I sit here at 36 weeks pregnant, enormous and anxious, pouring through books like 800 Bazillion Baby Names and Simply the Best Baby Name Book in This or Any Known Galaxy and No I Swear This Baby Naming Book is Like, Sooooo Much Better Than the Others. My mechanical pencil is at the ready, that I might excitedly scribble sixteen stars with alternating exclamation points around The Name when I find it.
But for some reason I can’t find it.
Or to be more specific, there are names I like. They are simply not available.
It’s a strange beast, this 21st century baby naming business. Back when I was a wee lass (you know, walking to school uphill both ways, fending off drunken Confederate soldiers, etc.) things were much simpler:
You basically named your daughter Jennifer.
It didn’t matter that your best friend had a Jennifer or that you had two cousins with Jennifers or that the celebrity du jour named her child Jennifer. In fact, you were proud to have chosen such a popular, contemporary name and you didn’t even bother to disguise that fact with eunicque spellings like Jynnyfr or J’Ennifer. You just propped yourself up in that hospital bed, wrote J-E-N-N-I-F-E-R on the birth certificate in your anesthetic stupor, and went right on ahead loving your baby Jennifer as if she were the only baby Jennifer in the whole nursery– never having even a clue that she’d grow up to resent being known as Jennifer P or Jennifer R for the rest of her days.
Today, this will simply not do. The new guidelines (surely made by a bunch of Jennifers, seeing as how they now rule the world) dictate that you may not use a baby name that has been taken by anyone you know, anyone you vaguely know, anyone you used to know but haven’t seen since your high school reunion, anyone known by anyone you know or used to know or vaguely know, or, worst of all, anyone who’s ever appeared between the covers of US Weekly.
These new mandates on name ownership evidently have had some impact. If you spend a few moments at the Social Security Administration’s names database (a great place to while away those long third trimester days), you’ll learn that the top 20 names in 1972 comprised 15% of all children. Today, the same top 20 is half that. There’s just a greater pool of names to choose from today, and so, you’re expected to find one that’s gone unclaimed within your social circle.
If you deign to steal a friend’s name (yes, I have heard this actual expression used) in lieu of finding a shiny new one, expect to fend off passive-agressive remarks like “Mind if I refer to her as Chloe II?” Or “How very Swedish of you.”
Therein lies my problem.
In a nutshell, I have friends and family with excellent taste, damn them. Their kids have fantastic names– hardly a clunker in the whole lot. And since I’m getting such a late start on this whole baby business, that leaves me, essentially, with the remnants.
You know things are tough when you flip through the increasingly dog-eared pages of one of the baby name books and realize that in a wholly sober state you circled Isis.
While my readers have been kind enough to offer up their rejects or even their own names (because certainly none of them will offer those of their children) over the past weeks, I have yet to find one with that magical combination of “awesome!” and “wow, I can’t believe no one I know has used that yet.”
And so, I continue to look for inspiration, holding out hope that The Name will come to me before that first contraction starts. I look through lists of Shakespearean names. Poets. Goddesses. I scan IMDB for Oscar Winners of the 1940s. I browse museum websites for favorite artists. I even humor Nate and try to look through the Redskins roster for a name he might go along with besides Clinton Portis. (Or Clintonia Portia, as Jaelithe cleverly suggested.) Then every so often, I think I’m onto something.
“I like the idea of a name from the natural world,” I tell a friend. “Maybe something floral?”
“Nice!”
“But I’m afraid the only unclaimed options are Calendula, Nasturtium or Wandering Jew.”
“How about Rose?” she suggests.
“I know two just in our building.”
“Okay, well Lily is sweet.”
“That’s Melissa’s daughter’s name.”
“Pansy?”
“Nope.”
“Daisy?”
“No way.”
“Dahlia?”
“Dahlia and Thalia…”
“Yeah, that’s not good. Okay, so Fern.”
“Unfortunately Jennifer just named her daughter that last week.”
“Jennifer R?”
“Jennifer P.”
And so it goes.
