OT: MGoParents, why did you give your kids an unusual name?

Submitted by 1989 UM GRAD on

In the thread about Daxx Garman below, someone wondered why a parent would burden their son with the name "Daxx."

It got me thinking back to the naming rules my wife and I followed when our kids were born 13.5 and 11 years ago...

1.  Must be the most common spelling of the name.  In other words, Kelly is "Kelly," not "Kelleigh."

2.  Must be able to discern the sex of the child from the name.  Eliminated Jordan, Taylor, Dylan, Avery, etc.

3.  Must be an actual name.  So Keyden and all of these other newer names were eliminated.  As was Marvcus and Plaxico.

4.  Must look professional on a resume or a nameplate.

Not going to give the specific names that we ended up with, as it would make me too identifiable to anyone on here knows me, but our daughter's name has been in the top 20 for at least a few decades...and our son's name is less common and slightly Jewishly-ethnic, but still would be recognizable to everyone.  There might even be a character on "Entourage" who has the same name.

So, my question to you, MGoParents, is why did you select an odd name or unusual spelling for your children?  Did you have any naming rules?  Years later, do you regret giving your child a less-common name?

I've wanted to ask people these questions in person, but obviously you would risk offending them...so I thought the anonymous nature of this forum would cause more people to provide explanations.

I do realize that the nature of this post creates a large opening for snark and smart-assery.  Hoping it'll be kept to a minimum.

EDIT (five hours or so after OP):  Just had my first opportunity to read thru some of the comments here.  While the vast majority of you are participating in the discussion as I intended, it appears as though a few of you (MaizeJacket, BornSinner, DanWillhor) were offended by the post and/or thought it was elitist and/or racist.  While I think you may be reading more in to the post than is there, I'd like to nonetheless sincerely apologize for upsetting anyone.  It was not my intention to do so.

EDIT (six hours or so after OP):  I just found this posting by MICHGOBLUE.  He/she more eloquently summarizes the point of my OP.

"At first I saw the same thing, but if you read his message, he isn't singling out names that are traditionally "ethnic," but rather made-up names. For example, Esteban is a typically Hispanic name and Shaquille is a typically African-American name. Based upon the OP's post, I don't think that he would have a problem with either, as the names are traditional (in each of their respective cultures), discernible by gender and spelled in the traditional manner. What I took the OP as having a problem with was simply stringing together a slew of letters and calling it a name or taking an existing name and just mis-spelling it to be unique.

One other point: on the issue of being "professional" sounding, as much as people should be hired based purely upon merit, it is a reality that people end up being discriminated against for just about anything in the hiring process, and a name - being one of the first things that a prospective employer sees - could create a negative first impression. Note that this is not limited to "ethnic" or "racial" sounding names. How well do you think Spike, Bruiser, Mercury or Venus would do interviewing for a major investment bank or law firm? Not everything is about race."

Don

May 29th, 2015 at 11:05 AM ^

I guess that means my wife and I are monsters, because we both agree that in the first few minutes after our daughter was born—after a 36-hour labor and difficult birth—she looked like E.T. because her skull had been so laterally compressed during delivery. Seriously, when she first appeared I was petrified because I was convinced her brains had been squished to a pulp based on how her skull was shaped.

The delivery room nurses assured me that her skull would "round up" quite quickly, and they were right. Nature is amazing.

bronxblue

May 29th, 2015 at 8:50 AM ^

We just picked a name for our daughter that was easy enough to say and spell. We did realize that when you say her full name she sounds like a southern belle, but that was unintentional.

jblaze

May 29th, 2015 at 8:51 AM ^

My son has an unusual name, but he's a toddler and everybody at daycare calls him a nickname anyway.

So, I'll give you my experiences with my own unique name (it's so unique that I have only heard of, never met anyone else with my first name). It's an ethnic name, but most people wouldn't be sure about the country of origin. 

I definately had issues as a kid growing up. Substitute teachers sometimes wouldn't even attempt to say my name. People had difficulty with it ntil about High School. I think by then, ethnic names were more popular and people actually cared about saying a name correctly instead of trying to give me an "Americanized" version of my name.

Anyway, I don't think I've had any resume trouble or career problems because of my first name. I think it's nice not to be in the Top 20 lists and am happy that people think about being sensitive to others with different names, whose parents were born somehwere else.

I think that's why I wanted my son to have a unique name that hints as to where his grandparents are from, but is relatively easy to say. Nobody in my family has ever been named anything like John, Rob, Dave... and I wanted to keep it that way.

sadeto

May 29th, 2015 at 8:53 AM ^

My children have Japanese first names as their mom is Japanese, and they have my last name, which is Irish. One's middle name is a continuation of a family name, the other is from a UM faculty member. 

