What Not To Name The Baby

[dr_pretentious]

My family waged a campaign--ultimately successful--to change my mind about what to name the baby. On the way to the strategy that actually worked, they tried one that was surely doomed to fail: telling me, with my common-as-mud name that was the one most frequently given to girls in my birth year, that the name I favored was too weird. Dan wasn't persuaded by the too-weird argument, either, having belonged once to a community service organization that had more members named Dan than it had women. In my high school algebra class, I was one of five Sarahs, with last initials conveniently lined up A through F, and our teacher just addressed us by initial.

"Why not a family name?" my mother asked.

"If you can find one in the genealogy that isn't common as mud, I'll be happy to add it to my short list," I said.

So we spent an hour on the phone going over the genealogies together. Mom would read up the lineage, "John, John, John, Samuel, Samuel, five Nathaniels, and then we're back to Johns again. How about Nathaniel?"

"Not big on Bible names," I said. "I'd feel...somewhere between disrespectful and hypocritical. Disingenuous at the very least."

"Oh, here's a run of Georges up another line. You had a Pagan friend named George."

"Other kids born in our community are already named in memory of him. My kid would grow up as part of a bumper crop of Georges, and it would be Sarahs A through F all over again. How about last names? Maybe there are some last names that could work as a first name."

And then we got a reminder about why all the first names were so dull--to balance out the wacky last names. "I'm especially fond," said Mom, "of Grace Crackbone, your five-times-great-grandmother."

"Grace Crackbone? She should definitely have been a martial artist."

Another half-hour of poring over the last names turned up no likely candidates. All those John Goatleys, Nathaniel Footes, and assorted Hoppings sounded like something out of Tolkien's Hobbit bloodlines.

Mom insisted, "But you can't name the baby Maddox. Please, just don't."

"Okay, fine," I said, "I'll string together a bunch of the last names and go with that instead."

"Uh oh."

"How about Crackbone Goatley Hopping Foote?"

It's a good thing our cell phone plans are generous with minutes, because it took a long time for the giggling to subside on both ends of the connection.

As a writer of fiction, I am firmly of the conviction that someone ought to be named Crackbone Goatley Hopping Foote. I'm not sure what kind of character s/he ought to be. Hopefully not a demon or a faerie, because the fantasy genre is saturated with those right now to the point of tedium--the shelves at Barnes & Noble are weighted down with Demons A through F, no matter what cool names their authors try to give them. But whoever gets that name, when eventually I have a chance to start new story projects, it won't be my actual baby.

Comments

[temporus.livejournal.com]

Good luck. Names took a while for us. We found out the hard way, they won't let you leave the hospital until you pick one. Really.

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

I've heard this many times, and I still find it unfathomable. How can you give someone a name before you've had a chance to get to know the person?

What did they do to keep you there? I mean, now you have me imagining a scheme to whisk Mom and No-name-yet out of the hospital. The theme from Mission: Impossible is playing in the background as the decoy mom (Martin Landau) comes to visit real mom, holding what looks like a Cabbage Patch kid doll...

[temporus.livejournal.com]

That was essentially our philosophy, that we had to meet our boys before they each got named. As to how do they keep you there? They simply don't discharge you. They need to be able to fill out forms, send in the paperwork for the birth certificate, etc. Also, every hospital I know of in this area installs some kind of baby lo-jack (usually done pretty much at birth and before any parents leave the room, you all get banded with coded ID so they cab tell which baby belongs to which parents). And if you try to leave with a child without going through channels, you'll set off alarms and put the hospital on lockdown.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

Wow. I was officially "Baby [surname]" for several months.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

My nephew (Dan's sister's kid) was born in Maryland, where the grace period is longer than in New Jersey. His parents gave him the placeholder nickname Squeaky for so long before they made up their minds, we all began to worry that he'd be stuck getting called Squeaky by his family for the rest of his life.

