Charlie Jane Anders, at io9:
The Social Security Administration just released its 2013 list of baby names in the United States. And once again, Game of Thrones rules. There were 1135 Aryas, 241 Khaleesis and 67 Daeneryses born in 2013. And 15 Theons and five Robbs. But some new names also came on the scene…
According to Nameberry, the most popular new girl’s names of 2013 include Vanellope — apparently inspired by Sarah Silverman’s character in Wreck-It Ralph? There were 63 Vanellope’s in 2013, up from zero in previous years. Other popular new girl’s names are Pistol, Prim, Rarity (from My Little Pony?), Charlemagne and Rebelle…
If Nameberry isn’t just messing with us, there are at least six little girls in America named Charlemagne. Truly, history is dead.
Brand new boy’s names included Rydder, Jceion, Hatch, Tuf, Lloyal, Xzaiden, Charger, Kyndle, Power, Warrior, Kaptain, Subaru, and Vice…
Jceion?!? That’s not a name, it’s the scrabble tiles dug out of the couch cushions after a rainy weekend entertaining relatives from out of town. And there’s at least ten kids condemned to a life of being contradicted by strangers on the spelling of their own name. Take it from someone whose parents named her after an (obsolete) pop song, it’s only romantic or creative when you don’t have to live with it.
TaMara (BHF)
Before I call it a night, here is the Blueberry Upside Down Cake as promised. Turned out pretty good. I’m going to make it again later in the week to take to a potluck.
Hal
“… Kyndle, Power, Warrior, Kaptain, Subaru, and Vice…”
High school should be fun for these kids. The name Kyndle is just lazy.
NotMax
What’s in a name? A Rsoe by any other name would smell as sweet.
Also too, no Baracks?
Belafon
We named my oldest, Walker, from the druid in the Scions of Shanara. Then, the year after he was born, Walker, Texas Ranger came out.
Omnes Omnibus
I have an ancestor named Shubal. I don’t care if it is in the Bible, one doesn’t do that to a kid – not even in early 1800s.
? Martin
A friend of ours named their son ‘Thor’. Told them they now needed a cat named mew-mew.
Joshua Norton
Kyndle
Next year look for Maq, yPad and Wynndoze.
NotMax
Not the worst name ever by any means, but one wouldn’t care to be saddled with, was that of a fellow in college.
Dudley Backup IV. (Hoping he isn’t by any chance a commenter here.)
However, should he name a child Subaru Backup…
NotMax
@? Martin
Fingers crossed that you immediately responded, “You dont thay!”
Joel
The Franks better watch the fuck out.
Joshua Norton
Jceion
I’m pretty sure in some states that would be considered child abuse.
jl
Some of this is momma grizzly Palin’s doing. I just know it.
Alison
I swear, some people ought to have gotten a dog rather than had a kid. Get that ridiculously stupid naming urge out of your system on a being that won’t give a fuck ever, and give your poor child who has to grow up and live in the world among other people a name that won’t make them want to kill you in your sleep.
NotMax
But the really odd thing is that it’s pronounced ‘dirty pig fucker.’
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: If I had had a boy, I wanted to name him after my maternal grandfather, who was very special to me. Only problem is that he was named Lyman. As in rhymes-with-hymen. I tried to think about how I would do it. Then found out I was having girls and gave up.
Omnes Omnibus
The Hmong have a tradition of naming children after prized items. Arrow, Field and so on. Once they came to the US, this tradition did lead to the name Trans-Am for one unfortunate child. But, within the tradition, it made sense.
Joshua Norton
Pistol
So would you call her Pis for short? I’m pretty sure the kids at school will.
? Martin
@NotMax: Oh, I did not…
NotMax
@Suzanne
Gotta pity the unfortunately named jazz pianist and band leader.
Suffern ACE
Is that pronounced Jah-SHAWN, JAY-Shi-OWN?