My feeling is that names should have meaning, not simply be given because of the way they sound or current popularity. Meaning could come from family usage or the actual root meaning of the name itself. My sons have the traditional titles for the first and second sons in a Japanese family (they are originally titles, as common names were different). Guess what they are and you win the prize (hint: I had no objection as Kurosawa is one of my favorite directors). 

I can't understand naming your child based on the popularity of the name - witness all the little girls named "Madison" or "Olivia" lately. 

MgoTango

May 29th, 2015 at 10:11 AM ^

My parents decided to do something creative with the spelling of each of our names. Mine is like taking a popular name, but adding an extra vowel. I am constantly correcting people, fixing it on forms (like mortgage paperwork, etc.). If my parents had said "It's unusual because it is a family name, from our heritage", I would be honored. But they did it out of creativity and just trying to be different. I like the idea of names that have some meaning.

MGoBrewMom

May 29th, 2015 at 8:56 AM ^

To piss off my in-laws and let em know who's in charge.

Naw, not really....but funny story about naming mine...they are twins and when I was expecting, we decided to not share their names with anyone until they were born. The reason for that was that we didn't want any comments or critiques, and figured once they were born, and introduced to the world as "name a" and "name b", we wouldn't get any grief...who will openly say "that's a terrible name!" about an actual human being? The names aren't all that different, but they won't make any anual top-10 lists either. And the funny part was that while it drove my mom a little nuts, she didn't bug us about it, and neither did anyone else, except my dad....my tough, deer hunting, right winged, Dad. I honestly thought he wouldn't give two shits about it, and that my mother in-law would be the one...But my dad drove me nuts. "It better not be Brittney, or Candy". "They better not be and stripper names." and "I don't like (insert name)" was in every conversation. So I finally told him I would name my kids, and he could name the next one he had. The whole thing confirmed our decision to not tell ahead of time.

GoBlueInNYC

May 29th, 2015 at 9:22 AM ^

Oh man, people are waaaaay too comfortable telling you their opinions of the names you're planning for your kids. My wife and I abandoned one name we were considering because her family kept going on about how terrible it is and how we shouldn't do it. So after literally the first name, we immediately clammed up about any other ideas. The funny part was that they continued to harass us about "what name are you thinking, give us a hint, etc," seemingly not realizing why we refused to tell them ahead of time.

MGoBrewMom

May 29th, 2015 at 1:59 PM ^

every single person has someone who, in 8th grade was a jerk to them, and I didn't need that influence on my kids' names. In my family, this was our decsion..not our parents, siblings, neighbors...nobody else got to impact their names. Once they're born, and the given name is attached to that miracle of a human being that people are looking at, nobody was providing any input on that name...

That plus, I'm pretty fit, and they'd get smacked.

xtramelanin

May 29th, 2015 at 8:59 AM ^

and we stuck to names with family reference, standard spelling, relevant to some ethnic/cultural background (your everyday african-irish names....).  We found boys names much easier to come up with, which is good since there are 5 of them.  the  girls names were tougher but we figured those out too.   in fact, we still have some more on the list if we are ever blessed with any more girls . 

LSAClassOf2000

May 29th, 2015 at 9:03 AM ^

To a certain extent, I seem to have lived this battle my entire life - I never thought of "Lorne" as unusual, but the incredible amount of difficulty people have with the "e" being silent, never mind anything else, still amazes me. 

As for my kids, Astrid Celeste and McLaren Elliott. My daughter's name was actually my idea as Astrid comes from an old Germanic word for "unusual strength", and my son's is a variation of the family name - "Elliott" is my middle name, and rather than make my son the fourth Lorne in the line, we changed it to the Scottish surname which essentially means "son of Lorne".

Still, I cringe especially when people persistently call my daughter "Ashley" because apparently "Astrid" does not compute.

OMG Shirtless

May 29th, 2015 at 9:08 AM ^

Having a normal name is a great idea.  Until you're trying to sell your house and at the last minute you realize the Recorder of Deeds is too stupid to differentiate between the 25 different John Smiths living in your state and you end up with liens for 2 or 3 different deadbeats preventing the sale.  Calling the creditors is a pleasure.  The creditors blame the Recorders Office.  The Recorders Office blames the creditors.  Its a fucking mess.  

Blazefire

May 29th, 2015 at 9:11 AM ^

I'm all for making sure your kid's name is phonetically logical and makes sure nobody will roll their eyes every time they hear it - but yeesh, your rules have a sort of puritanical air to them that is just ugly. It sounds like you would not name your kids "Denard" or "Jabrill" because those are "not real names", even though they are. Yeesh.