[jeneralist.livejournal.com]

My advice, if you think you'll face that again (and for dr_pretentious) is to let the nurses know during the admission process that you will not be naming the child yet. There's usually a question like, "do you have any spiritual/religious/cultural beliefs or practices we need to know about?" Tell them THEN that you will not be naming the child yet: you won't know the chil's name until you perceive the omens (ie, meet the kid).

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I think we'll be able to name him once we see him, but that is good to know.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

laughing

[kjc.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness! Crackbone Goatley Hopping Foote would clearly need to be a satyr or faun!

*nods*

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

A very, very naughty faun. >:-)

[puckmls.livejournal.com]

Perhaps in a very twisted version of C. S. Lewis' work? ;-)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Can I just say, you always have the coolest icons?

[garybart.livejournal.com]

And the strategy that worked was....? (I think Maddox is a cool name, FWIW. Sad you aren't going with it.)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It turns out there are two very famous, highly vociferous racists with that name (Lester Maddox, segregationist governor, and a comedian who just goes by Maddox, who apparently is famous among our students' generation). I don't want racism to be something two generations of Americans think of immediately when they meet my kid, so out the name goes. Somehow, my generation got by without a racist named Maddox of our own, so I had no idea it was what the folks both younger and older would jump to in their heads. I always thought of the British Modernist novelist Ford Maddox Ford, especially after doing a dissertation on mid-century Modernism. Oh, well. Maddox as a name will come back into its own a lot sooner than will, say, Adolf or Vlad, which should be some comfort to the Maddoxes of the world.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

I imagine that Maddox Pitt-Jolie will make the name cool.

[jasminewind.livejournal.com]

But Maddox is such a COOL name!!! I am sorry your family is predisposed against it.

Also, you already have a kid with an unusual and wonderful name (not that it is all that unusual to many of your friends but it is not on the SSA's top 100 name list, to be sure). You have to give #2 a name that coordinates with #1's name!

I predict you will be dreaming about your new character, Crackbone Goatley Hopping Foote, and all her many adventures very soon! I look forward to hearing the stories.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

You know, it never sank in during the 12 years I was on that side of the Pond, that Gareth was an "unusual" name over there. It was made clear to me that Nigel and Trevor were "unusual" names, I will admit :)

I kind of never got used to the idea of a surname as a first name, though it is a venerable and perfectly reasonable American tradition. I suppose that ALL names could be used as surnames, and ALL names have interesting origins, even if they are so widely used that we don't recognise that. Sarah means "a high ranking lady".

My Mum always says that my name "isn't common - it's popular". I was baptised in the year my name became popular for the first time in England. Now there are loads of us.

How about continuing the Welsh theme? If Gareth is an unusual name over there, what of Iean, Iantor, Cai, Emlyn, Emrys, Dylan, Owen/Owain/Ioan, Rhys/Reece, Geraint, Dafydd/Dai/Dewi, Howell/Hywel, Brynn, Bevan, Conwy/Conway, Morgan (ALWAYS a boy's name over here for some reason), Evan/Ifan, Mervyn, Huw, Tristan, Madoc (from whence Maddox - Prince Madoc was said to have reached America in the 11th c.), Gavin, Glyn/Glynn, Bran...

I love your family names. Grace Crackbone NEEDS to be in one of your stories!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I had no idea Madoc was a transatlantic voyager. Cool! I'd hoped to stick with the Welsh names, but Dan and I haven't found another we're both keen on.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

Well, apart from the total lack of evidence... it's a long-standing legend that the Welsh sailors married into a Native tribe.

If you're thinking Welsh, may I lobby for Emlyn, Emrys, Glyn, Hywel (as in Hywel Dda), or - my favourite, of all the Welsh boys' names - Aneurin (as in the Dark Ages poet who wrote Y Gododdin?

Just my tuppeny ha'penny :)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

What a wild story. I had some dim recollection of the riffing on that legend in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but no clue that the legend preexisted the novel. So many clashing colonial claims and dreams are at work there. The most melancholy implication is that a lot of the pioneers in the Manifest Destiny era really wanted to stop othering the Native Americans, but the only way they could imagine doing that would have been to prove that the natives had all along been crypto-Europeans.

