"Unusual Spellings of Baby Names Out of Control"

[*TripleJ*]

but then think about some ppl dont like names coz their normal coz their boring say James like i named my son ppl always say why such a boring name but i chose it for my stepdads best friend who sadly passed a few years ago and having a friend who said she 'saw' him watching over me convinced me even more even more freaky they both had the same birthweight also a maori middle name kai for my nz heritage and george for DH's grandad that passed away when he was 16
back 2 topic there are ppl who dont like normal spellings KWIM

[nickers]

Im a bit of a fence sitter with this one.
I used to go out with a guy who had an extremley common name in our era but spelt differently, it made his name seem different all together and there was never any confusion on the others always had to go by the first name and first inital of their surname.
The girls name i have always wanted was primarily a boys name and so i changed the spelling to suit a girl. (not that i had a girl so never used the name lol)
But in saying that i think some traditional names can get out of control with changing of spelling.

[visitor1]

BG how do you pronounce Nevaeh?

I cop it cos i spell Zachery the wrong way.....it should be ZachAry....do i care...Nope....he is my son and ill spell it my way.

I had lots tell me i should have spelt Jasmine...Jasmin so it doesnt sound like Jas-Mine but Jas-Min

Im all for weird names but can never get creative....id love for my kids to all be unique and different

[Fleur]

I had lots tell me i should have spelt Jasmine...Jasmin so it doesnt sound like Jas-Mine but Jas-Min

Mine is Jasmin & I always end up with an 'E' tacked on the end, even by those who have known me for years.
And sometimes, people who want to pronounce it 'Yasmin' (which, I think is another pronounciation?)

[~clover~]

BG how do you pronounce Nevaeh?

Neh-vay-ah : My friends DD has the same name I love it! Her twin is Levi, so they have Heaven & Ivel (evil) spelt backwards


Go the stripper kids

My DD goes to school with a 10 year old boy called Mango. From an upper social class. I think thats not fair. That child will have problems later in life, but Sindy? I really don't see that as a stripper name myself. Would Cindy have been ok?? My GP's name is Denny. Didn't affect his life or proffession that I can see. Then there's Layne Beachley - I focus on her surfing, not her name - as do most as far as I know. I never thought her name made her 'better', & it never crossed my mind that Michael Jackson was affected in any way by his 'common' name. Its their talent that makes them famous, not their name. I guess its possible that naming DD Jazmyne I gave her 'stripper' talent...Mind you she is very talented at alot of things. Especially athletics. I really believe its the area a child grows up in that makes a child who they are, not their name.
Thats why I moved to where I am now. We lived in a town full of drugs & teen pregnancies. If thats what everyone else is doing, thats what I'd expect of my DD. Now we live in a town where there is a very high uni rate, low to no teen pregnancies & every area has drugs, but they are not the life style here. There is not one person in town here that lives for drugs. (Its a small town, so I can say this truthfully)
There are also more opportunities offered at the schools here, marine biology etc. That is what will shape her life. Not the spelling of her name.

Plus, the way we are going, employers are just going to have to get over their 'fuddy duddy' ways, or there'll be noone left to employ.

[sas85]

I agree Skye. Employers will have to get over it. But if they don't - would anybody really want to be in the employ of a such a prejudiced person who won't even interview a suited applicant based on their name's spelling, perceived oddness, or worse yet, ethnicity. I doubt anyone of ethnic background wants to work for a bigot anyway. I do not accept the sound or spelling of a name as being a legitimate preclusion reason and believe it violates the anti-discrimination act.

I don't know how many of you have been down to the local GP's or Emergency room lately, but I can't even read what most of the (granted mostly foreign) names of the Doctors are, and sure didn't seem to impact their professional careers.

Sounds like Denmark is a little bit extreme there Expat. But, Australian law does prevent totally ridiculous names/spellings from coming into existence. When you fill in the form for BD&M at the hospital, there is subtext giving you preclusions as to what you can't include in names (foreign letters, punctuation marks) and also a note of the government reserving the right to refuse a name that it perceives to be unacceptable for extreme reasons. So unlike America, I don't believe the government would allow anyone to name their child that really long Talulah-in-Hawaii name someone mentioned earlier, or the full names of famous Nazi's. But still, within reason, you have to let people have their rights, and if that means giving their kids names with silent M's and X's through it for no reason or odd names, well that's what makes us a diverse people. And if the kid really hates the spelling, he can just change it himself unofficially or officially. It's not a big deal.

[Anila]

but then think about some ppl dont like names coz their normal coz their boring

I think my name is really boring, i would have loved my parents to have called me Ophelia, but then if they had of, would i then complain that ,my name was way too out there?

[~ Mylitta ~]

My name doesn't have the "normal" spelling, but I love it. What I like about many names it the way they look when written down. My name might sound exactly the same as "Kristy" and "Christie", but I love they way "Krystie" looks. Although I always have to spell it out to people, I figure that I would have had to spell out the other variations too... I liked having my name spelt in a more unique way considering that there were 3 others with the same name in my year level at high school.