Son is Maxwell Loreaux - Maxwell we just liked, and Loreaux is now a tradition for firstborn sons going back three generations.

I actually really really liked Jethro, which is biblical, but I got vetoed on that.

Crash

May 29th, 2015 at 9:17 AM ^

My wife and I have just have the 1 daughter.  I was in complete agreement with the OP rule #1, had to be a common spelling.  Other than that, it was my wife's choice.  She got to name the kid if it was a girl, I got to name the kid if it was a boy.  Well my wife ended up being in complete disagreement with the OP rule #2.  She loves boys names that sound cool for a girl (Taylor, Cameron, Blake, etc).  We ended up choosing Cameron.  We were also careful to make sure it wasn't a name that was easily made fun of, and we made sure the initials didn't look stupid.

ajh

May 29th, 2015 at 9:22 AM ^

I have a rather unusual name, with a reason behind it. My legal first name is just the letter "A," though luckily my parents were kind enough to make "Jay" my middle name-- so I go by A Jay in all circumstances.

 

The backstory: before I was born, my parents had a girl named Sarah Anne who died at 8 months due to congenital heart failure. Wanting to give me part of her name but not wanting to saddle their male child with "Sarah" or "Anne," I got her middle initial asmy first name. Actually pretty clever.

 

Outside of being occasionally confusing early on in life on official forms (I consider my first name to be A Jay, the government thinks of me as "A",) I can't say having a slightly odd moniker has been detrimental to my life at all.

kehnonymous

May 29th, 2015 at 10:14 AM ^

I've seen similar to that before, though I don't remember the circumstances.  The given name of the famously virginal Laker forward A.C. Green is literally the letters 'A' and 'C' - they don't stand for anything.

(Also, condolences on your deceased sister)

GoBlueInNYC

May 29th, 2015 at 9:26 AM ^

My wife and I were looking primarily at older names that had fallen out of fashion, but had a nice classic ring to them. That way it was something that was unique, but not crazy, too unusual, or difficult.

The trick was navigating that "classic" vs. "100% grandma" line (we were ok with like 40-60% grandma). 

FieldingBLUE

May 29th, 2015 at 11:31 AM ^

I went analytical with this and consulted the Social Security name database, which blows all those commercial sites out of the water in functionality. 

1. Wanted a Biblical name if possible but not one that is super popular (Daniel, Michael, Stephen, Jacob, Joshua). This was harder for the girls, and only one has a Biblical name.

2. Wanted one that was not a Top 20 or even Top 200.

My son's name (born 2003) was ranked #399 that year. It's risen to #119 in 2014. So it bothers me quite a bit. Except that when I hear a younger child with that name and comment to the parents that my 12 year old has that name too, their face drops a bit as they realize they are late to the party. :)

My daughters are similar, though the oldest is named after my grandmother (ranks out of the top 1000 back when she was born and still today). Yet EVERYONE knows the name very very well. My youngest has an awesome name (ranks around top 500) but a very popular one (top 10 for a decade, a couple times been #1) is close to it in sound, so she gets called that name a lot.

justingoblue

May 29th, 2015 at 9:41 AM ^

Jalen is an awesome name that everyone would assume I used because of Jalen Rose, so I probably wouldn't use it.

Another I wouldn't use, but I like and is/was unique: Meadow.

bluebloggin

May 29th, 2015 at 9:45 AM ^

As someone with a unique first name (Kai) which I hated growing up with (a short German kid doesn't need anything else to help him stand out at a school of Dutch Giants) I wanted a name for my firstborn to be something that would, at a minimum, be harder to make fun of (where as the wife wanted bijou...). Most of her name suggestions were goldmines for teasing for middle schoolers, but we compromised on something in the middle. Now we're planning #2 and the weird names are coming again. She just doesn't get it




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Wolverine in 312

May 29th, 2015 at 9:48 AM ^

George Kirk: What are we gonna call him?
Winona Kirk: We could name him after your father.
George Kirk: Tiberius? You kidding me? No, that's the worst. Let's name him after your dad. Let's call him Jim.
Winona Kirk: Jim. OK, Jim it is.
George Kirk: Sweetheart, can you hear me?
Winona Kirk: I hear you.
George Kirk: I love you so much. I love you...

(Tears)

CJRockford

May 29th, 2015 at 9:55 AM ^

We went through this 18 months ago when my son was born. I think boy names are much harder to come up with and I also have a very common last name (Jones), so it was tough. We looked at family names, but mine are all very common (George, Richard, William, etc), so we didn't want a common first and last name (I'm Christopher). I also eliminated any names that started with "B", as I didn't want him to be called BJ. In the end, we chose Ethan




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