My name is unisex enough that when I was in high school (back in the Stone Age) I was routinely assigned to the boys physical education classes and put in shop class instead of home EC. You would have thought that the (idiot) school counselor who did the schedules would have figured this out after the first error. But she didn’t. Happened every year.
We wanted names that either didn’t have a nickname, or had a nickname we really liked. For one of our kids, we often were asked “what are you going to call her?” Duh…we are going to call her by her full name. And everyone does. No nickname.
Sometimes the nicknames are unisex but the full name isn’t.
I used to work in a university department that handled student records, so we saw a lot of names that made you giggle. The trend of placenames as first names certainly created some different names! And there are parents deliberately being initial-cute (George Ivan Joseph comes to mind – GI Joe)
I was teased relentlessly growing up - an ethnic name that when Americanized had some easy rhyming taunts, and my initials also spelled out something. I’ve gone by a nickname since 3rd grade and happily changed my last name when I got married.
I agonized over names. I definitely thought about what would sound professional, was easy to pronounce, didn’t rhyme with anything and that initials weren’t a word. My D used a nickname from early childhood through 8th grade and then decided to use her full name. People often misspell it (there are a couple of variations) but most people can pronounce it correctly on the first try ; )
As such, I would never, ever make a negative comment about a baby name. The most I would do is give a preference if a friend presented me with a few options and asked for an opinion.
My GS has a classic Irish name (not one of the ones with a million silent letters) but just different enough that he will be spelling it out forever. Oh well. There’s one other in the town he lives in in the toddler age group; we don’t really know the family, but we’ve run into them enough that we refer to him as “the other GSname.”
If you all want to read some real snark, there is a FB group called “That Name is a Tragedeigh” which can be funny. But find the older one, with more than 100K members. It’s adamant about forbidding making fun of cultural names, and cliched urban legend stories. There’s a newer one with the same name that is fine with making fun of cultural names and I would NOT join that one, personally.
The original is more about ridiculous spellings, or naming your kid Coors Light, basically.
My first name is easily recognizable, but not common. You’ll hear it now and then. I’ve always loved it.
My mother also has such a name and it is gender neutral.
She said when I was born my grandfather in the hospital said he thought my name sounded like “a black girl’s name”.
He asked the black nurse if she agreed. She said she wasn’t sure what he meant, “but I sure do love the name ….!”
In the process of naming our second kid, initials ended up as EMC. My DH tried to convince me to add a second middle name so she could be “EMCsquared.”
I vetoed that option, but years later when we told our daughter the story she said she would’ve loved the EMC2 option. Now her plan is to marry someone with a last name starting with C so she can hyphenate and make it happen.
For some reason my parents did not give me a middle name (my sister and parent all had ones). After confirmation I began using my confirmation name as my middle name/ initial. Although I never legally changed my name (except my last name when I married), I have government IDs with all different variations - middle name included, no middle name, middle initial only, maiden name, etc. These are mostly from before things got so strict with government IDs (pre 9/11). I decided to not give my daughter a middle name and let her add one later in life if she decided to. She doesn’t have any interest in adding one (she is 29 now), and the work involved in making any change is hard to do now.
It is interesting that some names seem to come back, and others don’t. I was just thinking of my mother and her friends-names like Dolores, Olive, Vera, Lorraine, Nellie, Grace. The only one I think that you hear now would be Grace.
How cool! Glad to hear Olive is coming back. I remember the Olive I knew fondly. Same with the Grace I knew. All these women long gone but not forgotten!
None of my 3 kids have children yet but baby naming is a frequent discussion topic. Either baby or dog names!!
It’s become a standing joke that I dislike the name Penelope (apologies to any out there!). D2 who is FAR from even thinking about children liked it and I expressed how much I disliked it and now it’s the standing baby name joke.
We will often also say, “I like the name - but not for a baby. It’s a good dog name. “.
My name isn’t common, Irish but a normal spelling, except my parents added a random Y, so no one can pronounce it, and it’s always misspelled. Most of my kids’ names are perfectly acceptable for the royal family. Most have nice nicknames (my sister and I have names that are 2 syllables but there are no nicknames. One of my daughter’s very common name has 4 speaking’s, I went with the most common.
When my mother heard my daughter’s name she replied, “Why? That’s an old lady’s name”- thanks mom:). My daughter’s has been mentioned upthread- it’s beautiful, classic and my mother grew to love it and her.
I would never comment on someone’s name choice- really, it’s just a name!
When I was expecting one of my friends said, “The middle name could be armchair for all anyone cares.”
I know someone without a middle name. Their high school graduation program listed them as Firstname Nmn Lastname. My first thought was that Nmn is a name I’ve never heard of but perhaps it’s related to their heritage. I quickly realized it was No middle name.
We never told anyone the names we had chosen until after the babies had arrived (we also didn’t know the genders, so we had names chosen for both). People are more likely to make rude comments about a name you are thinking about than one you have actually given to your child.