One of the reasons we named our son Kyson was because I love the way it looks. I also loved that it was unique without being odd (like some celeb's childrens names...), and I also like the nickname of Ky

Since he was born I've had a couple of people ask if his name was an abbreviation of "Krystie's Son", lol, but no, it's not

[Phteven]

Yep Jasp, I get the difference



Here are a couple of articles about names that I thought were interesting.
I was going to post this one about jobs a month or two ago when it was in the news but I decided against it.
PM - Study finds employers shun minorities
Among the last names surveyed were Rosso, Ferrari and Romano (Italian), Chen, Huang and Chang (Chinese), Kassir and Baghdadi (Middle Eastern) and Tjungarrayi (Indigenous). They were pitted against Anglo-Saxon last names including Abbott, Adams and Johnson.

This article is based on the Freakonomics article about names which basically said that statistically the names that are popular amongst the wealthy and/or educated tend to be popular amongst the poorer and/or less educated about a decade later so the driver behind the cycles of popularity is keeping up with the Joneses. The author has been tracking the Freakonomics predictions for the most popular names of 2015.

This is a Freakonomics article about black names.

OT but if you can get your hands on a copy of Freakonomics read it. You may hate their ideas/conclusions but it's still fascinating

[Ca Plane Pour Moi]

I do remember reading that "traditional" names were paid better; variant spellings and made-up names less well.

That's in the UK though: foreign names weren't penalised as much as changing an I for a Y or a C for a K oddly enough.

[expat]

Jasp - your point is what everyone needs to keep in mind in this thread. It's not about ethnic names, nor unusual names, it's about the phonemic mangling of what would otherwise be a totally regular and totally nice name.

Saram - I love both of your kids names. My Friend in Sweden named her son Xander about 4 years ago so that one's gone for us! Ariya is very similar to another Indian name, Aaliya, which was one of my best friends in schools name. I've always loved the Sanskrit name Priya for a girl which means 'beloved'. I also love the Slavic name Milan for a boy (emphasis is on MI-lan) but too many people would think I'm naming him after the Italian city!

Maz - I never said you were a dreadful person. There's just the unfortunate fact that many people will judge a person by their name on a resume and put it in the 'NO' pile because they sound 'socially' less suited to the job' My dad had a woman come to interview for the position of dental nurse who had decent qualifications but whose name was Sindy. The fact that her name made her sound like a stripper rather than a medical professional precluded her from employment in a well paid job in a prestigious clinic. Yes, my dad is a fuddy-duddy and very conservative but so are many employers offering worthwhile jobs.

Someone I know named her son Maleek because his father was African. He's now 15 years old and it very well may have the same effect on him in this increasingly Islamophobic society.

I went to Uni with someone who changed her name as soon as she legally could because she wanted to get away from the dippy-hippy name her lovechild parents gave her. She said she always dreamed of a regular name.

In Denmark there is a list of 12,000 approved names you can call your child which includes a comprehensive list of ethnic minority names and is not at all racist. It is published for this exact reason; to stop parents claiming too much creative licence and allow the child to have a decent name. If you want a name that's not on the list, you need to petition the authorities and state a valid reason. If that fails, you can make it their middle name but legally they'll have one of the 12,000. This system stops parents giving their kids names like that NZ couple who wanted to call their son '4-real' and I think it's fair enough. It stops the courts getting clogged when parents want to call their kid 'Jeff the stopsign' or 'whalingboat' or whatever they think sounds fun at the time.

-And Yes, the celeb's can call their kids Tallulah-tuba-monkey, Apple, Prince Michael II....but with wealth comes many freedoms not afforded to you nor me.

[expat]

OK, I'm making back to back replies but I saw that a few more popped in whilst I was putting my son down for the night. Lady Z, you reminded me of an article I read on a study showing the tracking of given names in criminality. It was found that proportionate to the name's representation in society, people with unusual names were more likely to be involved in violent crime both as victims and perpetrators. Now the question is which came 1st? Did the kid get a certain upbringing and exposure because of the name, or did the kid get the name because of the upbringing and exposure of the parents?

[Phteven]

OK, I'm making back to back replies but I saw that a few more popped in whilst I was putting my son down for the night. Lady Z, you reminded me of an article I read on a study showing the tracking of given names in criminality. It was found that proportionate to the name's representation in society, people with unusual names were more likely to be involved in violent crime both as victims and perpetrators. Now the question is which came 1st? Did the kid get a certain upbringing and exposure because of the name, or did the kid get the name because of the upbringing and exposure of the parents?

I'd also wonder how the study defined an unusual name. Lots of people from minority groups have names that are popular within their culture but rare in the broader community. Cultural, social and economic exclusion tend to push people into crime so it may also be a result of broader social forces as well as upbringing and parenting.

[Roryrory]

On the topic of baby names and socioeconomic status, here is quote some of you might be interested in following up

In their book ?Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything,? authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner claim that baby names ?migrate? through the population from a higher socioeconomic level to a lower one. In their book, they predict the most popular baby names of 2015. (See list below).

So the names that are popular in "The Age" will soon be appearing in the "Herald-Sun"??

[{sarah}]

You know what I think is really silly... The fact that people think someone will be given a lesser chance at a job because of something that was beyond their control. It's essentially the same discrimination as for race or sex, you don't choose those & you don't choose you're name either (that is unless you change it later in life).