Baby-name remorse
 

Baby-name remorse -- what do you do?

Not as unusual as I expected.
But it can be hazardous.And it ain't easy.I suppose it's a good thing the government makes it tough, otherwise they might be swamped with parents twisting their kids.

The only remorse we have is chickening out of really giving Thor "Trouble" as a middle name. We came soooooo close..... (he ended up with Artemus George, but Trouble George was so up there)

She's lucky. In Texas, only marital name changes can be done by mail/phone. To change a child's name, you must bring the parental consent forms to the Social Security office in person, which is obscenely crowded from January through May ("tax season," said the security guard.) I had a four-hour wait, and I got there first thing in the morning. The saddest moment came after I was finished, and I carefully wound my way through the crowd and out the main door at the very back, only to discover that there was a long line of people just waiting outside the door--I had to inform them that there was not actually a line at all, there was a little take-a-number machine just inside the doors, but that it didn't matter anyway because at this point business hours would end long before their number would ever be called.

(Edit: which is not to say I changed my own child's name out of remorse; this was a court-ordered name change for one of my stepchildren as part of the custody ruling.)

I love my brother and his wife is cool too, but they gave their new daughter an unusual name. I think when she gets older, she may end up going by her initials, like C.J. Craig on The West Wing. I can't spell out the baby's name here, because if they ever google it, they will easily find this thread. I would be busted.

The name (please don't post it in this thread anyone) is the first name of the current dali lama. A Tibetin boy's name being given to an American girl.

Ah, hell. I'll make it easy for you. Read vertically.

T
E
N
Z
I
N

Anyway, it's her name. And when I hear this name, I think of the her, so it's all cool. At least within the family, it's cool now. But I wonder what it will be like for her when she is a teenager.

When she's teenzin, they'll be teezin her.:D

It'll be just fine, Glatt. Unique names are all the rage.

Here's a female one linky

I think it's a beautiful name glatt. I can't imagine why she'd get teased any more than any other kids do for their names. I know some are worse than others, but srsly, there's not that much you can do with that name.

I actually heard T----n the other day and liked it....Of course I live in Santa Fe, land of strange names, or normal names pronounced strange,and/ or with a different spelling. My name is considered weird...Someone called for me today not knowing they would get me first try, and were obviously displeased at having to pronounce my name....It's actually easy for an odd name so it kind of doubles as an IQ test. I like it.
When I called the person the first time I repeated my name over and over along with my number for this reason..she still didn't get it.

Maybe a little edit here please? ^ Glatt asked you not to spell out Matilda and spring him to his rellies.....

Our criteria were.... not so common that everybody had one. Not so unusual that they were hard to spell. One common way to spell. (My sister's name is Christy, and I'm familiar with all the trouble stemming from variations--Christie, Kristie, Kristy, etc. etc. etc.) Initials should not spell anything embarrassing or amusing. And no names of Gilbert & Sullivan characters. (That may sound weird, but Mrs. Dallas spends a lot of time conducting G&S shows, and if we had chosen, say, Frederick, or Mabel, some people were bound to think we named the kid after the character.)

Two of my cow orkers have named their bastard male offspring "Jayden." I also saw a Kaiden announcement today.

I think all the government need to let parents know the effect of changing the baby name after age 3. It very important that they will be aware of the effects.

Thanks, monster.

and the name is just fine. I even like it. I don't want to give the impression that I hate the name. But I'm her 40 year old uncle, so my opinion doesn't matter so much. It'll be her peers that matter.

Whats the big deal?
 

The article is dead on. I was named Aimee - my brothers and sisters named me after their kindergarten teacher. I was born in Texas, and no one around had the name. We moved to Colorado when I was 8 and Aimee is extrememly popular there. It turned out to be one of the top 5 names for my year (with different spellings). I hated the fact that there were 18 Amy/Aimee/Ami's in my small high school. Its not that I hated the name - its beautiful - nor that I wanted to be soooo unique or soooo special. I just didn't want a name every one else seemed to have. I remember always having to write my full name out - because there were already other Aimee C.'s, so I had to write my entire name on every homework assignment. If you don't have an incredibly common name, you don't think about these things that really do get to be a bother. By the time I was 10, my mom offered to let me change my name. I really liked Elizabeth, and its the name my mom wanted (my dad hated that name). However I was indecisive and never changed my name. My best friend was Jennifer - and there were 26 of those in my high school. Its always a pain when talking about people with common names "hey, I'm going to the mall with Jen" "Which one?" In college I had two roommates - both named Jen. I now go by my middle name - Christine. There was only one in my high school, and she went by Chrissy. Its funny how things turn out though. After moving to the East Coast, I run into more Christine/Christina/Chrissy's than Amy/Aimee/Ami's. I've thought about going back to Aimee.
Bottom line, unless you've had an incredibly common name, don't judge parents for wanting their child to have a name that not every other kid in school has. It really is a pain.

