Why do people do these mad bodyswerves to avoid names?

[hunkermunker]

Just give your child a name you like and don't go all-out to avoid anything someone else will choose.

my dd was playing at getting married to her prince the other day and she was marrying a Prince Norman which made us laugh - maybe they are the 'cool' names amongst 6 and 7 year old .
My 4 kids all have 'unusual names as far as the charts go and we have never met another of any of them BUT they are all traditional names that have fallen out of favour a little - nothing too wild or crazy just a couple of nice unusual biblical names.
We have a Jasmine and Esme issue at our school - there are LOADS of them - aswell as Felix, Conrad and Finlay/Finley/Finn

i must be a mad bodyswerver then

i love names

i love different names

I think Hecate's children are called Rumpelstiltskin. All of them.

I like that.

Rumpelstiltskin, stop hitting Rumpelstiltskin and come over here and help Rumpelstiltskin while I take Rumpelstiltskin upstairs to get changed.

Except I only have 2 kids..i just got carried away.

No, you're not, Paula - you just love different names.

It's the people who go "Oh, I'd love to call my DD something-top-ten, but it's not unusual enough, so I'm calling her Ecky-Thump" that get me. FFS!

had to lol at ecky-thump

Some twat will use it, you watch.

But they'd need a unique spelling.

Eki-thymp maybe.

I agree hunker. It confuses me when people think that because you've chosen a popular name, you haven't put much thought into it and you don't have a love for names. I actually think the opposite. Your love for names is more genuine, as you've chosen a name you totally love, not just beacuse it's different and cool.

I am obsessed with names, think about them all the time, yet amoung my favourites are Noah, Thomas, Edward and George. Am I not worthy?

Lol at unusual spelling for Ecky.

Agree, it's like if you've got a child with a name people have heard before, you've in some way "failed" by not being different enough.

Made a long list the day before yesterday, as a long day of maternity leave lounging about saw me start to panic madly that the baby would be born and we wouldn't be able to think of anything to call it.

Bloke thinks I have gone mad because I have veered between unusual names, saying that I want something 'special' and very traditional names because I don't want anything that might seem a bit chavvy.

Now, instead of the four names we have been discussing for weeks, we have a list of 20.

Hunker, you've solved my problem though. Bloke's family are northern, so Ecky-Thump seems perfect...

Kids probably don't care whether or not their name is common, and it probably never occurs to them that it could have been anything other than what it is.

When a parent is desperate to pick an unusual name (or unusually spellings, god help me) it isn't about the kid, it's about the PARENT trying to appear cool and individual to her peers.

My children love talking about their alternative names - dd once decided that she'd like to be called that name instead, so we did for a couple of days (I was glad when she got bored though!). I do think it's more important that the children like their names than parents do, but unfortunately when you name your child you don't know whether it will suit or not.

Hum, I think (oilandwater) that's a bit harsh. We all think our children are unique, and we want names that reflect how special we think they are.

I changed my name as a child; I had a nickname I didn't like then I didn't like the long version then I changed it to something completely different. So it did occur to me to have it something very different!

My new name was common and it was a problem at school, because the other XXXXs were very popular and I was a social nobody. I literally learnt to ignore the sound of my name, the boys were never talking to me....

If I believe what I read on MN, dd has the most common girl name nowadays (once you include variant spellings) -- we chose it to call her after DH's nan and it was unusual and elegant to my ears, at the time. And because of all the variant spellings (DD's spelling, exactly the same as her great-nan, is the only one I knew before I named her) we can't actually find a pencil with her name on it, would you believe?!

So we chose what I thought would be a very rare (unique) name for baby3, conventional spelling, and wouldn't you know it comes up in all the baby chav name lists, plus there has been one other in both his preschools in last 18 months? Bet I'll find it on future pencils more easily than DD's name!

Baby 4 is getting an old-fashioned boring but not very common name; everyone will know how to spell it, at least.

hm...whislt general commonness (?) is not really an issue with me...we , at one point, planned to call es Leon, but someone else chose that name a few month before es was born, and we felt they might not like someone else using this name so close to their own boys birth...

Mine have real names... but they are real in Wales - here people ask DD what DS's name is, they assume they have misheard, and when they look at me questioningly and I repeat it, they look like "Oh. She did say that then?"

Tis the same with his little mate - Irish father, Irish name... everyone says "Eh?"

Both our names we chose because we liked them though - I wouldn't be able to tell you what names are in the list at any one time.

lol Cali...we only moved over from Germany in jan '96...so, that might be why we loved the name, and the regiment had been over in germany in that time, too...

Hecate - do you mean the names you give them on yr blog? or their rl names? I NEED to know them!
dd has a v unusual name (Flame knows) very pretty, but people do give us odd looks. (a la Psychomum)

Only about 60 children in England with her name, so no worries about being many in her class.

Unusual enough to get comments such as 'err, is that a boy's name?' why yes! of course I wanted to be cruel to my pfb

And oilandwater children do care about their name- I was always singled out because of mine, and I have always hated it.

Its a 'virtue' type name, pita when saying prayers/singing hymns in assembly etc, and pretty difficult to live up to! I always wanted to be called Josephine when I was small, though I think I would have blended in better being Tracey, Claire, or Karen tbh.

Peach for me first it was Rebecca and then it was Josephine that I wanted to be called...well...most names are prettier and more girly then the one I have, lol...

What is it? Derek?

rofl- I like yr ds's names though

my name, lol...it's Kerstin...rather boring and far to common in germany...and over ehre people have problems to spell it, lol...the name is just a PITA

EachPeach - I mean their real life names! I'd bet my last rolo they are alone in the world!!