And there's Coleridge, with his Pantisocratic scheme, in the middle of all that swirling mythmongering. Everything really is connected with everything else.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

Does the twin in A Swiftly Tilting Planet had a good name? I can't recall.

I heard the name Cormac today. It seem unusual and Welsh sounding.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

It's Irish and is connected to the word for raven.

Cormac mac Airt was famous for his good judgment and wise rule as High King, so there's a recommendation for you :)

[evaelisabeth.livejournal.com]

Naming our daughter resembled nothing so much as the Camp David Accords, it's a miracle we eventually agreed on something :-)

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

hee hee

love those names!

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, Sarah, your ancestors are named like Dickens characters! Like Henry Fielding characters! cool!
My brother took 3 weeks or more to name his first daughter. Finally the national health system (they live in Canada) pushed them off the fence by demanding that she have her own health card, complete with her own name, or stop receiving services. If that hadn't happened, I'm afraid she might now be enrolled in high school as Baby Girl Bronsard.
I toyed with the idea of naming my son Aragorn. It would fulfill your conditions of containing an A and not being biblically derived.

Re: love those names!

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The Olympic skier Pecabo Street was born in a state that was very loose about baby naming, so that she was still legally Baby Girl Street until she was 2 years old, and named herself after the game of Peekaboo. Her parents tried to make the spelling look more like a name, but kept the kid's own pronunciation. It's a fun story, though not something I'd have done.

Aragorn and Samwise are both starting to appear in mainstream baby name books. I wouldn't be surprised if Aragorns started showing up in Kindergartens in another few years.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

"Crackbone Goatley Hopping Foote"

Sounds like a medical condition. Or a curse. ("I smite thee with the crackbone goatley hopping foot!")

My son, had he been born a girl, would have been named Rapunzel. I couldn't get the same deal on the second child, and my daughter's name turned out to be one of the more common ones among her age-mates all through school. She was furious (years later, obviously) when she found out that a cooler name like "Rapunzel" had been actually bandied about.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Pun would be the obvious nickname for Rapunzel, which is kind of cool, too.

I was almost named Emily Tiffany Avery, which would have been more unusual, but was just too dactylic.

[criada.livejournal.com]

I like Maddox, though the only other time I've heard it is as the name of a friend's dog. So don't blame me if I think of huskies every time I see your kid.
You remember Spencer, right? He named his new baby boy Samwise. They call him Sam, which is actually super annoying because at the same time Baby Sam arrived in the world, we got a Sam in our writing group! He negated any "he'll get made fun of for his name," criticism by saying a kid doesn't get beat up for having a stupid name, they get beat up because they're not cool.

I vote for Crackbone as the middle name. Maddox Crackbone Avery clearly isn't someone to mess with.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

I like Crackbone as a middle name too.

What worked

[collaboratelaw.livejournal.com]

I told Sarah that the first thing I thought of when I heard the name Maddox was of Lester Maddox, the segregationist governor of Georgia from 1967 -1971.
Sarah's Father

Re: What worked

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

And the day I conceded the point was the day the prodromal labor got useful. I wonder whether the little guy wasn't just holding out for an assurance that I wouldn't name him Maddox. :)

[sacredmime.livejournal.com]

As someone with an uncommon name--"Rodello"--I'm happy you weren't persuaded to settle for something mundane. A possible compromise (if you're so inclined) would be a name that can be shortened into a reasonably common nickname.

[siobhra.livejournal.com]

As someone who changed her name as an adult I can tell you that it is not easy. Some people say you become your name. I was Michael which means "God Like". I don't think anyone will ever pray to me. I was named after my father who went on to hate me. However I chose Siobhra after a long time of thinking about it. A lot of people gave me idea's. Siobhra= little elf, precocious one, elven princess, trouble maker.

I would look for a name that reflects how the two of you turned out. But from the start I would tell the child that you would not be hurt in the least if she/he decided to change it someday.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons we chose Gareth the first time around was that it shortens nicely to the more common Gary, and both kids will have common middle names for backup. If either or both decide to drop the hyphenated last name as adults, that's okay, too. If they want something even more unusual than what we pick out, more power to them.

what not to name your baby?

