To not understand why people call their baby...

[smellfunny]

Not to be goady, but I don't understand why people give their babies names with negative connotations or meanings. Examples from the top of my head being:

Cain (murdered his brother in Old Testament)
Hector (hector also being a synonym for bullying someone)
Tristan (this one is a bit contentious because it can either mean 'tumult' or correspond to 'sadness')

Is it just that people don't think about the meanings behind the names? Feel free to add more names to the list...

Bonus name: 'Claudia' coming from the Latin word for 'lame'. I gave this one a pass because it's so established and the connotation is generally unknown...

F all to do with you

We had a kid at school called Richard Head.
I've no idea what Drew Peacock's parents were thinking, either.

I agree. The meaning of your name is... well, meaningful.

I really dislike that my name means sadness. I really do. I'm named after someone who topped herself. Great! That's just fantastic!

Opehlia was a name I loved. I was always going to have a DD named Ophelia. Then I realised that A) it's such a pretentious name and B) I didn't want to name my daughter after such a tragic, depressing character. No way!

I'm an ex nurse. Amelia is the medical name for a particular birth defect where a child is born missing one or more limbs.

For that reason I wouldn't use it.

But I wouldn't worry about the negative connotations of biblical names such as Cain as I'm an atheist!

Shadow - that's a good point. Why is rose fine despite rose west, but Myra hindley has probably single handedly killed off Myra??

I imagine it's the Cain Dingle factor adding to the name's popularity.

Mind you Noah is a bit of a dodgy character post the flood.

As far as I'm concerned all those biblical stories Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve etc are pure fiction so it wouldn't be like calling your child Adolf or anything. A friend of mine called her son Cain actually, I love that name

I agree with those who say unless the meaning is very very well known and obvious, it doesn't matter because the vast majority of people won't know what the meaning is anyway.

Much more likely that people would avoid names connected with horrible people that they know or infamous horrible people. eg you don't get a lot of babies called Adolf or Judas or Herod, do you? (although presumably before and during Hitler's time there must have been other people called Adolf)

I used to know a John Thomas too.
And I always wondered what the hell Austin Healey's parents were thinking, but apparently they did it deliberately - he was actually named after his dad's favourite car.

Hector doesn’t have those connotations for me (Scottish) but then I wouldn’t name my child Hector either. Yes it means posh Scottish to me not to berate. What an odd example. It's actually given me the rage.

My daughters name means life or lively which is her to a t but I didn’t actually know this until I had already decided on using it! I must admit I was going to call her Lola but although I love the name was put off when I found out it meant ‘child of sadness’ or something to that effect!

@derxa aye posh Scottish to me too. Or Spanish, I’ve met a couple of Spanish Hectors.

@BishopBrennansArse those ones made me chuckle. And then feel extremely sorry for the poor boys lumbered with them!

Hector, in my DH's family has been used throughout the generations. When you've known someone of these less used names, they don't sound unusual.

My children have all gone to multicultural schools so, Prudence, Wisdom (there is a baby by me who is called that), Joy, Chasity, Mercy, Faith, Constance, just blend in to the rest.

The last two generations of our family have all had girls and i'm a bit sad that Hector isn't being carried on.

As for famous people who've committed suicide, been abusive that would cover every male name. All of the Slave owners had 'traditional' names.

I think there's two different issues:

1. I wouldn't choose a name whose etymology was negative, e.g. Tristan. This is just intrinsic to the name itself.

1. I would choose a name if someone who had had it in the past had an unhappy/tragic/evil life, if I otherwise liked it. Probably not Judas or Adolf, since they're only really known for one person and that person negative. But Joseph would be fine despite Stalin because so many other people throughout history have had it that it doesn't 'belong' to Stalin in the same way that Adolf belongs exclusively to Hitler. This caused arguments when I was pregnant because my favourite name was Madeleine, which my ex-h vetoed because of Madeleine McCann.

The thing about Hector always comes up on mn and gives me the rage (Scotland here too, wonder if that's the theme!) because it was our second choice for DS2. Hector was a name before it had another meaning and really, who ever uses the word hector in real life?!

Cain is a horrible name ... but someonr I went to school with was adamant that he wanted a son who he would name Kane, and he got what he wanted. Poor kid.

I remember my dad telling me the story of Lilith when I was young. Not surprised the name is seen as feminist, as that's how I see it too. Don't like it much with the -th ending but love how strong its association is.

The medical meaning for Amelia is a bit negative, however I had a best friend in primary school who had one arm. She was a great friend and really nice and didn't seem affected negatively from having one arm, so maybe not so negative after all. The Latin meaning for Amelia I think is very positive and could be inspirational for some people. I copied and pasted it from a baby website:

What does Amelia mean?
A blend of the medieval names Emilia and Amalia. In Latin, it means "industrious" and "striving." Its Teutonic meaning is "defender." Well-known Amelias: aviator Amelia Earhart; title character in the Amelia Bedelia kids' book series.

So, when choosing a name what might be negative for one person might be positive for another.

You hear the expression 'hectoring tone' and the equivalent all the time on PM's Questions or Breakfast Time. I even say 'Stop hectoring me'. It's in my active vocabulary.

Everyone has different 'idiolects' and personal vocabularies so names will resonate differently with each individual.

But I know several people called Hector and obviously when you know someone called that, that's just their name. I'm not mad keen on the abbreviation 'Heck' either as that's a bit like 'Blimey' or 'Damn'.

My son is called Elijah, which I think means 'my God is Yahweh'

Embarrassingly I chose the name because I heard it on the vampire diaries and really liked it 🙈😂.

I'm also bemused by choices from Shakespeare which suggest the parents were unaware of the fate of the character concerned - I know more than one Ophelia (who goes mad with grief and drowns) and Cordelia (who is hanged)

It doesn't suggest any such thing. If you've chosen a name from Shakespeare its a good bet you know something of the character. So what if Cordelia was hanged?

I still say most names are meaningless. I have a baby name book here, half the girls name in it mean beloved, or joyful, or loved by god, or joy of god or cherished or light or fair one or some other meaningless nonsense. They are so vague and common as to have no meaning at all.

If you do believe in meanings, then you should at least look a little closer. People complaining about Lilith because why, she's a demon? Lilith was the first wife of Adam, the first woman, made of the dirt and not his spare rib, who was banished because she refused to be subservient to a man! Of course they turned her into a shedevil.

you can choose your meanings, there are always more than one. Another thing that makes them mean so little.

Surely you'd write off a large proportion of names if we never used names that had any 'negative'/non-joyful origins?

Like a PP said, names that signify sadness and melancholy can also be seen as dramatic/romatic/Shakespearean. I think being named after a tragic hero, for example, is pretty cool, especially for blokes. How boring would it be if everyone's name meant 'joy', 'light', 'hope' etc!

Everyone has different 'idiolects' and personal vocabularies so names will resonate differently with each individual. Are you saying I don't have 'hector' in my 'personal' vocabulary? DH accuses me of 'hectoring' all the time but I don't associate it with Hector the name.

There's a difference in names that have historically been unpopular such as Cain, Judas or Jezebel because there was such a strong culture against those names that they've not had the original negative association diluted by popularity over many years. They're also not diluted by surnames. The associations are beginning to break down as popular culture changes, but they would still raise eyebrows to those who know their classical references well.

Calling your child Maggie, Ted or Rose is fine if you're not combining them with the surnames Thatcher, Grundy or West. There's also a high chance that the name is chosen for a benign reason like after a grandparent. They're historically well used names so haven't been tainted from the start.

i quite liked "benjamin" but got put off cos meaning= son of my right hand. sounds a bit wxxky .imho.