Sunday Summary: 19/2017

Is it summer yet? The weather has turned cool and rainy, but the calendar says it’s time to start thinking about sunscreen and beach trips. And so, here’s my latest: What’s your mermaid name? I’m Ariel Sandbar, which sounds a little bit like a mermaid accountant.

Elsewhere online:

• Oh, how I love Swistle’s comments in this post! Online forums can be tremendously helpful when you’re searching for baby names, but. They can also be snake pits. That’s the term Swistle used to describe them, and she’s so right. It’s discouraging to stumble into a forum where Every Name is Harshly Criticized.
• I’m not sure if I’ll see The Circle in theaters, but the character names are worth a scan. Emma Watson plays Mae, Tom Hanks is Eamon, and there’s a Bonnie and a Mercer, too.
• If you’re moving from Hawaii to Kansas, does your baby naming style change? Interesting Q – and good answer! – at The Name Lady.
• The weirdest part of this story isn’t that Ben Franklin once kept a pet squirrel. (Apparently, Colonial America was crawling with domesticated squirrels.) The weirdest part isn’t that he composed an elegy when his pet died. Nope, I think the weird part list his: he called his squirrel Mungo.
• One of my favorite kind of naming stories: coincidences that make names even more meaningful. The Kitchen’s Marcela Valladolid shared one about naming daughter Anna Carina. She liked the idea of naming her daughter for the novel Anna Karenina, but decided to name her daughter Anna Carina, after her sister, instead. And then she learned that her sister’s name? Was inspired by the Russian novel.
• A family name tradition that has carried over ten generations? Wow!
• Has anything like this ever happened to you? She thought she had a name chosen, but then a coincidence made her realize it wasn’t right.
• Some fascinating observations about naming pre- and post-9/11 from Baby Name Wizard. I know a handful of people born well before 2001 who had ambiguous legal names, and if I look back in my family tree, even more who passed away prior to the tightening of legal names.
• A great look at Star Wars names!
• I’m always interested to hear how families navigate naming an adopted child from another culture. This post at Sancta Nomina is packed with good ideas.

Before we close, a reminder: we expect the new, official US baby names popularity data to be released on Friday, May 12th – that’s less than a week away! I’ll be hanging out on Facebook that morning, so stop by and let’s chat about the biggest stories.

That’s all for now. As always, thank you for reading and have a great week!