Really struggling

[Dreamcatcher34]

The only names I like for a girl are Harlow and Everly. Even then, I’m not blown away.

For a boy, Chester is ok.

The kids like Max, but I’m not keen.

Please throw suggestions my way, I am completely sick of searching through websites now.

@peperethecat

www.businessinsider.com/disproportionately-common-names-by-profession-2015-1

Hate to disappoint but it seems names dont mean much these days.

So you might have saddled your kids with a stale old person name for nothing.

Somehow I doubt it! And that is the point.

This forum is where you come to ask people to say what they really think of certain names, because people will be honest on here whereas they would probably be polite in real life.

I'm being honest. I don't say these things to people in real life, but I do think them.

The two children the OP already has have perfectly nice names. There must be hundreds of names which are in the same style as those names without needing to choose one that is going to make a lot of people go "ugh". Everly and Harlow (and most of the names suggested by the other poster) will make a lot of people go "ugh".

I like Chester but not keen on Harlow or Everly
Suggestions

Jared
Jude
Caston
Rafe
Lennon
Woodrow
River
Cameron
Douglas / Doug / Dougie
Dylan
Dexter

Dulcie
Verity
Violet
Romy
Willow
Indie
India
Primrose

@peperethecat

Care to share your kids names, or just your favourite ones so we can critique?

@Wolfgirrl it would help if you didn't link an article from the US where people seem to go out of their way to give their kids horrible names.

Reuben or Ruby.

Also love Fern

Reuben, Cohen, Noah?

@peperethecat You can only speak for yourself and I'm afraid you just sound rather parochial. So an Oxbridge degree counts for nothing if your name is Chantelle?

How do employers cope with foreign sounding names?

@peperethecat so you think Abigail is horrible?

Abigail is a fine name. It wasn't on your list.

I know a 5 year old Hope which I think is a lovely name. Might be too close a match to Faith though.

If your have an Oxbridge degree your name is far more likely to be Katherine or Eleanor than Chantelle.

Look, don't shoot the messenger. People judge names. They do. That's why this board exists, so people can check whether they are potentially setting their child up for a lifetime of name woes.

So what happens if you name your kid Katherine and they end up an average achiever?

Caleb and Faith are lovely classic names.

Harlow is a town in Essex.

Do you mean Everley like the Everley brothers?
Or more like Eveleigh?

Which, shock horror, could happen.
Then they're an average achiever with a dull name.

Nothing happens. They go through life with a perfectly normal name with lots of short versions if they want, and literally nobody ever judges them for their name.

Better an average achiever with a dull normal name than an average achiever with a stupid name.

I probably shouldn't wade in but peper is right about people judging names. Yes it's classist, yes it's not nice but it's a fact of life. I'm all for unusual names but wolf, most of your list would cause the kid to be (unfairly) stereotyped so are best avoided.

@peperethecat that might be the case but that's a whole different conversation about inequality. It's not the name but the family, upbringing and education that shape a child.

Ultimately once you have a good education and get to the CV stage your name isn't going to matter one bit unless it's something ridiculous like Mrs Vagina Flaps.

It would be nice to think people don't judge kids for things like their names, but unfortunately they do. There have been lots of studies done in the US for example, where people submit the same CV, one with a white sounding name and the other with a Muslim or Hispanic sounding name, and one gets a call back and the other doesn't.

In the UK I think this kind of bias is more likely to be classist than racist.

No peper they really dont. Do you sit on recruitment panels? May I ask what you do for a living?

I would agree if it was Candycane or something, but Phoebe? Teaghan? They're lovely.

I feel sorry for the pressure you put on your kids which even means you would choose a name solely for the purpose of their CV which wont help anyway.

It speaks of somebody who cares more about how their kids reflect on them than their actual kids.

I work with lots of HR/recruitment people and am familiar with the studies about names and also with the discrimination cases around BAME sounding names and I'm afraid people really do discriminate. Appreciate this is more class related but the point is the same.

Teaghan isn't a good name.

Phoebe is fine. It was definitely an outlier on your list.

Teaghan is beautiful. It's on my list for if I have another girl.

I think it is disgraceful you are perpetuating racist and classist divisions based on your own prejudice. If everyone just called their kid what they loved regardless of how traditional it was, none of this would be any kind of issue.

You still havent answered my question about your job and name suggestions peper.

I haven't chosen any names yet. I hang out here for inspirations. Not sure what my job has got to do with anything. I'm a university educated professional, if that helps. I don't work with anyone called Teaghan. (But I did when I was a waitress.)