Baby Names that have been done to death

[Momvic5]

I think Luke is becoming pretty popular again. Our youngest is Luke also. I don't hear it a TON but I hear it often enough. Then again, he was our 3rd boy & we had a hard time coming up with *another* boy name!!! Took us forever to figure out names with the older 2, I'm picky about boy names & DH is also picky. Unfortunately....we both like DIFFERENT names -- so pretty soon his name would have just been "Baby Boy"... That's what his name was for at least 2 days.

One thing I have found is it makes no difference what you name them...you will run into some problems you probably didn't think through!! My DD's name ends in "LYN" a pretty classic name & no one seems to be able to pronounce it -- they insist it's pronounced "LINE".

Our youngest is Luke too. I love the name.

We have a Megan, and as common as Megan is, most people mis-pronounce it too. We pronounce the Meg part of Megan with the short e vowel sound as in Meg and Peg, but many people pronounce the Meg part with a long a vowel sound as in Maygan. My DD is nine now, and she is beggining to notice the difference. I have heard her correct her friends several times. She will say, "My name is Megan not Maygan."

 

[Mickeyluver37]

When you read a birth announcement for a new baby and its a name that has been done to death along with a middle name that's been done to death, do you automatically see the parents as dull? I do, and I don't like it...trying to find out how abnormal I am. What say you?

No, I don't care what other people name their babies. The only trend right now that I don't care for his Neveah. I just think it's wierd.

My name is Amy and it was certainly overdone in the late 70's. I have several friends named Amy.

 

[Disneychix]

I have a Brady too! And we were considering Peyton for a girl next but now I'm seeing it's becoming popular so I'll hold off!

I have an old sounding name so I know what it's like to be young with a unique name. No one could ever remember my name and I just felt 'different' or out of the loop because my name was so out there. But I would never want a totally popular name for my child. A nice middle of the road, sometimes you might find someone out there with the same name, kind of name.

If you were a Jennifer in the 80's you magically bonded with all the other Jennifers. Not so much with the Rosalie's!

 

[moburg]

I always though Levi was a more traditional Biblical name..either that or one of kids from "Children of the Corn".

Maybe the mother was wearing Levis and drinking Chardonnay in a Mercedes when she got pregnant with them?

Well, I doubt she was wearing the Levi's at the time.

 

[xoprincessmomxo]

I don't know -- I hear this argument all the time but my name is truly Becky! It actually worked to my advantage. When all the other "Becky's" were turning into Rebecca's so then had to add their initials...I was Becky. I never had to add my initial to anything -- if it was Becky, everyone knew it was me. No guessing which Rebecca.

It has never been a problem for me except occassionally asked "is that your legal name?" when filling out legal documents but considering my DH is called something totally different than his legal name (he's a III and the name he is called isn't even remotely close to his real name).

I guess because I'm an adult with a "nickname as a real name" I just don't get the problem with it. Maybe I'm missing something, that I should have problems with it? Who knows maybe other people have the problem with it & I just am not clued in that it was such a big issue.

My mom's name was Becky, too. Not Rebecca. She was born in 1950 and my very straightforward grandparents knew that they were going to call her Becky, so why in the world would they name her Rebecca?

As for my children, I have a Lydia and a Helena (Helen-uh). My sister tried to go "unique" and ended up with two of the most popular names ever for her children: oldest is Jack, youngest as of now is Ava. Her middle daughter is Eliot and no, she's never even seen Scrubs. She is due any day now with Christopher Blaise who will go by his middle name. Sounds like Blaze. I'm not so sure I'd use it, but she likes it and that's all that matters.

 

[HelenePA]

If she were a boy would you have called her Westminster, or just London?

well i have 2 and 2 no Westminster or London's here... but london is more of a girls name at least thats what i'm thinking from seeing zack znd cody one too many times? sorry for any typos feeding baby and typing with one hand

 

[SamIAm21]

We have a Megan, and as common as Megan is, most people mis-pronounce it too. We pronounce the Meg part of Megan with the short e vowel sound as in Meg and Peg, but many people pronounce the Meg part with a long a vowel sound as in Maygan. My DD is nine now, and she is beggining to notice the difference. I have heard her correct her friends several times. She will say, "My name is Megan not Maygan."

