to not really understand some of the posters on baby names

[balletnotlacrosse]

A poster will post asking if people like the name Juliet and there will always be someone who responds, fairly quickly, with

If you like Juliet you might also like:

Amelia
Beth
Helena
Josephine
Sylvia
Marianne
Maud
Genevieve
Maryann
Flora
Hermione
Daphne
Cecilia
and
on
and
on
and
on.

Do some posters just have a list of their favourite names that they're determined to push down everyone's throats?

"Would I be uncharitable if I suggested that some posters are testing the waters to see what's now considered déclassé"

I live in a selective LEA. First name is almost as good an indicator of which school a child will go to as CATs scores.............

Hak are you suggesting Photo-Louise won't get into the grammar?

I think the nn for Kilimanjaro should be Man-jar. Maybe that sounds too much like what you keep screws and bluetac in if you are a bloke??

Ailsa's a good stealth mountain name........

Doreen- there was one unusually named girl in dd's form. Turned out it was a name she had chosen for herself- her actual name was Sophia......

I have a confession. Years ago there was a thread along the lines of, what names are too pretentious to use but you secretly like? I got the idea for DD's name from it. So nah.

Faith, Hope, Charity and Kevin made me cry actual tears.

I once tried a spoof thread with names from the Ikea catalogue. I think I chose the wrong forum!

MN reeks of inverted snobbery. It's very unkind to criticise name choices. I fail to see why it's okay on mn to say classical names are pretentious and the parents are twats but not that others are 'chavvy'. Both comments are rude.

There seems to be some form of competitive ignorance too which people like to join in with. All names are made up of a series of syllables, like all words, these are usually quite simple sounds which when put together make up a word. If you genuinely struggle with 3 or 4 quite simple sounds then I worry for you.

I think it's disingenuous to say you cannot understand why some people choose a long name which they then shorten. When I grew up it was completely normal to be called Elizabeth and then choose a variety of shortening so which suited you, but use the long name for official occasions. I think we are losing our sense of occasion and ceremony when we get rid of the formal/Sunday best names and just name everyone a short easy name.

For the record I have a long classical name which I shorten for daily use but is nice for a formal occasion and introductions. My 2 children also have similar ( one is actually very close sounding to Lucifer - which means light). If the next one is a girl she will be Persephone. So nerrr I also know of 2 other mners with Persephones.

I think if you can't say anything nice about something, perhaps you shouldn't say anything at all, is the best advice for the baby name board.

I used to like reading the 'You called them what??!!" column in Chat magazine years ago (think it was Chat, anyway); at the time it was full of quite mainstream, ordinary names but 'with a twist' or an 'interesting spelling' to make it stand out from the crowd.

Me and my sister used to say that if we ever had a daughter we would do something like "call her Sarah, but spell it D A V E, so that she was yoonique and not like the other Sarahs".

I find it difficult to believe the posters who say 'I have honestly never, ever met a nice Carol. They have all been absolutely horrible'. [sceptical]

even.

I always hope for a naming situation like with some neighbour's kittens. Three of the kittens went to a family on one side, and one kitten to the house on the other side. So the mum cat and kittens were always hanging out together in one house or another.

The kittens were called Pixie, Trixie, Dixie, and Monica. secretly wishes this pregnancy was quads

The 'High Court Judge' argument annoys me as it is usually trotted out in a kind of end-of-argument way by someone who doesn't realise it is mentioned on at least 50% of baby names threads.

The reason there are not a lot of high court judges called Daisy/ Lexi/ Rainbow Cherryblossom is that..

a) There are relatively few High Court Judges per capita
b) There are even fewer female High Court Judges
c) Five year old are not allowed to be High Court Judges yet

There is a slightly snide class judgement inherent in the comment as well which is outdated in terms of naming habits these days. Names cross social borders much more than in past decades and by the time my daughter with her 'cutesy' name is grown up the other 200,000 other children with the same name will mean that it is more associated with an adult than a child.

I agree chariots. I'm sure, forty years ago, there were people sniggering at the thought of Headmistresses called Sharon, or solicitors called Lorraine.

Nowadays, if you got a letter from your dc's school signed by Sharon Granger - Headmistress, or were introduced to your new company solicitor Lorraine Brown, you wouldn't bat an eyelid. Fashionable popular names grow up, just as their owners do.

In seriousness if you like a name then you should just go for it. I thought I'd picked a classic name that's been around for a long time for DS, although we chose it because we liked it and the meaning really. I've had the odd 'too Welsh' comment from my Welsh mum (how can a Welsh name be too Welsh?) and the English people won't cope argument (never had any problems there so far). If you like it, and a pet won't come running if you call it out in the park, go for it!

"In seriousness if you like a name then you should just go for it"

No you shouldn't!

Talking of pets I have noticed an annoying tendency for cat and dog owners to name their pets the name which they would obviously have chosen had they had another child....so we get dogs and cats called Oscar, Lola, Ruby and Vince.

V annoying....

This thread has made my day. Especially the mountain ones. How about Snowdon (nn Snowy) or go all out with Torpendon if you're really into hills

A poster once put up a thread asking what nicknames children with her contemplated choice name had. Being my dd's name I posted back with her completely unrelated nickname and confused the life out of the poor women. She responded back seemingly alarmed and concerned as to how this name could result in this nickname!

agree pets now have people names ie sophie milly etc and children have pet names ie buzz spike Rex buster etc
Though jess Max Sam and Ben will always collie or lab names,

I like Matterhorn, Matte for short.

K2 made me wet myself.

I suppose Ben would be cheating rather on the mountain front?

Mrsnextdoor I agree there are a lot of pets with human names.

I don't think our dog has a human name , he is a Black Labrador called Jet, which to me is appropriate for a Black dog, but I've been told it is too human. One lady found it highly amusing that he had the same name as her friend and could not get her head around the fact that he was a dog. I've also met other black dogs called Jet but never a human. I believe Jordan has a son called this and John TRavoltas late son was called this, but not real life people. Maybe it's me though, a visiting teenager thought my youngest was called Jet.

All my pets have had old man names (back in the 80s/90s) which are now on trend for babies and not old man names anymore - I was ahead of the trend!

adarkwhisper a friend of mine who'd moved to the UK was choosing an English name for herself to be known as. Snowy was one her ideas, for some reason she thought loads of women were called it here