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Kinara, Aurora Jade, or Maggie….I wanted a girl and got two boys…My precious Javier Isaiah, and Giovanni Issac (a bit corny, but I love it!)
Iris.It was my grandmother’s name and is now my daughter’s. If you take it and we ever run into each other (though we live on opposite sides of the country) I will never ask you to refer to your child as Iris II. Maybe Iris junior. I was one of 8 “Lisa”s in my 7th grade history class. Half of us had the same middle name. I lived through it. So can little Lily Rose Ophelia Isabella or whatever you choose.
My daughter’s name is Natalie – I hated almost every other girls’ name out there, and the other ones I liked, my husband hated. I chose the name because, while it’s certainly not original and does come up in the top 100 names, it still doesn’t seem to be too popular. Feel free to use it if you like it – I live in Iowa… I’m guessing we won’t bump into each other anytime soon. Good luck!
i suggest Jacinda or Jacinta which is a form of the flower, Hyacinth.
How about Chrysanthumum??? The best kiddie book in the world was written about a mouse with this name!!The only problem…teaching her how to spell it:0
Has anyone mentioned the < HREF="http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html" REL="nofollow">Name Voyager<> to you yet?
At least you are veering away from naming your unborn daughter after two < HREF="http://selfmademom.net/2007/04/09/and-you-thought-baby-names-couldnt-get-any-worse/" REL="nofollow">football coaches<>Seriously, what’s wrong with “Anne” or “Elizabeth” or something??
Our daughter’s name is Harriett. (in-laws hated it). Sometimes we call her Harry for short. Haven’t met another one and I think it is adorable. My name is Bess. A name I hated growing up but love now.Name her what you want to.
I have spent far too much time pondering the whole name thing considering that I’m nowhere near this stage in my life.What about Adelaide? Addy for short. I have a penchant for three syllable names because I have one and because they often have a sing-song quality when people say them.
How about Ivy? It’s from the natural world, it’s kind of traditional, but it’s not very common.
Alusz and I are completely screwed if we ever have more boys. We love our boys names, hence them having those names, but we also love what the other named her boy. So, if I had another boy, wtf would I name him? I’ll just have to call him Little Thing Who Screams A Lot because we already claimed the best two boy names in the entire world. Wait, was I just talking about future baby names? Shoot me. Now. Right now.
You haven’t mentioned if you’ve got any family you want to honor. What about using one of their letters as a start.
I can’t resist jumping in to this one…Mary Jane. It’s plain and never used anymore. It’s the kind of name that would fit a punk rock kid or a studious one alike.I wanted to name Ruby this, her Dad nixed it. Funny really since he is such a big fan of the other “Mary Jane”.
Would you believe I know a girl named Isis? Yes, it is true… Look at it this way… what ever you name her she will hate when she is 12 anyway. Trust me
Oh, man. This post is making me laugh so hard. I inherited THREE different baby naming books, all written by the same effin guy. He’s making a fortune off us indecisive parents. My rules are: (1) can’t share a name with immediate family (many a good name has been taken as PET names for god’s sake); (2) can’t be the name of an ex (either side); (3) can’t sound goofy/too rhymey with their sibling; (4) no last names as first names; (5) no boys names as girls names, and (6) no kooky celebrity names. I liked the name Liam until the multi-talentless and attention-hungry Tori Spelling named her son that. Ack. So, it’s easy to see why we’re stilll on the search…
Here are some of my fave girl names for your perusal:Violet (yes, I know, I know, that’s Ben Affleck’s baby’s name, but still, I like it.)Ava (yes, yes, I know, that’s Reese Witherspoon’s (and everyone else’s) daughter’s name, but still, I like it)LilaCelesteRubyand DH says his fave girl name is, “Olivia.”I have an aunt who, herself, has an elderly aunt named Thalia. This Thalia’s sisters are Selma and Lola, if that helps you at all. Good luck! I love talking about baby names. I had my kids’ names picked out as soon as I knew their sex.