Welcome to the Cellar, aimeecc. :D
That's an interesting perspective.

My sister's name was very common -my middle name more so. I feel your pain, aimee. That's why my children have to suffer their unusual burdens :lol:

Glatt - be assured, its a cool name. It meets the test of "not too out there" (how many people know the current Dali Lama's name anyway?), and not an item (like apple or moon), but not common. Its easily pronounced - even if you've never seen the name before. Although I had never heard it before, it did not strike me as "that's weird". Its unusual, yes, but not freakish.

Monster - thanks. My husband and I picked Miles for our son. Not many of those, and its a name that other people have been named in the past, so its not "out there". However it seems we hear Miles more now - as the secondary roles in movies that we really don't aspire our son to be (Miles in Transformers was the main characters weird friend, and Miles is the name of the assassin in Assassins Creed).
What did you name your kids?

http://cellar.org/showpost.php?p=304320&postcount=29 :D

I understand the desire to name a child something that is not common. With our first child, we went out of our way to find an old family name that wasn't in use much any more. Isabel. Even did research and saw that it was something like number 280 on the list the year before. The Spanish version, Isabella, was a little more popular but was still very rare. When we put her in preschool, there was another Isabel in her class of 15. They even have last names that start with the same letter, so initials for the last names wouldn't work either. Everywhere Isabel goes, it seems like there is another Isabel there. The only name that is more common in Arlington seems to be Emily.

For our son, we didn't try to be different. We named him Adam. There are no other Adams around. The lesson is don't bother trying to be different, just like everyone else.

This is where I usually talk about the name Susan. I think of it as a common name, but it's extremely exotic. There were something like 400 Susans born in the entire US last year.

We named our youngest Ivy, only to realize our foolishness a couple of months later when a bratty little boy in a restaurant said "like poison ivy?"

If Miles was a girl, the name we picked out was Isabelle, after my husband's grandmother - much like what you did. Not only did his cousin pick that name for her daughter that was born 2 months before Miles, but then it turned out to be on the top baby girl names list. So we lucked out with Miles being a boy and not having to figure out another girl name. We haven't actually met any other Miles (yet).

your links are not working.

at least not working well... where do you get your "400 susans" information? The baby name gadget I was able to find at the link you offered a ranking of popularity of a given name, not the number of individuals with a given name... unless I'm looking in the wrong place.

There were four "Kimberly J. Smith"s in my college freshman class of about 2,000. I'm guessing it was all but impossible for them to make it through four years without getting confused at least a couple times.

Can't get anything past you, can I BigV? :blush:

Sorry. That first link was broken. I was trying to be all clever by linking the results of a Cellar search where I had mentioned this "Susan" phenomenon in old threads. In a thread back in 2004, I posted that "Susan" had been used 550 times in the previous year. I didn't provide a link then, but a cached google page backs this figure up, especially when you compare it to the figure I gave for Emily in the same post. So I figured that if back in 2003, Susan was the ... crap, now I see that my second link was broken too. Linking to search results doesn't work well.

Well anyway, if you go to http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ and put "Susan" in the "Popularity of a name" search box, you will see that it was number 2 way back in the late 50's and was 511th back in 2003, when there were 550 of them in the country. Last year, it was 611th in popularity. I totally guessed at the 400 number, but figure it is pretty close, because it used to be 550 and has fallen in popularity significantly. Maybe I'm off by 100 or so, but it's got to be in the ballpark.

A granddaugher named Stormy Cheyenne. My neice named some of her brood from the good book? Maybe Shadrrack, Neishack and ??????Well maybe not that. But close.

This baby name wizard is one of the best flash apps I've ever seen. Enter "susan" at the prompt to see how the name came into usage and then fell out of favor.

glatt:

I don't know why you think you're special.... people get stuff by me alllllll the time.

as for the 400/susan thang... I still don't agree/understand.

I read the link and page stuffs.. My understanding is that the name Susan is the 400th (I accept your rounding, fine) **most popular name** for the given period.

Not that there were only 400 people named Susan for the given period.

Caddyshack and Radioshack?

See the cached Google page I linked to. The formatting is all messed up, but it lists the ranking of the name, the name, and then the number of times the name was used. Look for the phrase: "For a girl Name Gender Times used Favorites"

Number 1 is Emily, and it was used 25,494 times in 2003.

Number 514 (not 511 as I stated above) is Susan, and it was used 550 times in 2003.

Look for the phrase "1 Emily 25494" and then later "514 Susan 550"

I know it's a sucky link to support a figure, but it's the only list I found that included more than the top 100 names for 2003. There are many more sites that will confirm the number one name in 2003 was Emily and was used 25,494 times.

I love that site.

