To think people should try and be a bit kinder

[Trivie]

I haven’t been using this baby names board for very long however I have noticed that some people are down right horrible to an unnecessary amount.
Of course if someone is asking for opinions on a name and you don’t like it, it’s fine to say that. But why do people spin off into “it’s chavvy” “it’s cruel” etc.
Not only are these responses often classist as any name not rigidly associated with the middle class gets abused but they are also totally dramatic and unnecessary. The same goes for the “I can’t imagine a doctor/lawyer/politician” with that name comments which to at least to me just suggest the commenter is bigoted and narrow minded if they really can’t imagine a lawyer or a doctor with a non-traditional name.
I don’t really understand why people can’t just say “it’s not to my taste how about x name in a similar style”.
I know the internet removes a lot of accountability but I don’t think it would hurt people to remember that the odds are these names do belong to real people or their children, and someone might read how cruel you are being about their name and find that rather hurtful.

Why do people feel the need to be so horrible on this board? Why is it so classist? and what do people get out of making comments akin to a bully instead of politely saying it’s not their favourite and moving on?

MN is full of little Englander types. Baby names is the worst board on MN for snobbery.

Actually yes, I’d quite like to be called Aphrodite. There are so many similar gorgeous and memorable names (eg Antigone, Penelope etc) that are far nicer than my boring 1970s name, the 70s version of today’s Ava or Evie!

Nope, the Charlies and Archies etc have been around ages and show no sign of disappearing.

I disagree - I find Archie, Alfie , Charlie very dated to the 2000s - I bet they’ll fall out of fashion soon - we’ll see?

It’s only because it’s anonymous. No one would call a baby name chavvy or pretentious if the question was on linkedin and all your colleagues could see you being nasty.

'Frankly, some of the names suggested on MN are ludicrous at best. These people need to be told.' I agree, @RuncibleSpoons .

@Zitroneneis , I think you probably have a popular name like the Lily or Freya of its time.

@Disturbia81 , that was true of Gary and Darren once.

You can be frank, blunt, undiplomatic etc but still stop short of being nasty. It’s the way some posters are deliberately trying to belittle and upset OPs that is the issue.

I can’t understand what motivates posters to feel such outrage at an anonymous posters choice of name. You say that. ‘These people need to be told’. Really? Do they?

Even if I see a name that I think it awful I don’t feel the need to make sure the poster knows. I don’t understand why the nasty posters care so much. I presume they must lead sad lives trying to find things to be bitter about.

I reckon if you're putting it out here, you're asking for genuine feedback, along with humour. If you want a chummy echo chamber, there's netmums.

I see no humour,only sneering pile ons.

There is absolutely no point on posting on an anonymous forum to get opinions on a name and expecting people to dance around the issue.

I don’t want to know if names are ‘not to my taste’. I don’t care if they are not to the taste of someone I don’t know. But I do care if there are other connotations to a name.

Nope showing no sign of stopping.

Have you actually read threads in the baby names board? Preciously little humour.

People absolutely overhype the future job thing. I come from a not very cosmopolitan area, and have known people with very unusual names - think animals and after celebrities, who have become doctors etc. This was also in the 90s, so the more unusual names weren’t as commonplace then. No one cared.

Same goes for diminutive names that are deemed too childish. In my experience, the likes of Charles and Frederick, known as Charlie and Freddie from birth, never use their full name, even professionally. I even know some people who see it as an unnecessary burden, despite the common view that you should give them the option.

On the baby names board everyone seems to be against any name that isn’t one of their personal favourites.

The benefit of asking the views of a bunch of random, anonymous strangers what they think of a name is that they will give you the truth & tell you what they really think. That is literally the whole point. The reason so many people said ‘Kodie’ was chavvy wasn’t that they wanted to be rude or nasty. It’s because Kodie IS chavvy.

If a pregnant woman told her family & friends that she was planning to call her baby ‘fartybreath’ they would smile and say ‘aah, how lovely’. Because they care & they don’t want to offend or upset her.

@Rhaenys , there are all sorts of prejudices with names. I've seen things like an opportunity being offered to the wrong person because they got the names mixed up.

Ideally and possibly, yes. And I agree with the OP about the unnecessarily harsh comments in general.

I guess names are a reflection of our society and all its prejudices. Would be great if they didn't exist. But they do - and everything in society can be a signifier even if we shouldn't put so much weight on it. Including name choices.

I try to judge a name by the sound and remove prejudices as far as i can. But if I'm completely honest, I wouldn't call a child born now Sharon or Tiffany or Lisa - lovely sounds but too dated and Sharon particularly has that Birds of a Feather image. Even if none of their classmates would be aware of it.

And Cosmo et al also have a certain image in the imagination. A lot of names do. To me Cosmo is a London lawyer or curator who drinks in Hampstead/Highgate. You have to be comfortable with your idea of the name's image. So families who are comfortable with that image are drawn to those names.