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Christ, I have a Lyman in my ancestry. His grandson married Shubal’s grand-daugher – if I have it right.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Joshua Norton: Or they might call her Colt or Glock. I’d insist on Heckler and Koch if they tormented me with manufacturer names.
Morzer
@Suffern ACE:
Jceion is the optimistic social climber’s way of spelling “Jason”.
? Martin
@Suffern ACE: It’s pronounced ‘Throat Warbler Mangrove’.
Suffern ACE
@Omnes Omnibus: if that tradition originated here, we’d see a lot of kids named beer-n-big-boobs.
Omnes Omnibus
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Mannlicher-Schönauer
Keith P
This reminds me of the old Onion graphic of kids’ names by ethnicity. I think my favorite name in there is “Sinutab”.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suffern ACE: Or Bootycall.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: It was not a weird name for a while. I thought about trying to use his middle name, but it was one of those clunky English family names and is difficult to pronounce. The other descendants of that side of the family are loaded because they have some yacht conglomerate named after that branch of the family. Someone back there was a peer, also.
TheMightyTrowel
@TaMara (BHF): making a pineapple upside down cake right now. Inspired by your post to finally try out bittman’s recipe. I used lime juice to sour the milk and added lime zest. I also had to much pineapple – fresh not Tinned – so I put a layer in the middle of the cake too.
danielx
Inquiring minds want to know: why would anyone name their kid after that miserable prick Theon Greyjoy?
Suzanne
@danielx: A prick he ain’t.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Yeah, my Shubal/Lyman/Winfield first named branch of the family are all English Puritan descended folks who intermarried for, literally, 300 years. My grandmother, by choosing a Scandinavian, in 1941, was the first in her line to step out of the fold.
Morzer
@danielx:
Miserable no-longer prick, thank you very much.
SatanicPanic
@Suffern ACE: Meet my kids “Hamburger” and “Mimosa”.
Full disclosure: I did name my kid after a thing which I love. But it’s a good one, I swear.
Alison
@danielx: Now I’m wondering if there are any Joffreys…
Suffern ACE
We spend a lot of money on a military that is useless against Kaiju.
jl
@SatanicPanic: Flat Screen Jr, Bass Boat, Beemer, TransAm and Landyacht. One big happy family.
Morzer
@Alison:
Some luckless child is going to be called Cersei Tyrion Lannister Smith.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx: They like the sound of it. Richards I, II, and arguably III* of England were shitty people and bad Kings, yet the name persists.
*I don’t think that RIII was the monster Willy S. made him out to be.
max
@Suzanne: A prick he ain’t.
Ahem. A prick he hasn’t.
max
[‘Naming a kid for the seven sisters of misery. My.’]
Jewish Steel
One of my band mates told me his sister-in-law in Creve Coeur has two daughters, Alyssa and Tyranny.
Pre Revolutionary War ancestors of mine: Federal and Intrepid Chase.
Federal!
SatanicPanic
@Suffern ACE: Please tell me no one name their kid Jaeger
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: my mom’s side of the family are all joyless, hardworking Protestants. The family shame was that the patriarch of the family, whose surname is my maiden name, was born with an ethnic Jewish name, and he adopted a British name when he converted to Protestantism. It’s so weird to me that my grandmother was ashamed of that. Like, who even cares?
However, then my mom married an Italian Catholic, AND the shit TOTES hit the fan.
Morzer
@jl:
I knew a Chinese student who had been named Ocean by his loving family. He got a number of remarks thrown his way about naming his hypothetical corner store Ocean’s 7-11.
Olivia
Love Jean Redpath and I love that song and you are fortunate to have that lovely name. My real name (not Olivia) was chosen by my father because he was a major suck up to anyone of influence and the wife of his current boss had that name. It was all downhill after that.
TooManyJens
I think you’ve got to be out of your goddamned mind to name a kid after a Game of Thrones character before the story’s even over. You don’t know what that character might end up doing or how they might end up dying.
