Hello, America. There is a pressing issue that I think needs to be brought to the attention of you good Americans. You see, there seems to be a rampant epidemic of terrible baby names coursing throughout our great nation, and I for one want to see this blight stopped dead in its tracks.
The other night, Dave and I somehow got on the topic of baby names. I think it started when I made him start translating various meaningful terms like "love" and "faith" into Japanese to see if any of them are cute for a little girl. But, I don't think that tactic is going to work because none of them were really name material. Go figure.
Anyway, Dave then decided to look up which names were most popular last year, and I introduced him to the wonder that is the Social Security Administration's website. It had been awhile since I had looked at it and we consequently spent the next 30 minutes rolling on the floor laughing at some of the gems that we found.
Now, I really hope that this doesn't offend anyone. Names are very personal. But some of these boys' names just shocked me in their popularity:
1. Deshawn, which, at 656 beat out Harry, Craig, Lee, and Toby (which I feel are very normal names...)
2. Nehemiah, all the way at 340, which was more popular last year than Scott, Brent, Mitchell, or Trent.
3. Cain. Cain. WHAT THE CRAP?! It was only 956 but still....enough people used it that it got on the map.
4. Issac. Probably the little brothers of all the Cains out there. Enough people accidentally misspelled Isaac that it was all the way up in the 430's.
5. And lastly, Alexzander. 675. Taking phonetic spelling to a whole new level.
The girls' names were not nearly as shocking because I think that people can take more liberty there. Living in Utah, I have seen my fair share of creative naming practices, but still....the fact that some of these were popular enough that even a few people used them blew me away. I think that there has been a surge in really cute girls' names lately, so I pretty much loved the top 25 (with the exception of Neveah...Heaven backwards...but if you like it, more power to you!), but one shocker was the fact that the name Mae, which I think is absolutely adorable (and the name of my cousin-in-law's little girl) was all the way at 988, and preceeded by Devyn and followed by Xiomara, Aracely, and Bryleigh. I definitely feel that it was a diamond in the rough there. So, I am pretty much convinced that there is no way to predict people's taste when it comes to this very emotional and meaningful subject.
Any opinions on baby naming? Any name horror stories?
Hahaha we've talked about this subject many times... people should just name their kids nice, normal names. Jon served his mission in South Cackalacky... which comes with it a WHOLE bunch of hick names. For example.. Abcd (pronounced Ab-se-dee), Orangejello (pronounced orahnj-ello), Female (pronounced feh-mawl-ee)... This is one area where being TOO creative isn't necessarily a good thing ;)
ReplyDeleteWorking in the nursery at the hospital, I saw an "Ermelina". And the nurses said they'd seen babies named "Placenta" and "Areola". There's a couple in our ward... His name is Kabrion (kay-bree-in) and her name is Ilish (eye-lish). We stuck with Timothy for our son. :-)
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