Happy Sunday!
First, if you’re in the path of this week’s hurricane, I’m sending safe (and dry!) thoughts your way. Since we’re traveling on Sunday, I’m drafting this early, while all the weather forecasts are rather ominous, and the earliest on-scene reports are just starting.
Of course, I can’t help but ponder hurricane names. After the devastation of Harvey – storm and Weinstein – last year, that name is set to plummet in use. I’ve been watching Florence in recent years. It re-entered the US Top 1000 this year. It nearly won this summer’s New Names Showdown. But now? A destructive storm changes the way we feel about names.
Wondering which names might be in danger during future storms? Here’s the current list.
Elsewhere online:
- Is it me, or is there just plain tons of Harry Potter news out there lately? Duana weighs in on whether this family can name their son Albus. I hope they do!
- In another fictional world of witchcraft, Netflix is rebooting Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, and this time? It looks dark. Creepy, even. Will we see an uptick in girls named Sabrina?
- Oh, BNOG. (That’s Boy Names On Girls.) It’s a controversial topic. And it’s tempting to draw hard, bright lines. Thou shall not. Except. Names are fluid. My take? The problem isn’t that we sometimes use conventionally masculine names for our daughters. The problem is why we feel that’s an appealing choice – and why we find the opposite idea so undesirable. My sense is that this is changing – though Laura Wattenberg, so knows the data better than anyone, disagrees.
- Which reminds me: really hoping they get to name their son Ambre.
- Dolly, Delphine, Dorothy and back to … Dolly again! Shona Sibary talks about how she struggled to name her youngest daughter. Her older kids are Flo, Annie, and Monty. I don’t think that’s a huge switch, though, is it? Dolly is a traditional nickname for Dorothy, and it shares lots of sounds with Delphine. It would be tough to choose between them!
- Would you ever give your child a middle initial, instead of a name? If you’re reading this, guessing that your answer is no! But I’ve heard it a few times recently, including this birth announcement for Christine Lakin’s new son, Baylor B. The B comes from his grandmother, Barbara. Love that it honors family! But I could never resist a second full name …
- While we’re looking at celebrity BAs, I think it’s time to add Navy to my annual trendwatch.
- A Robert Frost poem for name lovers. Warning: I teared up reading this!
- No matter how you feel about the Miss America pageant, I suspect you’ll appreciate the gorgeous given name of this year’s winner, Nia Imani Franklin.
- Bring back Edmund, and the rest of the Hardcore Gent names.
- From the wayback machine:
- Last year: 20 British Baby Names American Should Steal. Some of these are filtering into wider use in the US, but they’re really too great to ignore.
- In 2016: Word Names Beginning with S. Some very good options!
- In 2015: Looking for a relatively unusual girls’ name, rich with meaning, but not too fussy or elaborate? Alma might belong on your list.
- The wicked stepsisters get all the good names!
- I think there’s value in the conversation about which surname to use, or whether to start fresh. (Though I’ll admit that even though I try to go judgment-free on names, I’m not sure I’d like to be known as Nixie Pixie Starbright.)
That’s all for this week! As always, thank you for reading – and have a great week.
The Robert Frost poem is beautiful, thanks for sharing!
I feel like the woman who kept changing her child’s name could have just nicknamed her child Dolly? Those names are all so close together!
Wow, that poem! Thank you for sharing!
“Name children some names and see what you do.”
This comment may be rather lengthy, so my apologies in advance. I wanted to comment on a couple of things in this week’s summary. A middle initial instead of a name: the most famous example comes from our 33rd president, Harry S Truman. It seems his parents couldn’t decide on a middle name for him when he was born. After struggling with this for over a month, they settled on the letter ‘S’, honouring both grandfathers (Solomon Young and Anderson Shipp Truman).
I could not resist reading the Robert Frost poem, ‘Maple’. I think there may be more profundity there than one can comprehend on a first reading. Nonetheless, I could identify with Maple– searching in vain for the meaning of her name, the meaning of her existence. That was me. And, like her, I could not find any satisfactory answer until I found someone who overwhelmed me with love and brought me a new name:’Amanda’– whose meaning, ‘she must be loved’, I immediately understood.