Anoniminous
@? Martin:
Thor is a perfectly good Scandinavian name. Now, if they named the kid Ástráður or Órækja you would have a case.
Suzanne
@Alison: I wanted William and Kate to name the royal baby Joffrey SO BAD. They went with George, which is appropriate, when one gives birth to an old man with a beard like Santa Claus.
rikyrah
Parents, remember….the kid has to go to school with that name, and someday put it on a resume.
Morzer
@TooManyJens:
At least no-one seems to have named their child “Craster”.
PaulW
There’s always naming your kid XWing @Aliciousness or Tyroil Smoochie-Wallace or Torque (Construction Noise) Lewith.
If popularity makes for names, expect a good number of Gojiras next year… :)
Morzer
@PaulW:
JarJar Binks McCain has a ring to it….
Amir Khalid
I’ll start with a joke I made here a few days ago:
Remember when an English football player named his son Brooklyn, some years ago? Fortunately, the footballer was David Beckham and not Wayne Bridge.
Back when the British ruled my country, there was once a time when one could get into the police force with a sixth-grade education. And in those days, if you lived in a remote rural area as many Malayans did, the only place to register your newborn child was the local police station. And a Police Constable with only a 6th-grade education could make some curious mistakes when writing stuff down.
For example, a new father might say, “Nama anak saya Muhammad. Muhammad sahaja.”(My son’s name is Muhammad. Just Muhammad.) Naturally, PC So-and-so would carefully write this down. And so, the birth certificate would be issued for one Muhammad Sahaja bin [name of bemused dad].
Suzanne
@rikyrah: I also recommend a Google test. I did that with the name we picked out for Spawn the Younger, which was wise, as there ended up being a porn star with that name.
When I Googled, I learned that the adult film actress had won an industry award for Best Anal Performance. I still think that the judges would have given my kid the award if they had seen what she could do to a diaper.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: On the Simpsons, Homer went through every horrible nickname that could be applied to a kid when he and Marge were coming up for a name for Homer – during a flashback episode. I recommend the technique. IOW, what you said.
Higgs Boson's Mate
My wife became pregnant in 1984. We knew immediately that if the baby was a girl her first name would be Amanda. I wanted to name a boy baby Arcadio but, my wife (Who is a Latina) nixed that explaining that old time names like Arcadio marked one as a hick from the sticks. We settled on Lee for a boy name.
In my book, no one will ever top the names Frank Zappa gave to his children; Moon Unit and Dweezil.
NotMax
While musing on names, sort of a shame it never became a ‘thing’ – the Cleveland major league baseball team at one time rechristened themselves after their star player, changing the team name from the Bronchos to the Napoleons (Napoleon Lajoie was the player) before becoming the Indians.
Would have been sort of neat-o had the Yankees followed suit – the New York Babes has a certain ring to it.
TooManyJens
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: All I can think when I see Lee and Amanda is, “You were going to name your kids after Scarecrow & Mrs. King?”
Amir Khalid
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Their brother Ahmet is the only non-Muslim I know of by that name. He was named after Turkish-American music industry legend Ahmet Ertegun, cofounder of Atlantic Records.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
One thing’s for sure (discussed sometime earlier here) is that there aren’t any rugrats scooting around Malaysia named Subaru.
Mnemosyne
I have a co-worker who named her son Prosper (after either a grandfather or great-grandfather, can’t remember which). Another one went with Branko (pronounced “Bronco”), but at least that mom chose “Alexander” as his middle name so he could go by that later on if he wanted.
I have an extremely ethnic name, though the ethnicity is Italian. I literally did not meet a single other person with my same first name until I was 16, and I still haven’t met anyone with my same last name. It’s more common for me to meet people with the same first name out here in California since it’s also a Spanish name, but still pretty uncommon.