I have a Megan (8 y/o) as well who dislikes MAYGAN too! And she doesn't get the Meghan spelling... wonders if she should pronoune it Meg-Han... I told her it depends on the nationality.

 

[NY Disney fan]

Our youngest is Luke too. I love the name.

We have a Megan, and as common as Megan is, most people mis-pronounce it too. We pronounce the Meg part of Megan with the short e vowel sound as in Meg and Peg, but many people pronounce the Meg part with a long a vowel sound as in Maygan. My DD is nine now, and she is beggining to notice the difference. I have heard her correct her friends several times. She will say, "My name is Megan not Maygan."

I had someone correct me and tell me her name was "Mee-gan". I never even realized there were so many ways to say it.

 

[Kath2003]

well i have 2 and 2 no Westminster or London's here... but london is more of a girls name at least thats what i'm thinking from seeing zack znd cody one too many times? sorry for any typos feeding baby and typing with one hand

Don't ask me, no one in England calls their children London, regardless of gender

That said, I live in the county of Devon and have taught a number of students named Devon...

 

[Becky2005]

My mom's name was Becky, too. Not Rebecca. She was born in 1950 and my very straightforward grandparents knew that they were going to call her Becky, so why in the world would they name her Rebecca?

THAT was my mom's thinking...my sister is Kathy. Not Katherine, just plain old Kathy BUT my mom's argument doesn't hold water because my brother is Kenneth & goes by Ken (of course, extended family tend to still call him Kenny -- then again I guess it works for Kenny Rogers who I'm sure isn't hurting too badly in the economics department!).

I did have a cousin ask me "how do you spell your name?" -- I looked at her as if she was daft and went "B-e-c-k-y" turns out she was wanting to know if it was spelled Rebecca or Rebekah. Neither!

Of course now you do have Beckie as a spelling so I'm actually asked now how to spell my name -- it's bizarre as a child I was never asked to spell my name but now as an adult I'm always spelling it for people over the phone, etc... My brother always spelled my name BecKEY though and he wasn't doing it to be funny, I think he really thought it was spelled that way for the longest time (spelling is not a strong point of the males of my family!), he's older but I think I finally trained him the correct spelling, so he'll do it every once in a while now to be goofy.

I just got it from my MIL that DD's name was "too big of a name for a baby" -- HUH? She kept trying to make it shorter & I guess I'm definitely my mom's child since I kept thinking -- IF I wanted to call her something different I would have named her that. About the only one that really has a 'nickname' is Luke which sometimes I call Lukie but that really is the only name that lends itself to having an "e" ending.

 

[PlutosFriend]

Wow, I haven't seen anyone bash my kids names..in fact they haven't been mentioned at all!
My dd is in 3rd grade and there are a ton of boys named Jacob. Nice, strong name, but just too many.
Seems to be a lot of Kate's in our neck of the woods too.

 

[Becky2005]

I had someone correct me and tell me her name was "Mee-gan". I never even realized there were so many ways to say it.

I'm finding there are several names like that. Sonya is another one that has 2 pronounciations but are spelled the same way.

After reading this thread, I *knew* there was a reason I was not a teacher!! Actually I knew that Senior year when I realized I had been seeing a name "Sean" pronouncing it like "bean" for the longest time and it wasn't until one of the plays I found out it was pronounced "Shawn/Shaun".

The only reason I made the connection was I saw it in the program with knowing the name of the person playing the part & saw his name in print (he was a couple years ahead of me in school). The lightbulb went off and my thought was "how in the world to teachers know how to pronounce all these names?" HS was the first time I had ever seen it spelled that way.

 

[bethbuchall]

I'm trying to come up with a name for a girl--they tell us that's what we're having--and it's been tough. A lot of names sound too cutesy, or too old. Some names I do like are very popular, others I worry won't be pronounced correctly (if I name her Ariana, I worry she'll have to hear AIR-ee-ANN-uh her whole life). She'll be getting my hyphenated last name, and while it's a pretty simple last name, like Johnson-Smith, I don't want to give her a long first name like Anastasia. I like my name a lot, it's short, simple, and feminine. So I'm trying to find something along those lines.

