Posted by: neschria on: July 28, 2009
I’ve been beating my head against the Irish language (often called “Irish Gaelic” on this side of the Atlantic) for several years now, making only modest progress. This is probably the source of my fascination with Irish names for girls.
The spelling of Irish can be pretty intimidating, until you get used to it, and there’s nothing intuitive about puzzling out how to pronounce them for English-speaking Americans. My husband is sensitive to spelling issues, so this relegates these names to “guilty pleasure” status, or perhaps middle name territory at best.
Here’s a short list of some of my favorites:
Ríonach (and a note on pronouncing it)
Despite the popularity here in the US of Irish and Irish-inspired names for boys, they don’t rank quite as highly with me. I have a Liam already, so I guess that was enough. (And why Liam for him? It was the only thing we could agree on at the time. We never did agree on a name for a girl, so he’s lucky he’s a boy, or we’d probably still be arguing about it.)
Posted by: neschria on: July 25, 2009
Summer has been much busier than I had anticipated. It hasn’t left me a lot of time to mull over names that I may or may not use. It’s mostly been good busy, though, so I am not going to complain.
I’m not pregnant and won’t be for a minimum of 6 months at this point, so worrying about names isn’t exactly an emergency.
Unlike other people, my interest in names is a two-pronged thing: I am interested in names that I would use, and I am interested in creating fictional naming systems that fit my constructed languages.
I’ve given in to being a little snarky, but the truth is, I don’t care what people name their kids in general. If Mr. and Mrs. Christmas think it is a good idea to name their daughter Mary, that’s not really any of my business. And I don’t know that I’d even find it very surprising at this point.
So, anyway, on to my top picks as of today. Off the top of my head, I’m going to say that Edmund has moved up to #1 for a boy, and Tabitha is probably my #1 for a girl.
Jonah is really appealing to me right now. Malcolm remains a strong contender. Henry has probably fallen down below those. Kai is a favorite, and I’ll let that round out my picks, but I don’t know that it has what it takes to stand up to our 3-syllable last name.
I still like Wyatt, but saying it a few times with our last name, it doesn’t work so well. (It goes great with my maiden name though, which is just about useless.) Jethro and maybe Jasper are possible replacements for Wyatt on my list.
The other contenders in the feminine category are Phaedra, Daphne, Carmen and Claudia. I just like those best right now. Who knows how I’ll feel next month. Like I said, I’ve got all the time in the world.
And everything after this point is of little or no interest to baby name enthusiasts, but is intensely interesting to me, so I am going to post it anyway.
I had mentioned much earlier in this blog that I invent languages as a hobby, and part of that has been finding ways to adapt real world names to my fictional languages, and also inventing naming systems for my languages.
I have maybe 3.5 language projects that have developed into something more than a very preliminary sketch. One of those (Myjador) is dormant, one is semi-dormant (ea-luna), one is in active development (Teliya Nevashi) and one new one that hasn’t really been named yet and isn’t quite ready for its debut.
Of those, ea-luna probably had the most personal names floating around in my notes. Some were translations of “real” names, others were names just adapted to the sound system of ea-luna (often to the point of mangling– “Fred” would end up something like “Puredu” when adapted), and some were “native” to the fictional culture of the language (such as “Keawakadi”, which is actually a smooshed together phrase that could be translated as “Wintersoul”).
Myjador had a number of “native” feminine names, mostly referring to the time of day of the birth of the child. The only one I can think of without looking it up is “Shesari” (“Born In The Evening”). I think where I was going with that was that in that fictional culture, a person would have two given names– a very common one related to the circumstances of his/her birth (time of day, season, weather, war or peacetime status, etc), and then a more specific one picked just for them.
Teliya Nevashi is a newer project in very slow development. My plans for this one is to develop a list of naming elements that can be combined to create names with different meanings that mostly stand out from other words in the lexicon. The only Nevashi name I can think of that has been used so far is Tajítsha, which means “Little Marigold”, and for better or worse, that’s really just a word with a diminutive suffix on it. That’s not the way I want to go for most names, though.
I’ll probably have a combination system for the unnamed language project, which I intend to be a collaborative project in the long run. Right now I am just building a framework and I need to get the online infrastructure in place for the collaborators to work and share in, but I do think it would be cool if people coming into the project could build their own names. We’ll see how that goes.
As I said much earlier in this blog, I don’t mind made-up names, as long as it means something to someone, somewhere. Lots of now-legit names (e.g., Wendy, Vanessa) were invented for literary purposes. On the other hand, I may not be so much a fan of “it doesn’t mean anything, it’s not a reference to anything, it just sounded pretty.”
Posted by: neschria on: June 13, 2009
My Top 5 changes frequently and without notice. That’s my disclaimer.
The #1 combos are Henry Stuart and Tova Leocadia (still), and that puts Henry and Tova in the top spots for individual names as well.
The other four for girls, in no particular order: Daphne, Phaedra, Tabitha, Audrey.
The other four for boys are : Harold, Edmund, Malcolm, Wyatt.
Edmund is my solid #2, I think, with Edmund Jericho being my favorite combo at the moment. Yeah, I know Wyatt is really popular. I likes what I likes.
As far as the feminine side, Audrey is on very shaky ground there, but the other three are pretty solid. Audrey has Carmen, Beatrix, Sabrina, Susan, and even Claudia and Eden nipping at it’s heels.
I’d love to see some fresh, new combos for any of these, including the runners-up on the girl’s list. I’d really like to see a combo with Daphne and a middle starting with ‘M’ that isn’t Marie or Maria. I’ve just had a hard time coming up with anything satisfactory. (Thanks in advance for anything you suggest!)
