Name that baby

“The List” came out a couple of days ago.  The one from the Social Security Administration that details the top 1000 baby names given in the U.S. last year.  I just have one thing to say:

Dear Expectant Parents,

I know that you are excited about your newborn baby and want to choose a great name for him/her. Let me be frank with you.  If you want to pick a creative, fresh name, then pick one.  Don’t think that you can pick a tired, overused name and spell it differently and that will be just as good.  It won’t.  Nobody will think you are being original or cool; You’ll just look like you don’t know how to spell.  Aiden, Aden, Ayden, Aidan and Aaden all sound the same when you’re yelling across the playground.

(This means you, parents of Dillan, Khloe, Jakkob, Emely, Karsen and Allexus.)

P.S. Take it from someone who is named Jennie–yes, it’s spelled that way on my birth certificate.  It’s the worst of both worlds: the most common name for girls my age, but none of the perks: no personalized pencils, bike licence plates or keychains.

 

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14 thoughts on “Name that baby

  1. I get this, completely. My parents cursed me with the name “Terresa” and no one has spelled it correctly since my birth, including my own siblings!! 😉

  2. I have to defend one segment of the “crazy spellers” population …. ok, I’m just defending myself here. My mother-in-law thinks I’m insane to have spelled my daughters names “Maija” and “Rebekah” but “Maija” is an authentic Finnish spelling of the name which is where I got it from, and “Rebekah” as you know is the Biblical spelling which is where we got her name from. BUT I do know that nobody will ever spell their names correctly or even say them correctly. Poor Maija! 🙂

  3. I totally get this.
    But I still named my daughter Abbey. (yes, it’s spelled that way on her birth certificate)

  4. Thank You! I named my boys John and Stephen, and people said, “Oh, they are so ordinary!” Except that there are no others in school with those names, there are multiple Mason, Madison, and Sailors.

  5. Sailor?!? Were they born with tattoos? Why not name him Popeye for originality everyone can spell?

  6. With a name like “Voronda” I always wanted to get things that were personalized but where in the world does one find A Voronda pen or pencil?

    I refused to bless my kids with a moniker that was out of the ordinary!

    My daughter Allison Shelby Brooke (yes, with two ll’s)and my son Alec Hunter Blake.

  7. hehe! i too have a funky unspellable name. what were my parents thinking? and then i went and named my daughter kassadi…hmmm!! oh well. live and learn the rest of my kids names are easy! kyle, sass (kassadi), halle, gabriel and olivia. so i think i did ok! but i had to laugh 🙂

  8. Amen and amen.

    (Yeah, I have an invented name, but at least it’s retained its spelling and pronunciation since it was invented in the early 1800s.)

    Of course, even if you spell a name right, it’ll still get spelled wrong — as my daughter Mabel a/k/a Mable could be the first to tell you. (Or my son Isaac a/k/a Issac, for that matter.)

  9. I love it when you post about the “name list”. I think that I have been called everything that sounds like and doesn’t even come close to sounding like my name as I went through school.

    I do like some of the more unique names, but will never “bless” my kids with them.

  10. My real name is a very rare spelling in Australia – it’s normally with a “y”, but I know in the States “ie” is just as common as “i”.

    No personalised things for me, unless it’s handmade!

    Of course, I was named after a famous bushranger (outlaw) so changing the spelling wasn’t really that much weirder….

  11. I have had people ask me how I spell my son Van’s name. Once I did lie ad say “Vhanne”. Now a days, I am sure some idiot had done that.

    Speaking of stupid spellings, go to the link below and scroll down to Utah. There you will find winners for the Google Doodgle contest and there are prime examples of STUPID spellings.

    http://www.google.com/doodle4google/winners_state.html

  12. I have a way bigger issue with people who name their kids Kamron and Chayce than people who at least have the originality to make up names like Shalyn or Brynlee. Because no one is going to hear those and assume they know how to spell them. Those kids will get asked their whole lives how to spell their names, but the kids with normal names and weird spellings will have it worse; Everyone will assume they know how to spell it and won’t even ask.

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