As one of fourteen “Lisas” that I knew, I changed my spelling to “Lysa” at age 15. Sure was popular in ’68. And you remember all the Jennifers we had, don’t you? There was a book out in ’89 called “Beyond Jennifer and Jason,” which were the top names (besides Lisa and Michael) of the time. Me, I like Yevgeny and Wills for a boy and Amelie for a girl. My cousin took my previous favorite girl name 17 years ago, Chelsea.
okay so I reveal my kids names here…God help me…I don’t know what is going to happen …it’s all about the unknown. 3/4 of my names are of no use to you because they are boys…but what the heck.oldest-Nicolas Christian only known as NICO(EVERYONE loves his name)2nd- Michael Alexander only known as ALEX(this drives everyone in the free world crazy in their need to ask WHY, we would do that to a child?)3rd- Gianina Marie- Known as Gianina or G(her brothers and friends call her G)She was named after the Italian version of JOhn because her uncle John died when I was 5 months pregnant. 4th- Luke Angelo- my maiden name had the word Angel in it so we wanted to incorporate it into one of the kids names. The other rule was we wanted them to all have name that was somehow Biblically connected. Now 1st and 3rd have unique names and I am telling you every student and teacher and parent know who they are because they are the only one with their names. child # 2 & 4 have common names and especially Alex has been referred to as ALex 1 or Alex C or Alexander ….it is maddening. 3rd grade had 6 Alex’s in the same class 4 boys 2 girls. Good luck with your process…you will figure it out…Thalia was a beautiful choice. Just don’t second guess yourself. Maybe you should just wait and name her when you see her.
your baby is lucky you care so much + you will find the perfect name
Useless music trivia – Mike Doughty (totally kewl singer that once was in Soul Coughing) has a song called “27 Jennifers”. It’s to your point.Look internationally. There are troves of great, unclaimed names in my corporate directory. To wit: Sabina, Karine, Katia, Virginie, Sandrine, Francine, Maryline, Elise, Adrien. If he had joined the Bruins earlier, I would have been petitioning hard to name little D, ‘Patrice’ after #37 – my fave Bruin. And really, you just can’t go wrong with Clinton Portis.
A staggering proportion of my readers seem to be Jennifers. More specifically, Jens. For a while, my tagline was “where two out of three readers are named Jen”Whither the Kimberlys of yesteryear?
At Barnard, we used to say: 7 out of 10 students are named Jennifer; the other 3 are named Rachel.The Rachel thing speaks a little to the microclimate concept of names. ie Laura was more popular than Lucy in the US in 2005, but prolly in certain neighborhoods, like yours and mine, it is the reverse.
I am a Jennifer, who searched the family tree to name my son Douglas. At the time, the youngest Doug we knew was 45 years old, so we thought we were safe…until on Douglas first day of preschool he announces that there is another Douglas in his class. You can’t win for losing!
Ok, you already have one muse girl, so why not another? From the ever factual Wiki on Muses: “Polyhymnia (“the one of many hymns”), in Greek mythology, was the Muse of sacred-poetry, sacred hymn and eloquence as well as muse of agriculture and pantomime. She brings fame to writers whose works have won them immortal fame.” You are writers. It would fit nicely. Yes, Polyhymnia is mouthful and sounds like some weird medical issue like displaysia or roseaca, so maybe Polly would be a good alternative. How could you possibly take a pass on the muse of pantomine? (Picturing an infant in black leotards and kabuki makeup doing window hands in her crib.)
MiriNoraPiperCorey(Yeah, I am all about the r sounds.)Meg (not Megan)NancyCaroline
I second Phoebe, and not only because I used it for my daughter. It’s just a great name, not at all common, and uber freaking cute when they can’t make the F sound and call themselves Heebee. Seriously, it’s almost painfully sweet. Oh! I think I just ovulated!-posting anonymous to protect the guilty
What about your favorite artists/ Authors or book charecters? My 4th is Finn after Huck Finn which WAS really original until hollywood jumped on the wagon.So, like the Eagles?HenleyRasta music?MarleyAlice from Alice in Wonderland! You get my drift
My favorite part of the article you linked to has to be “The name Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 – pronounced Albin”-well, of COURSE it is!!