Roger Moore
Apparently the crazy new spellings that used to be used exclusively for girls have moved to boys names, too. That’s resulted in variants where Jason was re-spelled Jayson, Jayceon, and now apparently Jceion. Similarly with Jackson, Jaxon, Jaxxon, etc. If you really want to learn more than you ever knew about this stuff, I highly recommend the Baby Name Wizard blog.
JoyceH
@Omnes Omnibus:
And yet some names pretty much die out completely. I had a great-uncle named Adolph, was a fairly common name among German-Americans in the late 19th century. But you sure don’t see any Adolphs anymore. (Except among neo-Nazis, I guess.)
Anoniminous
@NotMax:
Since the name of a sports team is to strike fear into the hearts of their opponent I’ve always thought “The Tort Lawyers” has been sadly overlooked.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: One of my coworkers named hers Coral and Trinity, and I cannot help but think less of her. Names =/= nouns.
Roger Moore
@SatanicPanic:
Why not? There are plenty of Hunters out there, so why not the same name in German?
SatanicPanic
@NotMax: That’s great, until your marquee player has a really common name. “Today the Anaheim Mikes meet the New York Dereks”
Omnes Omnibus
@JoyceH: I have a great uncle who had that as a middle name in honor of Gustave Adolph of Sweden (an older brother of his was Gustave). He changed it to Andrew – for obvious reasons.
Anoniminous
It could be worse.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@TooManyJens:
Nope. Never saw that show. Amanda was my grandmother’s name and Lee is the name of my brother. He was named after one of my parent’s dearest friends on post-WWII Kwajelein. I was named after two of the patron saints of the Catholic church. Ironic, that, because I began the study of Zen Buddhism at the age of 16 and became a lapsed Catholic shortly thereafter..
Death Panel Truck
Whatever happened to normal names? I was the youngest of four boys. All four of us were Caesarian births, and we were all delivered by the same surgeon, a Dr. Kenneth Q. Pershall. Mom wanted at least one girl, but when I was born the doctor told her, “Congratulations and condolences, Pat. You have another son.” Mom said, “I guess it’s time to stop trying,” and promptly named me Kenneth in honor of the doctor.
My three brothers are named Mark, Michael and David. Normal names for the times, I guess (1957-63).
West of the Rockies
I am surprised that Katniss (Katness?) did not make the list.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Roger Moore:
I guess Jaeger is okay. I would draw the line at Jägermeister though.
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
There are problems with the Google test. If you have one of the most common last names, it’s incredibly likely that there will be not one but several people with any common name you come up with. There’s also the problem that somebody may become famous for something bad after you name your child. My sister Sarah had problems with her name after Sara Jane Moore tried to assassinate President Ford, which was not something that was predictable when our parents chose to name her that.
SatanicPanic
@Roger Moore: It’s the association with the frat-boy shot of choice that I would want to avoid
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
According to that blog, my first name is more popular in Scotland than in the US.
I have distant relatives who settled in Scotland — some of my grandfather’s (possibly great-grandfather’s) brothers went there instead of the US.
Interesting coincidence.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: I think SSE status starts to come into play with “interesting” spellings of fairly common names. The further down the ladder the more likely to use a non-standard spelling.
@Death Panel Truck: Most names are still fairly standard. We really are talking about outliers here.
Roger Moore
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I think Penn Jillette, who named his daughter Moxie Crimefighter has to rank fairly high on the list.
Walker
@Belafon:
Those of us with that name often have it because it is a last name in the family and (in the South) it is common to give last names as first names when they are about to be lost through marriage.
Though when that show was on, I got jokes about Walker, Texas Ranger all the time (particularly since I was working in Texas at the time). Now, I just get Breaking Bad jokes.
Amir Khalid
Many years ago I read in TIME magazine about Josef Mengele. He has family back in Germany who run a business of that name making metal-stamping machinery. TIME ran a picture of their factory: on the roof was panted the innocent (but accidentally creepy) slogan Mengele — die bessere Idee. (Mengele — the better idea)
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
IIRC, one of the guys from Green Day gave his son the middle name of “Danger.”
cckids
Yep. We gave our daughter a historical name, & thought about giving it a “new” spelling; changing out the ” e” for a “y”, then thought – why saddle her with having to spell/explain it for eternity? So its normal.
