Mommy & Daddy Dillons' Baby Naming Philosophy
We've discovered over the last few months that everyone has definate biases about baby naming. There are some "rules" that seem to be pretty entrenched right now in our subculture, such as selecting a name that is unique to the child's generation within the family and social circle. So, no cousins all named Christine and no best friends all with little girls named Amber. Other conventions are more traditional, such as using first names of dead relatives as middle names.
Through talking with others and reading baby name books and articles, we've identified a few interesting features of our own baby naming philosophy.
First Name Conventions
- Uniqueness: We definately agree that a child's name should be unique within their generation in both the family and social circle of the parents. So basically that precludes us using any names that have already been used by people we know to name their children.
- Uniqueness +: We also happen to take the uniqueness convention a little farther in that we believe a child's first name should be completely unique within the family and social circle regardless of generation. Basically we believe that a child's name should be *their* name, not someone else's. We feel that it's lame to saddle a child with a name that will never be wholely their own because they have a relative or family friend who has first dibs on the best variation of the name, or alternately to curse them with forever being called by a childish or diminutive nickname. So that eliminates all names currently in use by anyone we know.
- Tribute: The exception to the Uniqueness rule for us is in the case of dead friends/relatives. If the person we want to name the baby after is already dead, that's okay. It's like being put on a stamp or a coin.
- Uncommon: Another nod to uniqueness is our preference for unusual names. We both despise the continued use of overly common names such as Michael, John, James, William, Robert and the worse of all, David. *How* many Daves has Alena dated? Three. *How* many of Dillon's high school friends were named Michael? Five. *How* many ugly and boring sounding nicknames are there for the name Robert? Too many to mention. So you can bet sure money that we will never use any of the multitude of tragically common names for our children. The US government actually publishes naming statistics on the web at http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/, a definate must see. And, yes, "Michael" has been the #1 boy name EVERY SINGLE YEAR since 1964 until 1999, when it was toppled to the #2 spot by the new favorite "Jacob". (Which just happens to be the name of the newborn son of our neighbors across the street. Shudder.)
- Hard to Spell: Having myself grown up with a first name that practially no-one could spell, or even sometimes pronounce correctly, I have a soft spot in my heart for names that are spelled oddly. I personally feel that an uncommon name that takes a moment of thought to spell correctly gives the child a sense of their own "specialness". So all the names on our prospective list are names that have slightly difficult spellings. Nothing too weird, just the most interesting way of traditionally spelling that name.
- Shortens Well: Too many cool names shorten to horrible nicknames. Fergus, a good, solid, traditional Irish name tragically shortens most easily to "Fergie". Uhg! Juliette, a beautiful and quintessentially French girl's name shortens to the sadly boring "Julie". We went to alot of trouble picking cool sounding names for our children, so the last thing we want is for the cool name that we love to be clipped to an ugly or common nickname. So all of the names on our list shorten easily into cool sounding nicknames.
- Ethnicity: We both have strong feelings of connection to our ethnic roots and wish to pass that on to our children in the form of their names. Dillon's heritage is almost exclusively Irish, Scottish and Welsh. Yvette's heritage is varied but most strongly French, Italian, Irish, Danish and Yugoslavian. Hence our preference for Irish names for any boys we may have and French names for any girls.
- Must Be Real: We both have a strong interest in history and culture, so the use of "made-up" names seems lame to us. There are so many good names that aren't currently in use, why make up one that'll have no real meaning or history? All the names on our list are real, traditional names for the culture they're from.
- Not Gods: Being very religious polytheists with strong connections to our patron deities, we personally feel it is disrespectful and a bit creepy to name your human child after one of the Gods or Goddesses you yourself worship. So, no names of Gods or Goddesses for our children.
- Cool: Most important of all criteria, a child's name must be *cool*. They should convey strength, beauty and cleverness. Girl names should be a bit sexy. Boy names should be a bit heroic. All of the names we've pre-selected are, to say so myself, cool.
Middle Name Conventions
- We abhore the fact that our culture has systematically striped the recognition of the female lineage from the naming of children. In a society where men and women are supposedly "equal", the sole emphasis on the paternal line is totally lame. We believe that it is important to show our sons and daughters that their mother's lineage is as important as their father's. We have decided to do this by including a matrilineal marker in the naming of our family's children. Since in our culture the middle name is usually a "throw-away" name, something just to make the first and last name sound good, we've placed my matrilineal name (the middle name of myself, my mother and my mother's mother), Michon, in the middle name slot of our children. So yes, all of our children, boys and girls, will carry their mother's matrilineal middle name of Michon and their father's patrilineal last name of Dillon.
Baby Name Hints
There are 6 names on our list of possibles, 3 for boys, 3 for girls. The boys names are Irish, the girls names are French. The girl names are those of characters from one of my favorite novels. All of the names are fairly rare, might be difficult to spell for those who've never seen the name before, and can be easily shortened into a cool nickname.
Guesses from the Baby Shower
Gizelle, Micheline, Desiree, Marielle, Yvette, Nadine, Nicole, Collin, Rhys, Colin, Dylan, Connor, Ronald, Patrick.
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