What happened to normal conventional names?

[VelvetLace]

An acquaintance who is due slightly after me has just announced on Facebook that she will be naming her baby girl Charm. I originally thought it was short for something else but no. It's just the word Charm. I'm not saying that everyone should name their baby something incredibly dull, but why have full-blown dog names become so common for human beings? Has naming babies just become a creativity contest? I see a lot of conventional names being asked about and considered on MN, but I'm seeing the opposite with people that I know offline. DH and I were discussing this last night.

Very true - I used to know a lovely nurse called Mercy and she did genuinely live up to her name.

As someone who was saddled with an 'unusual' spelling I totally agree.

Who decides what is and isn't a name? Look at flower names, Rose, Violet, Ivy, Holly all perfectly normal names but why not 'Daffodil'? 'Aspidistra'?

This sums it up. I’ve noticed the same. Some people just want to disagree with the OP no matter what

No. I’m not keen on the name, but was just pointing out that ideas of ‘normality’ and ‘conventionality’ are entirely dependent on where you’re coming from.

You’re right, whatever happened to good old-fashioned Christian names like Chastity, Increase, Continent, and If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned.

You’ve never met a little baby Toadflax, or Hensbane?

Most kids are called the same 6 names. In our case the name Eve. At one point one third of the girls in dd1 class were called a variant of Eve. Mental. And extremely confusing.

Keith Richards named his daughter Dandelion, although I think she went by a different name when she got older.

I think for some people naming children has definitely become a creativity contest and there’s some really wacky names coming from some influencers in particular. (And then others choose to name their children in line with what they think is trendy so the unusual, creative names people have struggled to come up with end up more mainstream after a while anyway.)

I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to want to be creative. I put a lot of thought into naming my children because I wanted something that felt a bit more bespoke than off the peg and my choices would probably be described as “try hard” on here. Although I scour history, literature and the baby name books for a real but underused name, not pluck a word or an assortment of letters and sounds out of thin air and call it a name which I do think is silly!

But a virtue name like Charm isn’t even that out there and it probably wouldn’t look that out of place to the Victorians or the Puritans who loved a bit of that sort of thing, in fact it’s quite tame in comparison to some of theirs. And for every creative name there’s probably like ten Theo’s so it’s all relative anyway.

I quite like Dandelion !

You do wonder what the kids will think of these kinds of names when they’re adults.

Although, people do have more unusual names now so perhaps it will be fine.

I am amazed by the popularity of the name Bambi, just seems a mad name for an adult woman.

Same here. Sooo many girls called Eve or Ellie….

I think Charm is a great name that’s way more memorable than some of the overused top 10 names.

As long as the name is easy to spell and pronounce and doesn’t have negative associations, I think unusual names are much nicer than boring top 10 ones.

I don’t like Charm because I don’t like names that put expectations on a child to be a certain way - same reason I don’t like Joy, Grace, Belle/Beau, Rebel etc.

I do think some parents forget that their baby is actually a person and not a doll. There’s no other way to explain why three babies were named Teddy-Bear in 2024.

I am warming to Charm.🙂

Especially since the Bambi in the film was male!

It’s not really in the same league as the Christian virtue names though because they come from the more ardent Protestant traditions where luck is generally not a thing, at best, and blasphemy, at worst. To liken them is to fundamentally misunderstand that culture. I agree with people that said it sounds like a stripper name. And with the pp that said if you’d posted that you wanted to name your child this, people would be falling over themselves to criticise it.

Parents would do well to think of their baby as an adult when choosing their name. Some names proposed on MN would require very definite traits/abilities. The recent suggestion of calling a child Knowledge comes to mind.

The Puritans would be horrified by the name Charm! They were more for names like Obedience, Humiliation and FearoftheLord.

I met a Tulip once.

I think it’s a positive thing. Among my DS’s peers (age 14) there seems to be much less bullying around names as there isn’t such a small pool to choose from. I also like hearing more unusual names, it’s not like I’m being forced to use one for my own child 🤷🏻‍♀️. One of my DC has a name you pretty much never would have heard of (in this country) 40 years ago say and I still dont know any and he hasn’t met anyone with his name. My other has a very traditional name but not currently high on the name charts despite being very normal and well known.

In my teenage witch phase I would have loved to have been called Charm.

Is it any different to Hope, Faith,Grace, Melody etc. We have just gotten used to those words as names.
Names are subjective to taste. Would I call my child Charm, no but I also wouldn’t call my child Edward or Margaret because I personally don’t like them.

I imagine all the Ethels, Nancys, Joans, Marys and Elsies and Elizabeths were equally flabbergasted by all the 'weird' names of their grandchildren born in the 1960's/70's - Deborah, Tracy, Tina, Susan, Julie and Karen.

It's trends and a more internationalist, multicultural society.

Variety is the spice of life.

My DD had a girl in her primary school class called Rhyt'eous.

Everyone used to get the apostrophe in the wrong place.

Yes you are right! To Puritans, Charm is probably far too witchy. I can see the thread now:

”Why’s nobody using conventional names like Silence, Kill-Sin and Hate-Evil anymore?”