Trendy shit gets old fast. And you are rarely as innovative as you think you are.
Gretchen
@Suzanne: my son in law wanted to name his son after Grampa for the same reason, but Gramp’s name was Walter. So they used Joshua afters Grampa’s favorite bible verse.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Roger Moore:
I didn’t know that one. Definitely up there with Zappa’s children’s names.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
Adolf and Adolph were dying out long before Hitler gave the name the coup de grace.
Joshua Norton
it is common to give last names as first names when they are about to be lost through marriage.
I thought of trying that once. Unfortunately our family’s other major name is Moody (a very nice Puritan name in its time) and no matter whether you use it as a first name, middle name or a hyphenated last name, the results are equally disastrous.
Mnemosyne
The name saga of David Bowie’s son: he was born Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, called “Zowie” until he was a preteen when he decided he wanted to be called “Joey” or “Joe,” and then started using his original first name as an adult.
(“Zowie” was pronounced to rhyme with Bowie, though he and his father both retain the legal last name of Jones. Yes, that’s right — the only reason we know that musician as David Bowie is because of the Monkees.)
Suzanne
@Gretchen: Hah. My uncle’s name is Walter. So far, we have no little Walters running around.
God, my family members have stupid-ass names.
Omnes Omnibus
@cckids: My ex’s first name was bureaucratically misspelled on her birth certificate. It gave her problems in her home country, but once she moved here it was the opposite – the spelling was “correct.”
Olivia
Knew of a guy when I was a kid whose name was Harold. His last name was Butz. I know another guy named Harold, last name Dick. In Mennonite areas, the awareness is lacking.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Do you have an Eleazar? If you count middle names I have several even into this century. I am thankful for the Olivers, Richards, Michaels, and Johns that pop up in my family history because the other lot are a bit of a drain.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, I find it interesting that African-Americans have taken names discarded by white people as stodgy or old-fashioned and started making them cool again. Who knew that there would be not one, but two successful young actors named Donald? (Donald Faison and Donald Glover)
Amir Khalid
Back at The Star, I had a colleague named June. Her sister was May. Alas, no third sister named April.
Roger Moore
@Death Panel Truck:
Who gets to define normal, though? Nobody named their daughters Madison until Splash came out, but within a few years it was a reasonably common name and within 15 it was one of the 10 most popular names for girls in the country. And it’s not as if people have given up on traditional names, either. In fact, old-timey names seem to be undergoing a resurgence. Biblical and ethnic names seem to be very popular for boys, and fancy Victorian era names seem to be popular for girls. There are some new ones in there, but it’s not as if Jceion is threatening to become the most popular boy’s name in the country.
cckids
@Omnes Omnibus: We’ve got a famous last name, when I was pregnant in late 1992 you cannot believe how many people honestly thought I should name the kid Bill or Hillary. Why would you do that? Just asking for jokes/abuse for the poor kid.
My daughter went to 1st grade with a kid named Ronald Reagan (in 2001), and he refused to answer to it, told everyone his name was Chris. (middle name) Its just not kind.
cckids
@Olivia:
I had a junior high teacher whose last name was Suck. I know it was the 70’s in Nebraska, but seriously, I’d have kept my own name. Especially if I was going to be teaching teenagers. Yikes.
Omnes Omnibus
@cckids:
My first and last name match that of a formerly conservative now liberal pundit. During his rightish days, it cause a shitload of annoyance.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
“Danger is my middle name! No, seriously, look at my driver’s license.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Yeah, that one is pure win. As long as it is a middle name.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: No, but I had a classmate who had Eleazar as her surname. I think she was Filipino.
Suzanne
@Omnes Omnibus: It would be even funnier with Carlos.