I know lots of people who would be far more comfortable with Lilah-Beau (roundly mocked on a previous thread) than Persephone (which I love but was vetoed even as a middle name!).

I guess it's just being kinder about people's tastes which would be formed by their backgrounds and as you say, characters from books they like etc.

But can you (and others) simply not see what you’re doing by classing names as “chavvy”? Obviously that’s classist, often it’s ageist as younger mums tend to go for more novel names, and, as I for one have said a few times in this thread, it’s often racist (and xenophobic).

I judge someone much more for saying a name is chavvy than the person giving the name (let alone the child who has the name).

There are people on these threads literally saying they would judge and pretty much discriminate against someone based on their name, the name their parents gave them.

I do find this an interesting topic.

Part of me thinks, if you ask for an opinion then expect everyone to give theirs freely. However, what I find strange on this forum is people being so dramatically negative about some really standard names that no one else would bat an eye at. Like some have said in the replies, perhaps people find it useful to get others perception about a name, but I've seen people ask for opinions on pretty common names and they'll have replies suggesting they are dooming their future offspring to a life of misery and pain. The name will be Poppy or Luna or Alfie or something of that ilk - a name hundreds of people have and likely live with without any issues.

Whilst I sometimes wonder why people ask for opinions on names if they don't want to hear negative feedback, I also wonder why some people seem to relish telling a poster they really dislike their name choices. I'm not sure I would go as far as to say it's bullying, but I do get the impression some people on MN find joy in slagging off a name (again, quite often names that are perfectly normal, nothing that outlandish). I really struggle to understand why they find joy in this. Is it because no one asks for their opinion in their everyday lives so they delight in giving it on here? Or they enjoy the freedom that comes with giving an opinion behind the safety of a screen? Are they really hoping they will have a direct influence on what the poster names their child? The psychology behind people giving opinions out interests me more than why people ask for opinions.

I have started a thread on here before to ask for opinions on names, and will likely again in the future, but that's mainly because I enjoy discussing names, not because I'm really invested in what some random women on the internet think about the names I like. I agree with what some others have said, I don't feel those that post on this name forum are very reflective of society's views as a whole. Some of the references people make when a particular name is mentioned go completely over my head, so I've long assumed a lot of posters on here are from older generations (I could be wrong though!) If opinions on here aren't reflective of society, and possibly niche, I do question how useful they are for those starting threads and asking for views.

I sometimes get the impression that some people think they're providing a public service by trying to put a poster off a name. It's like, no, love, it's simply a name not to your taste and that's ok, we don't all need to like the same names. If every baby girl born was called Elizabeth the world would be a very boring place.

I used to like the name threads as I thought they were kind of contained in the sense that the situation was simply an op asking for honest opinions about something they had not yet committed to. So not politics or anything really traumatic etc.

But lately I am just getting the feeling that people are posting in jest - names that contravene the MN "rules" about hyphens, or changed spellings etc. Some of the threads referred to here I wondered about: won't say which. I didn't even click on the Kodie one, so I've no idea how genuine it was, but we do seem to have been getting lots of provocative name threads.

The problem with that is, while I don't mind a bit of brutal honesty where someone is genuinely asking for a real baby, I'm not prepared to stick my neck out and be rude to someone who is getting fun out of it, as, inevitably there will be some children who DO have that name already (well - possibly not ALL of them 🙄). But I'm not prepared to deliver brutal honesty if it isn't of real use. So I'm going off them a bit.

Oh but there are so many lovely diminutives of Elizabeth!! (joke!) (Sort of ...!)

Are they really hoping they will have a direct influence on what the poster names their child?

Actually, @Dee51121 I kind of did - or at least thought that if they were genuinely asking, then a genuine answer had a useful influence in the sense of it being part of the weighing up of the bulk of responses.

But, as I said above, I'm beginning to wonder if there aren't quite a few of these threads with no real baby in the offing ...

@Calliopespa yes I can see that if there are a bulk of responses all with a similar theme, but when there's a mix and, for example, one person has replied, "Ronnie is a terrible name for an adult man, he'll never be taken seriously, I much prefer James or George" is that person hoping their opinion will be the one that changes the poster's mind? I just can't shake the feeling there's a certain arrogance with some people on here thinking their opinion is the one that counts, when in reality it's just one of many opinions. Don't get me wrong, I do occasionally reply to some threads and give my view, but I do so because I enjoy discussing names, not because I assume my opinion will have any bearing on the OP's naming decision.

Also @Calliopespa your comment on Elizabeth made me laugh - you're right there are a lot of diminutive options for it, some of which I'm much more fond of than Elizabeth! Still, I like that there's such a large range of name options (for girls at least) nowadays

Usually harsh comments when the names are shit.

Why ask for opinions if you don’t want to hear them?
I agree that saying, it’s not to my taste, is more pleasant than saying that is a vile same, used by drug dealers and child molesters.
Even so why ask?