry loudest about name stealing are the ones naming their babies Harper and Aiden.
I very much like the idea of naming after a honeymoon destination, but I do agree with you that subtelty is very important. We actually got married in Paris, hence why we did eventually decide on Genevieve for our first.
I think sharing names before the birth can be a bit of a minefield depending on who you share them with as you are likely to come across someone who doesn’t like, knew someone with that name who was awful etc. People, in my experience can be a little rude about names that aren’t their particular style (I was actually having a similar discussion this week at work, one of the women I work with has a son called Wilf!)
As for Haribo, well Joey Barton is from my neck of the woods and he’s never had the best reputation so I hope that’s an attention seeking joke!
Thanks for a great week, really enjoying the changes 🙂
Carey, I adore Corinne! It’s one of my favorites! I am a huge fan of C names for some reason, and Corinne is lovely. I am a lifelong Francophile, and it just rolls of the tongue. I don’t think its a mouthful at all! If they don’t like it, I guess they could call her Cora (my fave nickname for Corinne).
I have mentioned some names to my family and friends, but as I am not married and have no kids, I haven’t been able to “claim” any name for my own. Both my mom and my best friend have extremely different tastes from mine (BF likes unusual names, mom seems to be quite trendy), I don’t really worry about anyone stealing (in the case of my BF) my name choices.
We knew the gender for both our kids and we discussed a million names with everyone, but when it came down to the short list, we only shared with a few close friends. We especially didn’t want to share with my parents who tend to be very opinionated. They were pretty shocked by my oldest’s name (Finley) but now they can’t imagine calling him anything else. For our second, my husband had just suffered a stroke and because he has aphasia he couldn’t process names. Since we knew it was a girl and the possibilities seemed endless, I really needed to take the reins, so I spent a lot of time at Appellation Mountain and You Can’t Call It It and even enlisted Elisabeth’s help! With her help and the help of two trusted friends and some serious bargaining with the first and middle name between my husband and I we arrived at a name just before she was born. I definitely don’t regret not sharing with more people. Everyone has strong opinions before the name actually belongs to a baby and we needed to love the names ourselves first and know that even people who didn’t love it at first would come around eventually. And incidentally my parents think my daughter’s name (Corinne) is a “mouthful.” Sigh. But we love it 🙂
My great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather are both named Amasa. In their case, however, the name is pronounced ah-mah-see instead of uh-may-suh. I don’t know where that pronunciation comes from. It’s a family name, but not something that I can see us using.
I shared Phoebe’s name because, well, it was her name. We chose pretty early on, probably a few days after we knew that she was a girl. I wanted to choose early because I am a planner, and somehow, knowing and calling her by name made me feel closer to this baby inside of me, like I knew who she was. So once we were settled, it would have beem hard to refrain from calling her Phoebe in company. When we have another, I think we will do the same. I have toyed with not finding out the sex, but I don’t think I will be able to do it. Except for the element of surprise, I don’t really see the point in not sharing the name. I guess some people don’t want to hear any negative comments, but if we go a little more “out there” for the next, which we probably will, I feel like it’s my responsibility to hear the negatives BEFORE I saddle it on a child. And yes, I did and do want to “claim” the name in case any other expecting parents get any ideas!!
I shared my first son’s name ahead of time and never regretted it, but when I was pregnant with my second, I just didn’t feel like sharing most of the time, so I kept it to a minimum. After he was born, I actually wished I had shared it more. We chose an unusual name (Raynor) and although I don’t think we would have changed our minds, it would have been easier dealing with hostile family members while I was pregnant than during the hormonal postpartum period.