Anne Laurie
@Mnemosyne: I understand quite a few WWII Italian refugees/POWs ended up in Scotland, thereby leading to oddities like Paisley native Paolo Nutini…
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: Is it the song about shoes? Also there is Dario Franchitti.
Amir Khalid
I was amused to learn there were at least two Edsel Fords in Henry’s family. I wonder what their reunions are like. Does one get to meet the vaguely disreputable aunt Escort, the obnoxious loudmouth cousin Fairlane, Uncle Mustang, and great-aunt Anglia from England?
Roger Moore
@cckids:
Trust me, sharing the name of a popular culture icon is a drag. I still get James Bond jokes even though my namesake hasn’t made a Bond movie in almost 30 years and there have been three Bonds since then. Couldn’t somebody at least make a Simon Templar or Beauregarde Maverick joke instead?
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Do Chinese Malays do the same thing they do in the US and have two first names (here’s it’s that they have a Chinese one and an “English” one)? Most people I know from either China or Taiwan have a Chinese first name but go by an English one. When a Taiwanese friend of G’s adopted Charlotte’s sister, even the cat had two names — we had named her Olive, but her owner called her Lan-Lan (I think) and would refer to her as Olive with us since that was the cat’s “English” name.
Same thing with the folks who work for the Giant Evil Corporation in China — they all go by English first names but also have Chinese first names. Except their boss, who never found an English name he liked and is just “Zhou Chen” (not his real name). It is sometimes very confusing for our computer system.
Morzer
@Amir Khalid:
Not forgetting the diligent Prefect Ford.
SatanicPanic
I’ve seriously considered dropping my middle name. Not because it’s odd or anything, I just don’t use it. I wonder how much time I’ve spent writing it down. But I’m too lazy to bother.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: He had his reasons.
Death Panel Truck
@Roger Moore: Took me just a little too seriously, didn’t ya?
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
He skimped a bit on his preparatory research.
Omnes Omnibus
@Death Panel Truck: No, less seriously than was appropriate. It is a serious question in semiotics.
lol
At least this thread didn’t dive into the near inevitable ‘Well, you know *those* people can’t spell’ derision that usually happens.
Also got spared the usual outrage about Khaleesi being a title and not a name from some GOT man child named Duke or some such.
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course, that necessitates an investigation into the semiotics of seriousness….
Anne Laurie
@Omnes Omnibus: Yup.
Speaking of using one’s middle name, during most of the 20th century Irish-Americans tended to use the same dozen common first names, which in a period when every family was expected to have six or eight kids could get a little… complicated. My old man was christened Michael James Robert Fleming Paul, but since there were already several Mikes, Mickeys, Mikeys, James, Jims, etc in the extended family, he grew up answering to Bobby. Only the people who met him through his job, including the woman he married, ever knew him as Mike. Twenty years later, after his divorce, he moved back to his parents’ apartment in what was now a mostly Hispanic neighborhood in the Bronx, and for some reason his new Cuban neighbors all called him Paul (pronounced ‘Ball’).
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
It seems like a mix with the ones I know. Some of them adopt English names- and frequently get their names legally changed if they become citizens- but a lot of them stick with their Chinese names, and that seems to be more common today than it was 15 or 20 years ago. Maybe it’s easier to stick with a Chinese name if you live in and area like Arcadia or Monterey Park where there are plenty of people who won’t garble your name.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: Do you want to go there? Do you really want that? I don’t.
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
Yup, the car was actually named after Henry Ford’s son. At least as recently as the 1980s (when I was living in Michigan, where the auto families were still royalty) that was still a source of public embarrassment among the clan!
Morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
And now we have to interrogate the semiotics of desire….
Couldn’t you have just quit when we were behind?
Mike G
@Omnes Omnibus:
I once worked with a Hmong guy named Sony.
I assumed the name had some non-Japanese-electronics-related meaning in their language, but now I wonder if he was named after a TV or somesuch.