I’m one of FIVE Susan’s on a staff of 25, but it’s a name that’s almost unheard of today.Here’s my favorite, though:CecilyIt’s my daughter’s name and there are no others in our circle of friends/acquaintances, and I think it sounds beautiful when you say it.
I second Lila; like lilac.
We were actually thinking of Clementine if we had a girl. Weird, I know, but we kind of liked it. And we call my daughter, Genevieve, Gigi.And then I got a baby name book to review and the press release said, “This is the book that will keep your child from ending up with a name like Gigi Clementine!”I’m not kidding.
My twin daughters are named Caden (K-den, we thought she was going to be a boy, and Braden… but she suprised us) Her sister is Kayler (sounds like Taylor) and is named after a golf resort.
It was spelled Kahler-feel free to use ‘em…
Well, DUH, go with Jennifer. We can’t all be wrong! You can have my kids names: Brandon, Zarek and Gabriella. For that matter, you can have my kids. Ha!Our only other girl name was Trinity.But still, I say go with Jennifer for a girl. At least she can blame everything she does wrong on “that other Jennifer” as she grows up.
But in all honesty, you will end up calling the child, “Hey you!” or by the dog’s name anyway, so it is just for standardized forms you need a real name.
I named my daughter Bonilyn, the emphasis on the first syllable, but we are in the south, so I get a lot of people calling her Bonnie Lynn. It is actually a combination of my grandmother’s name and my middle name. Her middle name is Violet, after my husband’s grandmother. My mom said she almost named me Jennifer, and I get a lot of people calling me Jennifer. I’m happy with a ‘normal’ name, although in high school, I was in an advanced English class with five other Stephanies! But today’s kid would feel out of place with a ‘normal’ name. Just go to any preschool and look at the names on the artwork hanging on the walls. You’re not considered cool unless the teacher has to ask you how to pronounce your name.
Not that you need any more suggestions, but if Thomas had been a girl, (which I was 150% sure he would be), we would have named him Madeline Jane, after our two grandmothers.And called her Troll Baby for short. Ha ha.
After we named our son Wolf (my husband always wanted to name his son after the character Wolf Larsen from Jack London’s novel Sea Wolf – forget the fact that the character isn’t exactly a nice person, I eventually agreed and now I love it), we couldn’t name our daughter “Jennifer.” So, her name is Scout, from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (I also love the names Harper and Lee). Her middle name is Isabella and we only came up with that after she was born. I always say Isabella is my post-partum hormone induced “long flow-y girly” name. Other than those, my best friend is Jude and I love that name.
With the name of Genevieve Aurora I never had the problem of having to use my last initial. I hated having to correct my teachers pronunciation (no its not Geneva) but I love my name now. Although it seems that a lot of people have a granmother named Genevieve.
Such fun! I remember when we were looking. I LOVED the name Anaximander. Isn’t it awesome? Like… you think you’re drunk or something, and then you blink and it’s still there.I like petra, actually. Isn’t it a nice name?Katherine is a good one and a classic. Plus, Kate or Katie is a great name when you age!! My husband really wanted to name our daughter Addison and then call her Addie. When I learned that I was pg. with a boy, I said “what do you want to call it?” and he said “Addie.” So **I** chose the name!Good luck!BTW, my grandmother’s name was Suzanne but we called her “zaza,” and YEARS ago (like — 6 generations ago), one of my relatives was named “Deliverance Rich.” (That goes into the see? things could ALWAYS be worse category!)Hi from svmoms.com website! kateps: SHORT LABOR!
My daughter’s name is Ariana EvelynnIt means Holy in Hebrew and Silvery in Greek.We call her Ari for short. You are welcome to deign it if you like seeing as I don’t know you.
