The Art of Naming

For the third installment of World-Wide Wednesday, we'll take a look at the naming traditions in Africa. Featured African Names: Kato & Zola For most Africans, baby-naming is extremely important. They place a high value on the name choice and its meaning. Many believe that it will have a major influence on the lives of the child and the family as a whole.  There is a delicate balance between giving a child a name that is too ambitious and a simple name that may not yield high enough expectations. Of course, Africa is a very large continent and it is home to hundreds of different languages and customs. Traditionally, African parents like to give names that reflect the time and day of the birth, the environment in which the baby was born or other related circumstances like gender or birth order. Many African names also reflect the parents hopes, aspirations and dreams for the child, or they may have to do with their fears, their religious beliefs and their own philosop...

Spanish baby-naming traditions vary slightly from country to country, but overall, they are very similar. These customs appear in Spain, Mexico, certain islands in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. The latter four are grouped together and called "Hispanic America." In Spain, people today tend to bear a single given name and two surnames, or perhaps a "composite first name" like Juan Pablo followed by two surnames. The first surname is the father's first surname, and the second is the mother's first surname. Occasionally, the father's and mother's surnames could be reversed, but every sibling must have the same two surnames in the same order. It is so important that if the parents cannot agree on whose surname goes first, it is taken to court for an official to decide. For example, if a man named Alberto Sanchez Hernandez and a woman named Maria Ruiz Gonzales have a son named Eduardo, the child's name would most likely be Edua...

In the never-ending quest to be unique, some parents today think the best way to do that is to use "kreeaytiv" spellings. I'm going to flat-out say it: spelling a name incorrectly is not cute.  Yes, I'm calling it "incorrect" not "creative." If you think I'm being harsh, I apologize, but I know that many of my fellow name-bloggers would back me up on this. Professor Kara is in the classroom. Ponder for a minute. What are you doing to your child? Yes, it might seem cute to see a baby named Braylynn or Kaedynn, but what happens when they grow up and need to apply for a professional job? There are people who argue that a name should have nothing to do with their intelligence and credentials for said job, but could you really imagine the President of the United States being named Aiedynn Kristhian Smith when Aidan Christian Smith would be so much nicer? Imagine 50-60 years from now when a whole new flock of babies are being born (hopefull...

Inochi (Life) Once a month, I will venture into international waters and find "exotic" and "foreign" names that are common in that particular native land.  For this first installment of "World-Wide Wednesday" where I find interesting name choices from around the world, I thought I'd focus on Japanese names. Authentic Japanese names can be so wonderful! Its a shame that some Japanese immigrants to the US feel the need to "Americanize" their name, or choose a boring, English name like Jerry or Lee.  However, there are many that keep the name their parents gave them. I read that it is traditional to have a big celebratory feast for the infant on its "Oshichiya" or its seventh day of life. They hang on the wall a very special "Shodo," or name plaque, that has the child's name inscribed in Japanese characters on very special paper. Clearly, they take baby-naming very seriously! How many of us even had a celebrato...

They say that it takes 100 years for names to come back into fashion. They aren't wrong. When you think about all of the names that are currently at the top of the charts (or rising quickly) how many of them were previously considered "Grandma" names? Perhaps these names are now being used to honor those grandparents. Or maybe those names now belong to the great-grandparents of current baby-namers and aren't well-known or thought of as old. Just like fashion trends, names have a way of coming back around and seeming fresh again. The 100 year rule is real! To prove that, here are some names that saw popularity spikes in the 1915-1925 range. These same names have begun gaining popularity since 2010 (and sometimes earlier because of those parents ahead of the trend.) We can only assume that these names will continue to climb our modern day charts and hit their peaks around the 100-years-later mark and then decline again. Name: (Year with most births) #ranki...

There are so many different classifications of names. Of course you know about the most obvious ones like Classic names or "Yoonik" (Misspelled) Names. What are some of the newish classifications or trends? Here are two that I've heard about recently: Liquid Names These names were first classified over on The Baby Name Wizard by blogger Laura Wattenberg . She defined these as names that flow smoothly. Many, if not most of these names have every sound drawn out (long vowels) they don't require much mouth movement such as Aliya or Eliana. These names tend to have three or more syllables and there are fewer consonant sounds than syllables. Letters allowed to be used in this trend include L, R, N, Y and H.  Some examples: Aaliyah Arianna Liliana Alaina Eliana Aria Elena Aurora Alana Aniyah Ariel Alina Elaina Liana Anaya Is this a trend that you like or is it just too smooth? Some people like more crunch to their names. Raindrop Names   In additi...

