To think people should take naming their children seriously?

[DreamsOfDownUnder]

Do they not imagine their name choice on the top of a CV or whatever when naming their child 'Ballerina' or 'Buttercup' or 'Tulip'. I find it tends to more girl names than boys.

Actually, this is something I feel strongly about, as I was given a silly name.
I hated it as a child and I still hate it now.
I strongly believe that you shouldn't be allowed to impose this nonsense on someone else, even if that person does happen to be your child.
DS has a very bland, traditional and inoffensive name as a result.

People who imagine their child's name on a CV would never choose those kind of names in the first place.

This is too true.

Someone I know recently named their daughter Blossom which is fairly cute for a baby/little girl but as an adult, not so much. Not unless she gets an airy fairy job but anything serious and she may have issues.

I say this but imagine what some lawyers, doctors and teachers of the future may actually be called. I have heard some absolutely ridiculous names recently, some just sound entirely made up. Stands to reason a few doctors in 20+ years will be called things like Blossom...

I strongly believe that you shouldn't be allowed to impose this nonsense on someone else, even if that person does happen to be your child

It's hard though because you don't know what kind of person your child will be before you name them. What if your DS grows up and says

"This is something I feel strongly about, as I was given a bland, traditional and inoffensive name.
I hated it as a child and I still hate it now.
I strongly believe that you shouldn't be allowed to impose this nonsense on someone else, even if that person does happen to be your child.
My DS has a very unique, unusual and rare name as a result"

I don’t know why people harp on about “made up” names. It may come as a shock to some, but all names were made up at some point.

Yeah OK Nuno- fair enough if that's your point of view.
I just wanted DS to be able to be his own person, and be judged for who he is rather than giving him what I consider to be the 'baggage' to deal with which comes with having a weird name.
Personally, I don't feel that a parent has the right to make that sort of decision for their child but of course, each to their own.

Personally, I don't feel that a parent has the right to make that sort of decision for their child but of course, each to their own

I think you missed my point, which is that parents HAVE to make a decision on the name. In your experience being given an unusual name was a negative thing, but for some people, having a common name is a negative thing (I've seen LOTS of threads where people say they hated having a common name actually). Since we can't know what our children are going to grow up to be like, we just have to make a decision and hope for the best!

Nuno, I disagree.
If you give your child an unusual name, I believe it is actually saying something about you and not the child- take the 'Blossom' example upthread.
The parents impose that on the child ,and then they have to live with it for the rest of their life. OK, there is a chance they may like it, but there is a very good chance they won't.
If that child was called, let's say Grace or Olivia or something like that- while not unusual, it won't cause them embarrassment as they get older even if it's not the name they would have chosen for themselves.
In my opinion, boring is better- but this is of course my view only and I'm sure there are many on here who will disagree.

I agree, Nuno. Whatever name you call your child is you as a parent imposing your views about an appropriate name on said child, whether it's called Sophie, Shanice or Serendipity.

And I was one of the people who had a name so common that there were six of us, three with the same initials, in the same class all through primary school. My parents, who are timid and conformist people, and whose worst nightmare would have been for anyone to think they were in any way 'unusual'. chose the name precisely so as not to stand out from the crowd, but in fact it was way more depressing than that, because what it taught me was not to respond to my own name, because whoever was being shouted for was probably not me.

I don’t know why people harp on about “made up” names. It may come as a shock to some, but all names were made up at some point.

That is true. There must have been a point where people thought that names like James, Matthew, Mark, Anne, Jane etc were a bit.....

You can't help but impose your taste in names on your baby, because they obviously can't choose their own name. But I suppose at least if you are conformist or traditional and give your child a very common or mainstream name, they're probably on average more likely to suit that as they grow up in that kind of family. And if you're the type to use a madly unusual name, you're probably noncomformist and eccentric to some degree which may also rub off on your DC.

And if it doesn't people can change their names.

My DC have unusual names (though they are real names, just rare ones) and they are also, not unlike me, a bit eccentric. At the moment they both like being the only one with their name, because that's what they're like. If they change their minds and want to use their middle names or change them completely, that's fine and their choice. You can't really say fairer than that.

I don't like my own name much, I think it's prissy, but crap as my parents were I don't think I can hold that against them.

Haven't RTFT, but there have been studies done (in the USA) whereby people's job prospects were very much effected by their names.

Although in the USA it was with regards to "non-white" sounding names.

As someone said up the thread, what do you suggest, HouseOf -- that people from ethnic minority backgrounds give their children white-sounding names to 'pass'? Or that recruiters are trained to combat racism and unconscious bias?

is it always that easy to gauge how names will come across in 20 years time, though?

I have plenty of younger colleagues with names that would have been seen as real career-stoppers when I was young- thing is, I wasn't young when their time to seek a career came; these days they are perfectly ordinary names

otoh some names that seemed very mainstream when I was young, sound extremely dated now

Working in schools I have never met any teachers with an “out there” name.

I've met a teacher called Brilliant, his siblings had perfectly normal names like Paul and Anne.

It was a great icebreaker, "Hello, I'm Brilliant" and I thin weird names can be ice breakers.

is it always that easy to gauge how names will come across in 20 years time, though?

I think that depends on the name.

An out-there but currently popular name could go either way in 20 years

An outright bonkers name (like the one my parents chose) is never going to change from anything other than bonkers

I do remember my reaction when I heard of the first little boy named Oscar in a country where the name had been totally obsolete, absolutely not for use by anyone under about 125. Poor child, how can his parents be doing this to him, it's a ridiculous name, he's going to be sooo bullied and probably never get a job. 10 years later, every infants class had 2 or 3 Oscars and you couldn't imagine anything more mainstream.

There is no inherent reason why Blossom should be more ridiculous than Holly or Poppy. If it takes off, it won't be. If it moves up the class ladder, it won't be.

At my Dd's school, there's a Princess and a Tiara amongst other very cultural names. Dd says the teachers stumbled over calling 'Princess' quite a lot but, now call her Princess Anne* - not really Anne, but the child's middle name. I'm just not keen on either but, Tiara...No!

My Dd has a tree name and my Ds has a biblical name. I often wonder if I did the right thing with Dd's name but, it really suits her. Ds has never liked his very normal and very popular name but, as yet, he hasn't changed it. I hope he never does.

Are you sure it's now Tiana? We have a Tiana at school.

Noah used to be quite unusual for boys but now seems quite popular.

Looking at my family tree a number of Scottish female relatives in the mid-nineteenth century were given Darling as a first or middle name. It was fashionable in recognition of the popularity of Grace Darling, the heroic lighthouse keeper's daughter who saved shipwrecked sailors. I rather liked this discovery and thought it quite romantic but if I used it today in naming my daughter - despite my family tradition - OP would definitely judge me. In the end my daughter has an unusual and pretty French name which is probably perceived as quite 'posh' despite us having no French connection!

In reality there have always been more unusual names used in the past - it's just today that people decide what they think are traditional names and ascribe their class values on what is or is not an acceptable name.

“I’ve never met a teacher with an out there name” - what point are you trying to prove?

Are you suggesting head teachers recruit based on first names? If they do I hope they don’t have the same prejudice where the children are concerned.

“I’ve never met a teacher with an out there name"

Well, that's proof then.

I've met teachers called Tyla, Corinthian, Faroe and Augustus...

I’m a teacher with an unusual name so we do exist (not Bethany obviously)

Do you know what's really weird? I've never met an astronaut with a name!

Are all astronauts nameless?