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

How 'bout Waverly Avery-Davis?

Re: what not to name your baby?

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

...which I might add is still preferable to the worst possible name I came up with for my 2nd child--who should be eternally grateful not to be Jar Jar Sklar.

Re: what not to name your baby?

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

There is NO WAY any child of mine would get that name (Jar Jar Sklar) so you would have to find a different mommy.

Re: what not to name your baby?

[thunderpigeon.livejournal.com]

Um...pardon me. Jar Jar Young-Sklar.

Re: what not to name your baby?

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's just wrong. But still not as wrong as Jar Jar Sklar.

[wombats.livejournal.com]

I'd vote go for going just flat out unique, if possible. A name is supposed to be identifier, a label. How useful is a label if it fits so many other ... items? I have the opposite problem, a common first and last name. It's annoying to have to continual redirect folks to the others of my name, and I'm sure that my counterparts equally are as annoyed. I encountered a woman in an undergraduate course that had had a name that until her time as a college student was unique. She really enjoyed and appreciated it. Now, she did admit to be shocked and offended when she'd discovered that someone else had "stolen" her name but being an adult at that time, she was more able to deal with it.

[reynaud.livejournal.com]

As a friend of kids every where, I have to thank your mother for trying to go against "Maddox." Yeah, it's a cool name, but think of the crap the kid would get in middle school. He had BETTER be built like an ox, because that'd be his nickname.

As for WHAT to name him... what would his last name be? That makes a big difference.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

We were guessing he'd get nicknamed Mad Dog, and really, what teenage boy wouldn't want a nickname like that? Okay, I knew radiotelescope in high school, and he probably wouldn't have, but most of the guys I know would have been tickled pink.

We'll be going with hyphenation again. It causes bureuacratic headaches, but we want the two kids' last names to match. So, _________ William Avery-Davis. Whatever his first name is, he's getting William for the middle.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

By high school I had already read _A Swiftly Tilting Planet_, so it would have been an unpleasant reference, not a cool nickname. (There's a crazed dictator or something named Madog. Where Wales finds the leverage to produce crazed dictators, I don't recall.)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I'd almost completely forgotten that, until we considered the more Welsh spelling Madoc and I tried to remember where I'd seen it before. Oh, well. We'll have to leave it to Angelina Jolie's kid to rehabilitate that name.

[spindlewand.livejournal.com]

My husband picked out both first names because, quite frankly, he was a pig about it and insisted.

DS number one got a cool hyphenated middle name, in case he decides to be cooler than his first name, which is the sort of name everyone has heard but not that many people have. Not common, but pretty usual.

DS number two got the shaft entirely. First off all, I managed to give him a hyphenated middle name that, in combination with his last name, spells something he would not want to be called. *facepalm.* Secondly, (going in totally random order here) he got a combination of names terribly typical for a group he does not actually belong to. Thirdly, not one of them is as cool as his brother's middle name.

I did manage to fend off the MIL who wanted him named after someone I did not care to name him after. In memory. Which was somehow important with this second, healthy, child and not with the first one... (I am sure you can hear my teeth grinding in Jersey...)

No wonder I have yet to have this child baptized.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Oh, my. I've heard some cautionary tales about family disagreements over baby naming turning into decades long feuds, but the only one I know of that beats yours involves actual threats to sue for custody and write people out of wills.

In the naming blunders department, my parents forgot to check what my initials would spell, so that I can use J.K. Rowling's gender-disguising gambit--my first two initials followed by my last name yield S.L. Avery, and slavery is just not a connotation I want to have following my name around, even subliminally. Oops. Whatever mistake Dan and I will make in naming our offspring, it won't be that one.

Every school that has ever issued me an email address has used some variation on Savery, which I kind of like, actually.

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

Yes, we had to avoid name possibilities that ended up with a child getting A.S.S. as initials...which led to us having Sarah too.