Omnes Omnibus
@Morzer: What gives you any idea I know what I am talking about?
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Let’s take two typical examples. Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng, whom you may have heard of. Her given names are Michelle and Choo-Kheng, with her surname Yeoh in between. Jimmy Choo Yeang Keat, the only Malaysian ever mentioned by name on Sex and The City, has the same deal: Western given name before the surname, Chinese given name after it.
By the way, a note on terminology: Malay is an ethnicity, not the nationality. Michelle Yeoh and Jimmy Choo are what Americans would call Chinese-Malaysians. You’re not the first American I’ve seen get confused on this; it can be a really awkward mistake to make over here.
CaseyL
Puritans liked to name their kids after virtues: Patience, Temperance, Faith, Prosperity, Perseverance. I’m waiting for that to come around again – or maybe parents who want to be daring and contrarian will name their kids after the venal sins. “Avarice” would be a great name for a scion of the 1%.
Ruckus
@SatanicPanic:
I’ve only used my middle name on serious legal documents for decades. I also use the nickname that I’ve gone by since I was about 3. The scribble that is my signature only has one recognizable letter in it. It’s easy and fast to sign.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: A legal signature is anything you intend it to be.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
I understand but I used to sign my whole name in beautiful script and it was a pain. Grew up around people who didn’t have a high school education but their signature looked like artwork from calligraphy school. It was a royal pain to make the change over, so many things had my original signature and if they checked people wouldn’t accept my scribble.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: My signature changed significantly during the time that I was signing thing 50+ times a day. My new scrawl was faster and easier than my old crappy handwriting thing.
Amir Khalid
@CaseyL:
For some reason, this name occurred to me: Verisimilitude Romney.
Mike G
@Amir Khalid:
In college I lived in a dorm with a lot of Malaysian-Chinese. Many of them had curiously old-fashioned English names — Pansy, Winston, Clemency, Eugene.
Amir Khalid
@Mike G:
You met Chinese people of Malaysian ancestry?
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid:
Love it!
But even if some branch of the Romneys used it (and Mormons admit a tendency toward unusual names) I have the feeling it would be given to a little girl…. who would probably end up being called Vera or Veery.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
Speaking of “the same dozen common first names,” on my mother’s side of the family in rural Tennessee there was an old relative named Calvin Baxter (not the real surname), nicknamed “Dude.” I would hear stories about “Uncle Dude” or “Dude Baxter.” Then there was a younger Calvin Baxter, also nicknamed “Dude,” so stories got differentiated with “Big Dude Baxter” or “Little Dude Baxter” or—which even as a child I thought was hilarious—“Uncle Big Dude” or “Uncle Little Dude.”
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
It’s quite common in the credits of Hong Kong movies to see mixed Chinese/Western names, e.g., Tony Leung Ka Fai, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (just to take two from movies I’ve see this week).
Roger Moore
@Steeplejack:
This is common among Chinese Americans who adopted Western names. The ones I know usually go Western name, Chinese given name, Chinese family name, but will occasionally go by Chinese given name, Western name, Chinese family name; I think it depends on whether the Western name is considered a nickname or a real name. It’s particularly helpful for people who went by their Chinese name for a while and only decided to adopt a Western name later. Some people know them by one name and some by the other, so listing both names helps people recognize that they refer to the same person.
BTW, this is by no means exclusive to Chinese names. A fair number of the Vietnamese people I know have adopted Western names, and they tend to do the same thing.
Jebediah, RBG
@Steeplejack:
Holy shit that’s awesome.
Glaukopis
Some unusual ones in my family – Silence (another Puritan virtue, apparently), Comfort ( a man’s name), Africa and America were siblings. All before 1800.
Alex S.
Jceion = Just saying?
Adolph is not popular anymore, but why is Joseph still accepted?
NeenerNeener
My first introduction to pop culture baby naming was on a usenet board back in the late 90s when someone bragged that they had named their daughter Delenn, after an alien on “Babylon 5”.