The number is "usage of (name) per MILLION babies." So, it would be 550 million Susans. A popular name is Ethan, and its #4, with over 5 billion babies born in 2005 with that name. Although 550 million sound like a lot, its only 10% of the number of Ethans.
My son's name has grown in popularity over the last few years, and in 2006 there were ~440 million Miles, ranked 202. Still a lot better than 5 billion.

:headshake

5 Billion Ethans born in the USA in 2005? I don't think so.....
5,000,000,000?

United States
Population: 301,139,947 (July 2007 est.)
from here

Population Clocks
U.S. 303,168,757
World 6,641,883,975
15:28 GMT (EST+5) Jan 04, 2008
from here

Ignoring the math mistakes later in the post, I can find no indication from the site I linked that the figures are "per million" babies. The word "million" doesn't appear on that site anywhere. The similar sites I linked to that have only the top names for that year also don't mention the figures are "per million" babies. Where did you see that?

In 2005, there were roughly 4 million babies born in the US, so you can multiply that number by 4 if it's true. Or 2,200 Susans in the country. But I see no proof it is true.

If figures are given per million, in order to know how many babies that is, you need to know how many million babies were born in the year and multiply by that figure, not multiply by one million. (4.1 million in the US seems the most reliable figure I've found). The site UT links to is per million. But the site glatt links to gives usage, so 550 is the answer (according to that site), not 550 per million

hah! I got distracted and beaten!

Where's that beating a dead horse icon?

To really belabor the point, in the Flash based site that UT linked to, the statistics are per million, and the graph for Susan, pasted enlarged below, appears to show there were 100 Susans per Million births. So you multiply by 4.1 and get 410, which is only ten more babies than I estimated way back in post 21.

Worship me, and my mad estimating skillz!

Ok, my ability to do math is completely off. Thanks for the correction! lol

you should probably run for president, aimee :D

:whip:

oops, wrong thread? :lol:

Well, I did invent the internet... lol

My name was 318th the year I was born, and got all the way up to 33rd in 1991 (that's when it started appearing on personalized stuff - long after I actually wanted barrettes with my name on them).
My daughter's name is not and never has been in the top 1000. No barrettes for her...

My name was a leader at the turn of the century (ranked at 33) and then fell out of favor in the 1940's for some reason, but is now making a bit of a comeback.

Interesting.

my name is average and boring.

That's a long name, Average and Boring. Of course, my name is Complacent and Irresponsible. ;)

(Should we ask why UT is perusing baby name sites?)

It never went completely out of style, though. I know a few little girls who share your name. I like it. My name is derived from it ;)

I'm a big fan of quality visual display of quantitative information. When people get it right, as they did with that flash tool, it must be studied.

I named my daughter Gillian (I was a huge X-Files fan). I thought it was such a beautiful and unique name.

Until I realized that most people are illiterate.

Not only does she get people pronouncing her name with a hard "G" rather than soft "J", but god forbid someone actually reads her name off of a form - they inevitably call her "Gilligan". Where the hell they get another "g" to throw in there in the middle of her name, I don't know.

As for my name, I make everyone call me "Chris". My full name, Christine, sounds so pretentious, especially for a tomboy. And no one ever calls me by the correct name: it's always Christie, or Kristen, or Christina, none of which are my name and it really irks me. And guaranteed - if you have a southern accent, you're calling me Christina.

I would have gone by my middle, but it's "Ann", and that's just HORRID.

My name was in the top 10 from 1966 to 1991, and held the number 1 spot from 1970 all the way through 1984. I hate my name.

And I had a very, very common maiden name too! I don't know what the hell my parents were thinking. It's no wonder I went by a completely unrelated nickname from fourth grade all the way through high school.

Was pretty well used in the UK when I was a kid. I must've known 4 or 5 -one spelled with a J, the rest G.

I have a biblical name and those are everywhere. The thing is I have the name that I use the professional world and then I have the name(s) that my family and friends call me.

My full given name can be pronounced two different ways. My parents chose the less common way, resulting in a childhood of having to correct both peers and adults in authority as to how I said my name.

That said, although I wanted to change my name for years I'm glad my parents stuck with it - it certainly taught me that the majority is not always right.

We didn't had any problem in choosing our babies names, I picked them out when I was 16.

Why the link? Do you have a webpage devoted to your kids' names? Couldn't you just reveal the secret here? :rolleyes:

Oh look, your other two posts also link to this site. It's not even high quality spammage.

well, how'd you like to go through life named Lum?

I noticed that too Monster - maybe the link should be pulled from those posts as well?

back on topic, my names, all three of them came right outta the bible -
not that it helped any. :p

No, the first two times were timely and appropriate to the discussion. The third was :dedhorse:

well I mentioned in that thread that, after following the link, I couldn't find what she was referring to, even through the site search. No biggie.