To ask if you've ever had a bad reaction on announcing your new baby's name?

[YouDoTheMath]

Also posted in Baby Names, but I guess a lot if the ladies there don't have DCs yet.

So - did anyone ever have the gumption to tell you outright that they think the name you chose for your child is awful?

Oh, I think Maisie is cute! :)

Apparently my ds2's name is a dogs name (my aunt)

No sure "Toby" is that dog realted tbh..........

Have had fairly nice comments from friends and family about my dc names but it wouldnt have mattered...we chose their names and thats that!

My SIL is due in Nov and dont really like the name they have chosen for my neice to be but its not my decision and as long as they like it thats all that counts (think footballers wives type name!)

Thanks Cheerful I think it's cute too, but that's the problem. Lovely on a baby but as she's got older I've started to think it's not growing with her IYSWIM.

(plus there's loads of them now whereas it was unusual 6 yrs ago)

Oh well, can't be helped now.

Organic, is Arran the pronunciation or the spelling?

You see I would expect Aaron to be Airon but I hear it pronounced Arran all the time. Whereas Arran is clearly Arran.

I really do not see the problem with Rufus either - the actor Rufus Sewell does not seem to have problems with ti. I also do not see the problems with dogs having the nice same name. I cannot see a pitbull called Rufus only a labrador or golden retriever and they are nice dogs. One of the other names I liked was the same as my aunts red setter and although people say i cannot call a child that as it reminds them of the dog I really do not see that as a problem as I love the dog! Does that make me a bad mother?
Reeble, heather really fits with the rest of her name, and gives it that extra something. Plus how beautiful that it gave someone so much happiness in their last days. (i can still understand you want to strangle MIL with piano wire).

kelly If ds2 had been a girl he would have been named after my late lamented black lab (Lucy)

I have two Aarons at school, both pronounce Arron and they and their parents get irrate if it's pronounced wrong. I feel like saying, if you spelt it correctly you wouldn't have the issue! I don't understand why people take a normal name and spell it wrong to be unusual - then get cross when people can't spell it. Don't understand. Sorry.

I have always hated my name, and have told my mum this repeatedly. As my brothers name was very common at the time of his birth and he hates his middle name she has lucked out with the both of us. As she is very opinionated I thought I would get a few comments about LO name.

From the beginning I was adament that she would have either a short name (she has strong middle names), or a name that could be shortened if she didn't like it. I loved Elenor - always have. Thanks to Ms Class my OH loved Ava (stgrangly not loving Hero though. Although I do regardless of the type of character she is in Shakespeare's play). When she was born she looked like neither of the names we had chosen.

She ended up being named Isobella, a name chosen by my OH. Clearly we hadn't spent enough time looking at sites regarding the popularity of the name but there you go. It had been suggested while I was pregnant and I have said no as everyone would think she was named after a character in Twilight. However my OH has taken over 10 years to read a book on Nelson so I knew he didn't get the name from there. There are two stories to the name choice. The first I was told when he suggested the name and so was the reason I said yes: He had liked the name since I was at university and he had seen a poster of Isabella and the Pot of Basil. He liked the picture so much he read the story and thought it was romantic. (This from a man who has given me flowers once as he claims that they are a waste of money!) The second he told me more recently and had me gagging and has also to do with the spelling. When he looked ad our LO he thought she was beautiful (no gagging at this point), so he wanted to have that in her name. We both love Italy so he thought the Italian spelling would work, as broken down it is I - so - beautiful. (gagging sound made here). Lots of people love this explanation though.

However recently I was in mothercare and a mum shouted "Isobella!" 5 mums looked up to check where there LO was. I told my OH this and he has decided its too popular. He has since decided to call her Doris which she happily answers to (She is 11 months).

Oh and my mum loves the name.... For that reason alone I'm tempted to go back and change it at the registry office. I have a month to do it.

Why oh why give your DC a name that you feel others are 'rude' or 'cheeky' to comment upon? Surely one is intelligent enough to appreciate that if the general consensus is that you are being daft/pretentious/thick enough to land on that name, there might be an issue with it?

