Poncey Names?

[WinkyWinkola]

I'm nearly 12 weeks pregnant with my second child.

DH and I have chosen names already but I'm starting to think they could be the source of mockery for the baby but I love these names. They're unusual (apart from my hearing lots of dog owners shouting, "Barnaby!," recently!) and dunno, I just like 'em.

What do you think? Am I going to subject my child to misery?

Boy
Atticus Elijah or Barnaby Elijah

Girl
Ophelia Pearl
Gretchen Violet

WinkyWinkola

LexyB, FAB names!!!

Ophelia is too unfortunate,like calling your child unlucky. But the other girls' names are lovely, really pretty. Pearl is gorgeous.

LOVE Elijah, although it is everywhere at the mo'. Atticus fine. Personally, am not keen on Barnaby.

Well, I'm 34 weeks pregnant (not long to go now!) and have read this thread with interest as we have decided on the name Barnaby for our little one.

I've read the negative comments as well as the positive ones and I don't care - to me, our little one is Barnaby and we like it!

I'm sure we'll get comments that Barnaby is a bear or a little purple dinosaur, but that hasn't stopped parents calling their sons Thomas to avoid tank engine comments, has it?

Too many Elijah`s around lately
I like Gretha or Ophella

I love Elijah (would have chosen it myself but my cousin stole it )

I also like Atticus and Barnaby, but not so sure about the girls names.

I have a Caleb which isn't common, but also not so uncommon any more and we still get strange looks!

I wouldn't tell anyone what you want to name your baby. When you name he/she they become that person and after a few days you wouldn't even be able to see thme with a different name.

You go with the names you like. Who cares what others think, it's your baby.

BTW some of the names which have come up here are great...love Keziah, Alexander (DS1 is Alex), Jemima, Jasper and hate the Brittanys, Chanels etc!

Let existing child choose name, then you can have a wonderful name like Spiderman or Darth Vader or Myt Little Pony and disclaim all responsibility for it.

Atticus is great but I dont like any of the others.

I think you have to rise above "ponce" comments. And "Chav" comments. (And about 99% of the other spoken & unspoken criticisms of your parenting choices!)

I mean, naming children is so much down to fashion--even the current middle class trend towards traditional English names. Names you see now like "Grace" and "Olivia" were considered granny names a decade and a half ago. But now they're young people's names again. That's fashion.

I think a greater worry with, say, a name like "Ophelia" is, as others have said, burdening a child with the name of a suicide. Though I agree it's a beautiful name.

I thought about giving my daughter one of the Greek mythological names that are in my family, but those names tend to be associated with gruesome events: child sacrifice, incest, you name it. I'm not sure I made the right decision by avoiding those names, but I felt it was only fair to take into account those negative associations.

As for Barnaby. There's one at my boy's school. He's a wonderful boy: smart, talented, polite. As far as I know, no one has ever thought twice about his name. After a while you see the child, not the name.

I am predicting a reaction to the Victorian maids' and old geezers' names with a return to seventies names, so to be in at the forefront of this trend, you want something like Stephanie or Barbra or Jacqueline for a girl and maybe Steve for a boy?

Yes if you want to be REALLY ahead of the game, call your child Lorraine

Oh sorry, its a boy.

Barry it is, then

hmmmmn

ophelia i like,

gretchen i really dont,

atticus is cool

elijah is boring.

Brnaby sounds like a dogs name to me, but if you like it - go for it,

kitty

with sons Addison Robert & Dexter James

& hoping for a 3rd boy one day , Phinneaus

xxx

told some friends and MIL at weekend the name we had chosen if we had a boy and all said they were happy we had a girl - I think it is a good idea to keep your names secret as people find it easier to comment if it has not been given to the child already.
Arthur may or may not be considered in the future if we have a DS.

Am so wishing had called mine Barry, Steve and Lorraine...

Kevin or Ian too...and let's not forget Susan Krabbie (there were five in my class of 30).
Ds wanted to call our dd Eric or Erica btw. Which would have sounded like someone choking when combined with our surname...

I am convinced that Derek, Roger, Martin etc must be due for a revival soon

I think Ophelia is lovely, & Pearl is too - not keen on them together though.

Barnaby is cool

I really like the name Camilla, but this was vetoed by DH - such a shame - no men seem to like it...(apart from Prince Charles...)

I've chosen names for our impending baby but have told everyone it's a secret for fear of jinxing anything. And agree that it's much harder for anyone to criticise when the baby is sat there in front of them, a real person.