Posted by: neschria on: June 13, 2009
I attended the high school graduation of son #2 last Sunday. This put a program full of teenagers’ full names in my hands. Obviously, I am not going to put full names with surnames out there, out of respect for their privacy, and I am not even going to list all the first and middle names, but I can’t help but make a few observations:
1) My son had the longest (full) name in his class. The salutatorian came in second, at four letters shorter. (They both have hyphenated last names).
2) Due to the ethnic diversity of his graduating class, there are a lot of names out of languages other than English.
And now for some individual names–
The valedictorian was named Melody. (Middle name? The demure-but-predictable Anne.)
The young lady named Charlotte Aletha probably had a name ahead of its time.
There was one young man named Olexander, but when my daughter mentioned him, she called him “Alex”.
Demashia wasn’t pronounced De-MAH-shee-ah, as I’d imagined when I read it. It was De-MAY-shee-ah.
One of my son’s classmates was named Ikea. Yes, like the furniture store. No, I’m not kidding.
Another was named Fantasia.
Yet another was named Myriah Karrey, pronounced “Mariah Carey”.
You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a Michael, or a girl who had Ashley as a first or middle name. Samantha was also popular that year, and there were a couple of Ambers too. Likewise, there were a few boys named Marcus, and (being ethnically diverse, as I previously mentioned) there were a couple of boys named Jesus as well.
Marie was a wildly popular middle name. I wonder if it still is, or if Rose is the new universal middle name. Speaking of which, there was a girl with Rose in the middle there too, but only one. There was only one girl with the middle name “Breeze” also, but that’s less surprising.
And on the personal opinion side:
My favorite name of the day (other than my son’s) was probably “Maria De La Luz”. I know it’s in-your-face Spanish (and perhaps in-your-face Catholic), but it’s got a lovely ring to it, IMO.
Posted by: neschria on: June 5, 2009
I’ve been insanely busy for the last few weeks with all sorts of end of the school year activity. And later today, I will be leaving on an out-of-state trip for my son’s graduation, visiting relatives, and (if things go well) a trip to the beach.
I’ve been trying to work out some Daphne and Phaedra combos. These two names have worked their way up the list for me. I hope to have some combos to post when I get home in a week or so.
Posted by: neschria on: May 14, 2009
Some of my 4-year-old’s future classmates:
Elleyana is a variant spelling of Eliana, in cast that wasn’t clear.
Posted by: neschria on: May 12, 2009
Here are the top 10 names from around the region I live in. I’ve lived in three of these four states– New Jersey hasn’t been my home. (Yet… Who knows what the future holds?)
PA
DE
MD
NJ
I have to say, I was surprised to see Alexis and Brianna on the list in Delaware, and Samantha and Ashley in New Jersey. I am afraid that these names already seem dated to me, even though they are still relatively popular.
Alexis peaked at #3 nationally in 1999. It’s still a top 20 name, nationally– 19 in 2007, 15 in 2008. Brianna also peaked in 1999, at #14. It’s at 23 for 2008. Samantha peaked at #3 in 1998. It is still up there at #11 for last year. Ashley was #1 in 1991-92. It’s down at 18 on the latest list. (All data courtesy of the Social Security Administration.)
I guess that just goes to show that the national lists don’t necessarily reflect what’s going on in your neighborhood.
Posted by: neschria on: May 12, 2009
I have a lot of feminine names written down in my little names notebook. I’ve only mentioned a fraction of them here, even when I previously gave a preliminary list. I called that post “part 1″, and I never got around to part 2, so that’s what I’ll call this one. This is a short odds-and-ends list. These are sort of the weirdos on my long list. You may be seeing some of these in future combo lists too.
Posted by: neschria on: May 12, 2009
I have been really busy and have been neglecting this blog just a little bit, so this is a “random thoughts I’ve been having about naming” post before I get back into the swing of picking and picking apart specific names. I apologize for the random, tangential nature of this post in advance.
I get a daily name suggestions email from Baby Names World at Parents Connect. These suggestions are supposedly based on what I’ve previously marked “like” or “dislike”, and while I have actually gotten some good suggestions, lately it’s been sending me some that make me wonder what I selected that would make them send these particular names. Do I seem like a Shantel person? Chantal, maybe, but Shantel?!
When I posted my list of botanical names, I missed Linnea, which is odd, because I’ve adored that name forever. Unfortunately, thanks to Stargate SG-1, everytime I say that name, my husband adds, “Destroyer of Worlds”. That’s ok, though. It’s a non-starter for us anyway.
One criteria I failed to mention in my earliest posts about what I am looking for in a name I might use at this point is that I don’t want it to start with L or feature that sound prominently in any first name. My last three kids were Liam, Lilia, and Elaina (most often called ‘Laina’). Enough is enough! I’ll probably discuss some L names at some point, for other people’s hypothetical babies, but they are off limits for us as first names.
Oh, we’ve been blogrolled at Appellation Mountain! That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. That’s where I learned that the Social Security Administration has released the popularity rankings for 2008.
Tomorrow, the SSA will be releasing the popularity by state rankings, which will be very interesting to me. I am from Delaware and live in Pennsylvania. Ava was the #1 name for girls in both in 2007, and Michael was at the top in both states for boys. (The lists diverge after that first one, though.) I will be very interested to see how the names pan out around my region.
I’ve wanted to blog for a while regarding using names from an ethnic background not your own, but I can quite seem to get my thoughts together on it. I have concerns about scavenging from other people’s cultures, but, on the other hand, isn’t that America? How do you all feel about it?
Posted by: neschria on: May 7, 2009
I did a quick list of a few pairs, starting with boys and matching the girls to them. Here are a few going the other way:
I should match girls with girls and boys with boys next. And combos, as I mentioned in the other “Pairs” post.