Another new naming trend that is gaining popularity this year is softer-sounding boys names. Many of these names contain the "sh" sound. Here are some of our favorites: Asher Bishop Cashel Cassius Dashiell Elisha Fisher Hamish Joshua Marshall Misha Nash Parish Sasha Shawn Shai Shane Shepherd Sheridan Sherwood Shiloh Tavish We particularly like the short but handsome nicknames/names such as Ash, Cash, Dash and Nash.  What is your favorite full name for the nickname Cash? Cashel, Cassius, Cassian, or just plain Cash? Can you think of any other names that might fit this trend? Do you like the trend? Let me know below!

We have all heard of names that were originally masculine but slowly became taken over by the girls.  Classic examples are Shannon, Kelly, Tracy, Stacy, Leslie, Ashley, Aubrey, Meredith, Dana, Caroll, Shirley, Shelby and so on. One of today's naming trends that I personally dislike is "boy names on girls" but I realize that this is not a new thing. Girls have been stealing names for decades! It is a wonder there are any legitimate boy names left! While there is nothing necessarily wrong with bending the gender rules, I think it only leads to confusion for children. Possible identity issues, and having to correct people who assume the wrong gender based on the written name, etc. I mean no disrespect to those of you who enjoy this phenomenon, but I personally like gender-specific names more than the gender-neutral names. That being said, I thought I would list some more modern examples of names that switched sides or can be considered a "gender-bender" in w...

Baby Under The Towel by  Vera Kratochvil Many parents today choose long, proper names for the birth certificate but they call their little ones by a nickname. For girls, nicknames that end with -ie have always been popular. For example, perhaps you love the idea of having a little Maggie but you aren't comfortable with Maggie as a given name. What do you do? Name her Margaret.   Now, some parents are skipping the proper name and using the nickname on its own. While Maggie is a nickname for a specific name, some "nicknamey-names" could be short for any number of names.  What if you wrote Sadie or Callie directly on the birth certificate? And what about names that seem nicknamey but don't have an obvious long-form like Bonnie? In the 1880's, Minnie, Annie, Bessie and Nellie ranked in the Top 20 as a whole name. So it begs the question, which of these nicknames can stand alone today, and which require a proper given name?  Of course, there is n...

I keep hearing talk about a new trend in boys names and I wanted to do some research to see if this is a real thing yet or not. Apparently the new favorite thing is boys names that end with the letter -o. Some examples that I keep hearing about are Hugo, Arlo, Milo, and Leo. Now, when I went through the Top 500 names of 2012, I found so many more names ending in -o than I imagined that I would. However, the Top 100 was very absent of a single -o name. It wasn't until I hit #110 that I found my first, Diego. In all, there were 37 names between #110-500. As a woman of Hispanic heritage, I have to imagine that most of these -o names are legitimately used by Spanish and Italian families. It leaves me wondering how many of these are truly gaining popularity across the race spectrum, and how many have always lingered around their respective ranks. I have no way of looking up the race of the parents, but I had to dig deeper to see which of these are climbing the charts and which are...

by Vera Kratochvil Maybe you've noticed it, maybe you haven't, but there was a naming phenomenon that swept the country for the past decade until now. In 2011, more than 700,000 American baby boys had names that ended with the letter N. Maybe you haven't thought about it, but now you're able to recall all the little Aidens, Masons, Ethans and Jaydens that you know. With all the recent data released for 2012, it looks like the "era of the -n" is finally starting to wind down. The 5 fastest falling boy names last year all ended with N. Boys: 1. Jaden - Dropped by 40 ranks. (It went from #100 in 2011 to #140 in 2012.) 2.  Rylan  -Down by 33 ranks. (#146 in 2011 to #179 in 2012.) 3.  Ashton  -Fell 32 spots (#109 in 2011 to # 141 in 2012.) 4.  Hayden -Moved down 19 spots.  (#90 in 2011 to #109 in 2012.) 5. Justin - After 40+ years of popularity, it finally fell 15 ranks.  (#59 in 2011 to #74 in 2012.) Jaden has embarked on its journey down th...