I was going to suggest my dd's name, Laura. Then I noticed your user name.

 

[prettyprincessbelle]

I'm a Courtney and I was born in 1987. I didn't even know another Courtney until I started working at my current job last year. She was born in 1986.

 

[C.Ann]

Not at all.. I assume that all parents choose the names for their children based on quite a bit of research - something they both like - or many times, the child is named after someone in the family (either still alive or deceased)..

 

[NotUrsula]

Archer could be a Star Trek name, too, after Capt. Jonathan Archer. The person who said it sounded "snooty" probably was associating it with Newland Archer, the character in Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence.

Just a note as someone from a family of Irish speakers. Irish-speaking people tend to get a bit bent out of shape about the spelling of Irish names because Irish is one of those languages where changing the spelling usually changes the meaning of the word, most often messing up the gender it takes. For instance, I have a tendency to cringe when I see Aidan spelled with the ending "en" because in Irish that forces it to become a feminine-gender word. The proper ending spelling for Irish male names that end that way is always going to be "an", because that's masculine in Irish. BTW, Irish names that end in "a" are male, too. Popular examples: Brian, Cieran, Declan, and Enda -- all male.

PS: the Meghan thing is funny. What you are seeing with that spelling is an attempt to make a name look Irish when it isn't. While Meg and Peg are "very" popular in Ireland as short forms of Margaret, and thus just about everyone seems to know an Irish girl called Meggie, the name Megan is actually Welsh, by way of Greek. If it *were* Irish, with that spelling it would be pronounced "Mee-han" because a gh in the middle of the word like that would be silent. (Not to be confused with Micheal, which is a properly-spelled male name, pronounced Mee-haul)

 

[ctinct]

I prefer common names over the weirdly spelled ones - stop sticking in random "Y's"!

Uh-oh. I stuck a random "y" in my daughter's name, but I had a reason for it, and I've since seen a few others spelltheir names like hers. Her name is Dayna, with the "Y" to distinguish it from the male Dana. (Females can also be spelled that way, too, though.) I didn't think it would be a problem for people to pronounce, but she has been called Diana, Dayana, Dina, and a few others I can't remember.

I agree with thinking ahead to your child's adult life. My other daughter is Carla. I don't know, I just think these names are feminine without being overly girly, and they have some "weight" to them. I can envision a president named Carla, or for that matter Elizabeth, Geraldine, or Sarah, but not so much a president Tiffany. Don't mean to offend anyone if your child's name is Tiffany- it's my personal problem, I know. I'm not offended by people not liking my "y".

 

[Colleen27]

Following Lost and Titanic, I'm predicting an influx of Jack and Kate in high schools in about ten years

Lost is one of my favorite shows and I didn't even catch the name connection with our short list. Sawyer was one of our top choice boy names, and we ended up with a Kate (Katherine). I hope it doesn't get too popular any time soon!

 

[Colleen27]

I just got it from my MIL that DD's name was "too big of a name for a baby" -- HUH? She kept trying to make it shorter & I guess I'm definitely my mom's child since I kept thinking -- IF I wanted to call her something different I would have named her that.

I got that about naming my son Sebastian too. He grew into the name, though - he's 10 now, almost as tall as me and wearing a bigger shoe size!

 

[Scurvy]

I love traditional names! What I hate are the "unique" and "trendy" names, especially the ones with weird spellings. And somehow it never fails that the people who get the most creative with the spellings are also the ones who get the angriest if their child's name is mispronounced or misspelled.

On another forum I visit, a woman was determined to name her daughter "Miichael". No, that's not a typo - not only did she choose a traditionally male name she also decided to add an extra "i" just for fun. Apparently she really did end up naming her daughter that despite everyone on the board trying to tell her what a mistake it would be.

A site that deals with really bad baby names is: http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/index.html Some of the names on there make me think that the countries that have lists of approved names for babies might not be so bad after all.