As I may have posted earlier, I am of the belief that this stems from a generational belief that 'I'm speshul, my kid's speshul, I own him/her therefore I project my 'me' on them and the general populace who think either outwardly ('How DARE they!') or inwardly (Cat's bum mouth) that my choice of name is wanky just have to be wankers themselves coz I is right'.....

As others have said- fine, great, but your child will not thank you for saddling them with your stupid, 'unusual', pretentious name in later life. If you aren't, say, Welsh, don't use a Welsh name. If you're not Jedi, don't use names plucked from Star Wars.

LtEveDallas - I know a 25 year old Maisie and the name totally suits her.

The thing is that with any name people associate the name with a person, IYSWIM. So for example I'll never name a dd Eilidh or Donna as it brings back memories of horrible girls - but I knew a lovely Rory & Annis

I have to repeat DS1s name ad nauseum, and have just given up and introduce him as Guy.

I get lots of s, but hey, it was good enough for my father, his father, and most of the blokes in our family going back centuries, so it's good enough for our lad.

It's Gaius btw.

Dru77- I know EXACTLY what you mean!! I've never come across anyone else with my name, so my feelings on that are precisely the same. I feel quite possessive about my name! Having said that, I'd name my DCs (none yet!) slightly out of the way names but not one-offs.

When I told my very youthful male hairdresser what my daughter's name was, he said, "Cake? That's a great name now. Not boring at all. I hate the way people call their children boring names. Cake! Great name that. Love it actually. You don't look the sort to tell you the truth. I might have had you down for a person who might call their child a boring name, but Cake. That's really cool." And he told everyone who came in and all the other staff that I (the fat middle aged one) had called my child "Cake". ( I hadn't the heart to tell him that I'd actually said "Kate").

Hahahaha, Twinkle!

NO MORE MR NICE GAIUS!

When my (horrible) aunt was told ds1's name she said, ooh thats a black name, he'll never get a job, employers will see it on a form & say no thanks he must be black.

As you amy imagine we don't see her very often.

My DD1 has two children in her after school club called Unique.....1 is bad, two is....well, lets just say Im waiting for one to join called Ironic.

we chose the name Charlie for our ds and we were told by a friends father "ugh dont call him that, Charlie is what you stuck up ya nose".
his sons name is deryck!

"Why would you name your child after an ugly city?" (A close relative, on the day dd1 was born)

Jennifer, spill!

So erebus what names would you say arnt daft/ pretentious/thick as some of the names commented on here eg Mark, Toby, maisie all sound like perfectly normal to me

Do tell one is very interested to know your name choices

Erebus's limitations would be problematic in Australia - not many Australian names out there. What should we call out children here then?

Thing is Erebus, most of the derided names on this thread are actually pretty normal names not too many that are really that odd.

I agree that giving a child a wacky name just to be orijinal is unkind, but to limit your selection only to names which come from your own country seems a bit harsh. So no more Annas or Rachels in England then? No more Anthonys or Alexanders?

I agree it's a bit silly to give a child a Welsh (or whatever) name if most people in your country won't be able to say or spell it.

"I agree it's a bit silly to give a child a Welsh (or whatever) name if most people in your country won't be able to say or spell it."

QED

My DSs have 2 common Apostle names fwiw. Their middle names are those of their grandfathers, again both fairly 'everyday' and neither would cause anyone literate the slightest spelling concerns.

'Unusual' should be a quality that becomes evident in their personalities, not in the name I saddle them with.

anon - actually that may well happen. Of course you'd like to think someone wouldn't want to work for an organisation that would be that racist in its selection process but long ago I used to work in the NHS and a consultant (female, white, upper middle class) told me that in her past, she couldn't understand why her application for a sought after registrar position kept failing to even get her an interview. She showed her application to her senior who told her to change her place of birth from somewhere in India (her father was a diplomat) to somewhere like Guildford. Funnily enough she got the job.

So whilst we all feel outraged by that, that sort of practice certainly used to happen even in the NHS.