John M. Burt
@Jewish Steel: A girl named Tyranny? Not even spelled Tyr’ahnee?
And BTW, let me say that I love the multilingual pun buried in that name: She is the Queen of Mars, which is to say she is the Tyr Rahnee. Ingenious.
I have a child whose first name and middle name come from my brother and my wife’s brother — neither of whom, at the time, we were speaking to. But they’re both lovely names, and have long standing in the family. Also we made it up with one of those brothers.
Another child of mine, I supplied his middle name from my family, and his mother supplied the first name from a character on a TV show. But, it was a good strong Biblical name, of one of the Biblical heroes who wasn’t a total dick, so there’s that.
I always figure it’s okay to give a child an exotic name, as long as you provide a reasonably normal name. Mary Callisto Smith, Kal-El Clark Jones, &c.
Weird spelling / familiar pronunciation isn’t totally a bad idea. I have at times considered going by J’Onn Burt (yes, like the Justice League guy), but continuing to pronounce it simply “John”.
Patricia Kayden
Actually that’s a beautiful song, Anne Laurie.
Lurking Canadian
@Anne Laurie: my father is from Cape Breton Nova Scotia. His mother had three brothers. The first was named John. The second was named Angus. Then, having exhausted the possible boy names of Cape Breton, they named the third John Angus.
jfly
My brother and his wife named their son Alexander, but insist he be called Xander. It’s growing on me after almost a year, but still….too cute by half.
pseudonymous in nc
@Omnes Omnibus: Tom Conti, Peter Capaldi, too. Italians were moving to Scotland (and the rest of Britain) well before WW2. They brought ice cream and coffee, opened cafes, ran fish and chip shops. You’d have Catholic schools where Irish and Italian names ran side by side, and hybrids when the two married.
ellennelle
ok, these are decidedly NOT born of scrabble tiles, and those dubbing their kids with them do not likely have that much education. sadly.
i have a 30 year old story. at that time, a dear friend of mine taught school in memphis. she had to review records to make sure names identified their rightful students, etc. here are just a couple she ran across.
triplets named james 1, james 2, and james 3.
yllis. my friend asked, how do you pronounce that? willis? yillis? the mother responded (no kidding), it’s PHyllis (as in Fillis); THE PH IS SILENT.
my friend gently pointed out they were actually not silent, but invisible.
now, these last two won’t pack the same head trick whollop as when someone says them out loud as opposed to reading them here. so read this to someone else as such:
shuTHEED and aSHOLee.
spelled, ON THEIR BIRTH CERTIFICATES, as
SHITHEAD AND ASSHOLE.
i. kid. u. not.
all making those GOT names pretty damn tame, not to mention the macho charger crap.
sheez.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
I’ll do my best, but I’ll probably still get it wrong. ;-) The question I was trying to ask was if it’s mostly a mainland Chinese or Taiwanese custom, or if it’s a general ethnic Chinese custom, and it sounds like ethnic Chinese people in multiple countries do it.
@Roger Moore:
One of the artists at work is from Thailand and has a Western first name that she goes by, so I wonder if the custom is starting to spread to non-Chinese cultures. (Her Thai first name is a real tongue-twister for Americans, so I’m not at all surprised she adopted a Western one.)
Citizen_X
To strike fear into the Teahadi, I’m naming my kids Black Helicopter X and Barack Hussein Dronemaster X.
Vlad
@Mnemosyne: Branko is a real, albeit rare, name. I think it comes from Serbia and/or Croatia?
Were the parents fight fans? There used to be a pretty fair K-1 kickboxer named Branko Cikatic.
Caravelle
Charlemagne is okay, she can go by “Charlie”, which I think can be a girl name ? It’s pretty cute actually in a baroque sort of way. Of that list I think “Pistol” is the most rad, though much harder to get away with than “Charlemagne”. (unfortunate first syllable, for one).