Um, baby names?

[javasaurus]

Gwyneth Paltrow just named her newborn son "Moses." While that isn't extrememly strange, it's certainly uncommon. Of course, she named her daughter "Apple."

Of course, neither compares to the Zappa offspring, named Dweezil and Moon Unit (who now has her own daughter, Mathilda Plum).

Anybody have thoughts on obscure or strange names? Yes, they provide a sense of individuality, but I fear it would be awfully upsetting to go to Disney World, and not be able to buy a coffee cup with my name on it.

Comments

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

and not be able to buy a coffee cup with my name on it

well, dynamic labelling technology keeps getting better so on-demand pressings will likely be the thing by the time these kids' ego grows up to become that demand.

[cozit.livejournal.com]

Heck *I* can't get things with my name on it. Could only *very* rarely even manage the nickname that I grew up with... Now's a bit better in the nickname department :-)

And I don't even have that unusual a name.

(hmm... and of my kids, one can, of both names, the other can't... even though we've met at least 10 others with her name so far.)

[blueeowyn.livejournal.com]

It depends on how strange and obscure, unique is good, bizarre tends to be less good. Having no one able to pronounce (or spell) your name (first or last) is hard when you are in school. Having hugely long names for both first AND last is pretty rough (I still resent the fact that my teacher wouldn't let kids use their commonly used nicknames when writing their names out when we had to get the whole thing correct before going out to play ... if someone thinks of himself as Bob, why make him write out Robert (esp. if his last name is Johannason)?

I have heard of people naming their kids based on 'cute' names (e.g. naming the boy Jack if the last name is Spratt), I mean do they really want their kid to grow up as a punching bag?

Then we have the 'recycled names' problem where every family in every generation has to have a Jonathon or a Georgiana (or whatever) so at any gathering you have "John, Jack, Jonnie, Toni, Jonathon, JJ, JQ, Jud, and Little John" so when you call Jonathon you get 9 people responding. I wonder if some of the kids end up feeling like "well, I guess I wasn't worth trying to find a name for me, they just recycled one of the family names" or lose that sense of uniqueness (and that isn't even looking at the person whose name was re-used).

Then we get to the spelling problems (which seem to be more likely inflicted on female children than male).
Susan, Suzanne, Suzhan, Sussan, Shuzhanne etc.
Kristopher, Christopher, Kristoffer, Cristopheur, etc.

Or the dreaded "We really wanted Gender Q and got Gender P so we modified the chosen name. For some names (Patrick/Patricia) it isn't a big deal, but can you imagine a little boy growing up as Maryce or a little girl growing up as Johna? If the parents are going to do that, they should be a little less obvious. [Yes, I know that some parents find out the gender prior to birth but not all of them do AND not all of the techs 'read' the gender correctly.]

There are a lot of perfectly reasonable names out there, why reinvent the wheel?