I’ve been meaning to tell you this because you’ve mentioned it several times and are obviously passionate about it. I haven’t wanted to bring it up because it involves me sharing our baby’s name, which I have been wont to do in case some asshat needs to tell me that they know a serial killer with that name. But anyway I digress. Our son is going to be named for his great grandfather, whose name is derived from old English and is spelled as such. His name is going to be Myles. Don’t judge me ;o)
My aunt wanted to name me Patchouli Desdemona. My parents stuck with Jennifer, because “no one was giving that name to little girls then.” I think Patchy D. would have been a wicked cool nickname. I would have been guaranteed a DJ job in L.A. Or maybe…too mangy?Loved this post.
Serendipity (It’s the girl version of Chance! Yes, that’s really his name.)For flower/nature names I always liked Lisianthus (though obviously that won’t work). How about Fuschia? It sounds so punk, and you could soften it with a middle name of Grace or something.Personally, I’ve always liked the really old-fashioned names, Abigail, Clementine (thanks Suburban Turmoil – I love it, too!) , all the “virtue” names, even Maude. No one likes Maude. Probably, if and when we have a girl, we’ll go for something like Maggie. M names run in the family.
dareth
since i have twin girls, we had to think of 2 (4 really) girls names at once. every single one that i suggested was the name of someone my husband once dated or slept with. nice.we ended up with one name that he dated and one that he didn’t. and like someone said way up in the comments, once the name is your child’s, all other associations fall away.can’t wait to hear what you decide.
A little late to the party, but what the heck…How about Blythe?It’s my daughter’s name (and no, she wouldn’t have to be Blythe II
It’s unusual, but not weird. We’ve received a lot of very nice compliments on it.
You may have more suggestions than you can read, at this point. But, I’m 35 weeks pregnant and my husband and I have agreed on exactly 2 names (one for a boy and one for a girl). Both, I might add, he actually chose (he had a much stronger opinion about the whole thing than I’d anticipated). If we have a girl, we’re planning to name her Thessaly (also spelled Thessily). When we shorten it, we’ll likely go with Tess or Tessa (yes, we will be dropping the “th” sound for a “t” sound — I’ve answered that question a dozen times, but I’m the momma right? I can do that). I think it’s a beautiful name, but, honestly I worry that it’s a little too unusual. I’m afraid we’ll be spending our lives (as she will hers) spelling it, pronouncing it again and correcting people. So, I’d LOVE to start a trend prior to her starting kindergarten. A small trend. Perhaps not on the scale of the Jennifer trend. If you like it, please don’t hesitate to use it. In fact, I’d like to point out how good it sounds with Thalia.
When pregnant with my daughter and faced with the “Name-Nazi’s” telling me I couldn’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t dare name my daughter anything already used within our “circle”, I just made one up. Guaranteed to never have been used before. Her Name? Britene. Pronounced Brit – tin – nay. Of course, many of her teachers called her Briteny, but about age 7 she was vocal enough to call most adults on it and set the record straight. After a long bout of her hating me for the name, she now (at age 21) loves it. It was touch and go there for a while though. Good luck on deciding what to shackle the kid with the REST OF HER LIFE!
I was named after Jennifer Warnes.I think.My last name starting with a W I was Jennifer W throughout my entire life.I think the most interesting spelling I’ve ever had of my name was by an Indian fellow: Geniphur.I had a hard time with my daughter too. It was very hard and when I finally picked her name “Brenna” (I loved it loved it loved it, woulda married it) I realised after she was born that it was almost impossible for me to pronounce it right (I live in France). Everyone killed it by saying Bwenna (making it sound like some African tribal name). Boy I cried. My postpartum was concentrated on totally f*cking up her name…She’s six now and loves her name. People often call her Brenda but she sets them straight soon enough.And if the Jennifers are plotting a takeover of the world, I want to know why I haven’t been contacted.
I stumbled across this post and have come back to it three nights to finish it. All things said above being equally important, my input is: Robin (either sex)MollyKelley (either sex)Gilbert (who else read Anne of Green Gables)CarloLarsMattiasJulietand…Archer. good luck and best of health; Susanna Jennifer K.
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