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...

How is Cain a negative name? The human race descended from Cain (not Abel). He was the ‘father of cities’ as he couldn’t farm land. He was a realist who felt that worshipping God should not be at the expense of the survival of your people (this was why he never donated his best grain).

Cain is a character in a story book. Not real. Nobody is actually descended from him.

Ah I don't watch a lot of PM's questions!! I don't think I have ever used the word hector myself in that context but that doesn't mean it's not in my vocabulary. I just think of the name first.

Also don't like the abbreviation Hec though, which is why my DS is Hamish!

My oldest sons name means 'empty' or something similar. I really couldn't care less. If anyone ever brought it up, I would probably look like this

I bet there won't be too many baby girls called india, this year.

Cameron means long nose ..

I guess parents choose a name they love and the actual meaning of the name is irrelevant. Well that’s what I did. I checked out the meanings of my dds names, then forget them as it made no difference.

My name means unfortunate.,,
It is very very unusual in the UK, but I like it!

when you remind me about the Cain bible ref, I vaguely know of it, but otherwise I just think Cain is a lovely name.

the bible certainly doesn't come to my mind first in any kind of discussion.

They are mostly fictional characters. So I wouldn't think of the meaning.

I know a woman who said "I love the name Persophone" for her DD she was expecting.

I said "You do know what happened to her in the myth??"

Because I couldn't believe she'd choose that name!

That was rude of you.

I think there is a difference between names that have a meaning that's not generally well-known, and names that have very strong negative literary or historical associations that are almost inescapably associated with a particular figure from real life or myth. Adolf might mean 'noble wolf' originally, but most people would think of a certain historical personage when they heard that name.

My DS’s name is on that list! He is Scottish though.

I had Hector on my list for DS1. It couldn't go on my list for DS2 because with the name of DS1 we'd look like we just picked all our names from the British Grenadiers song! While i Understand it in the context of hectoring someone would never have linked the name to that.

Like the first syllable of DS1 name (which he sometimes gets shortened to) means to tell a fib and the first syllable of DS2 (which we say twice) means toilet. To me they are just syllable sounds that we like. They mean DS1 and DS2, and nothing else to me when am saying them in that context.

My mythological name had a tragic life - raped, made a concubine then murdered. None of this has any reflection on me at all. Most people just say 'oh what a lovely name'

Of course I'm not saying you don't have that word in your vocabulary. I hear the word as a verb much more often than as a name, so that's what I think of. That's what I associate it with. I can't help that.

Dream I know! It just slipped out.

My DD is named after my DM. As that's an old fashioned name these days, we use a cute peppy popular diminutive.

Which has a really really unfortunate meaning in Italian, Spanish and Greek, so friends from those countries informed us afterwards. Ah well. She'll have to use her Sunday name if we holiday there

I love the Tristan and Iseult story! I've read several versions in Old French. I actually prefer his father's name as it appears in some versions, Rivalin. And the part of some versions that tells of how Tristan's mother, Blanchefleur, came to love him as he lay injured in her family's home, not expected to live and Blanchefleur tells her maid, 'This dead man Rivalin of Loonois is killing me.'

I know load of Hectors, but I'm Latin American.

just looked it up - Persephone was abducted? is it that it? Does no one name their child after anyone who had anything awful happen to them, in real life, - are there any names left?!

If DD had been a boy i was lobbying for Tristan but DH vetoed it. Luckily she was a she!

Helen isn't a very nice story, yet there are lots of Helens.

This thread is making me wish that I had named DD Lilith, I love the name but worried about the negative connotations. But I know someone who got anonymous hate mail for calling their DD Pagan so I bottled it.

DS's name is often disliked on MN because it's the surname of a right wing politician. But no one in real life seems to care or is rude enough to mention it, and I'm sure his contemporaries wouldn't have a clue.

You can choose your meanings
Sounds like something President Trump would say

Does no one name their child after anyone who had anything awful happen to them, in real life, - are there any names left?!

Helen isn't a very nice story, yet there are lots of Helens.

Yes, exactly. I think we need to get over it and recognise that some people just like some names/that certain names might have personal, family, emotional resonance for people above and beyond their historical or traditional meanings.

But Helen was a famous beauty, "the face that launched a thousand ships"!