It’s a little bit of a riddle: how do you name your kid after yourself without actually naming your kid after yourself?
Recent weeks have given us two stand-out examples.
Paris Hilton, who used to say she planned to name a future daughter London, instead welcomed son Phoenix Barron Hilton Reum with husband Carter Reum.
A few weeks earlier, Ireland Baldwin announced that she’d name her first child – and the first grandchild for Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger – Holland.
The famous women aren’t the first to take this approach. Maybe you’ve known a Violet named for a Rose.
But it’s a good approach. So good, in fact, that I added the possibility to this list of Creative Honor Names. It started with nine ideas, grew to ten, and now is up to twelve! I’m sure there are more …
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This “How I Named My Baby” is another in the category of naming your baby after yourself without naming your baby after yourself. He’s Bret. His twin brother is Bart, both named after characters from the 1960s television Western Maverick. And so Bret’s son ended up being … why, Maverick, of course. (This name is everywhere lately. It came up in last Tuesday’s newsletter, too! And I’ll admit that I’ve done a 180 on my opinion of the name since starting this site in 2008.)
Somehow Laura’s list of New-Old Nickname names feels like it fits here. She’s focused on Cal, Mac, Kit, and Wes – four names that yes, I’m hearing more and more. But are there others that fit into that category? And is this the masculine equivalent of Birdie, Goldie, and Nellie?
Nancy recently attempted to calculate an all-Canada popularity list. Nothing shocking in her results, but I appreciate the math.
Swistle says it perfectly. (She always does.) “This is one of the most useful things about feedback, I think: not that the feedback itself is helpful, but that our REACTIONS to the feedback can tell us what we really wanted to hear.” More good advice in this post.
This is from way back in 2008, but it surfaced during the Super Bowl, and I just love it too much not to share it (again): NFL Players Whose Names Sound Vaguely Dickensian, and The Characters They Would Be In An Actual Dickens Novel. I mean … given my lack of football knowledge, I completely believe that Will Witherspoon and Otis Grigsby stepped right out of a lesser-known Dickens tale.
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