MIL said the other day that some friends of hers had named their daughter Abigail, which is lovely, but wanted to call her Abi as a pet name. MIL then proceeded to say what a stupid idea and why not just christen her Abi in the first place? Kept quiet cos I've already shortened chosen name and always refer to the bump in the pet name... when I'm by myself, that is. Do we pick names and pet names so that we get a choice as to what to call our child in various situations? And anyway, other people will shorten them to whatever they think appropriate.

My dh is called Alan, and all through high school his friends called him Alice..... I think they thought it was humourous. He didn't mind too much.

Naming is such a personal matter that you really need to ignore other people's prejudices and go with whatever YOU love. I'd still be wary of saddling a child with a name that is likely to make them a target for teasing/bullying at school. Think really carefully about what any name could potentially be shortened to, whether the initials spell anything dodgy or whether you'd be happy with the abbreviated version of any name (because inevitably they WILL get shortened).

My person opinion on the names you listed -
Atticus: way too poncey. Quite like it in principle but would never use it - and would be get called "Atty"?
Elijah: OK, but just conjures up Elijah Wood.
Barnaby: Actually really like this - it's on our (much too long) shortlist too at the moment ...
Ophelia: No. Don't do it.
Pearl: Sorry, but I hate it and it reminds me of a blue-rinsed old lady.
Gretchen: I've never liked this name; there's something too 'hard' and gutteral about it.
Violet: Again, a blue-rinse name IMO.

Nightmare isn't it!! We are really struggling with the name issue. Something not too common, not too wierd, interesting, sort of different, nice meaning, no bad associations with anyone else of that name, no embarrasing shortenings, and hardest of all - something we can both agree on! Most of my suggestions are vetoed. Was it always this hard or are we more sensitive now? I went to school with lots of normal and unusual names and didn't really think twice about them, maybe we are more judgemental now and scared of giving the kids a complex.

Agree not telling people before it is born. They don't even pretend to be polite!! Faces screw up, and i've had 'you can't call him/her that' and 'do you have any other options?'

Anyhoo, I could live with the initial options. Went to school with a lovely girl called Gretchen. I think we all come around to liking our names at some point in our lives, otherwise we just choose nicknames.

I must be tired Marina, I was thinking there were 5 girls in your class named Susan Krabbie, which seemed an astonishing coincidence unless you lived in a very small and inbred town. I think we should start this 70s name thing going. Who wants to join up to call any new child they have Susan, Janice, Trevor, Malcolm etc etc... ?

I think the reason its more complex now is that we've got the 60's/70's legacy of rainbow and flowergirl names, the 1990's new agey crowd with the tendancy towards celtic names, the 'chav' names like Chardonnay, the madeup names, the tendancy for people to pick wholly innapropriate names from other cultures (and then spell them wrongly)
and then all the long standing names to choose from

Too much choice, and the 'wrong' name can say so much about you.

I'd disagree about there being a mix of names 30 years ago. In my class at school we had:
Ian, Jonathon, Lee, Stephen, Andrew, David, Alison, Rebecca, Pamela, Paula, Peter, Tracy, Lisa, Neil.

A mix of 'classic' names and fairly obviuos 1970's choices. We certianly didn't have a Beyonce, Bowie, Sky, Jasper, Calminy, Willow and TJ. as In one class of infancts I taught in last year.

In our playgroups we have:
Alexander, Thomas, Theodore, Oscar, Alfred, Harriet, Samual, Laura, Freya, Elizabeth, Catherine, Georgia.

(yes its appallingly middleclass)

ten years ago i bought my daughter a little tikes play family and i named them all the least fashionable names i could think of . Mum and dad are Derek and Susan - the daughter Jackie and the baby Eve. Look whats happened to Eve!

Whats even more weird is that once I've heard names I used to loathe a few times, I suddenly see them in a different light and start liking them fickle or what?!

Still struggling here with girl's name. And totally agree about not telling others till the deed is done: someone always has something offputting to say.

dd1 (2.10) has suggested a) Deia (she made it up for her toy cat, but its actually a town in Mallorca I think?!) b) Yup Yup Prison (get Freud onto that one) c) Aliboo

Frankly, we're not doing much better...

My dad had a friend with a name which was unusual at the time, though popular now, and he said it was great when he had grown into it

I think that is more relevant than other people's views - though always worth checkingthere isn't some unfortunate connotation or abbreviation you haven't thought of. We overlooked this possibility when naming DS1 Call the little love a name that suits him/her, imo, and s/he will grow into it