The Baby Name Wizard

We seek unique names for our kids not as a matter of style, but because our extremely common surname causes ample and serious identity confusion.

My husband had to appear in court after being confused with a deadbeat dad of three. The judge was unhappy to find the prosecution had sued a 16 year old high school student for the child support of at least one child older than himself.

Our paychecks have been issued to the wrong parties and others' bills have been directed to us. Through clerical error, we've had others' medical bills (in distant cities) applied to our insurance. I once picked up a prescription for birth control to open the bag and find heart medicine for another person of my name. I cannot imagine what that retiree thought when she opened my prescription.

I want my kids to avoid identity confusion. They don't need to get parole violations notices or debt collection calls because someone decided to guess at an offending party's new address.

We've spent a lot of time trying to prove who we are not, and it's no easy task.

Thus, my kids have uncommon names.

I agree. I've always had a unique name and have been very "searchable" for the majority of my life. There's something in me that believes we need to be responsible for the lives and choices (and bad photos, hehe) that make us who we are as we grow.

It seems so dishonest to me when people create double lives for themselves- when the people they are in real life are completely different than who they present themselves to be online.

Yes, someone can find me easily by typing my name in a search bar, but it's my responsibility to live in such a way that makes me proud of what they will find when they do.

Great post!

Upon marriage, I will be choosing to trade a fairly uncommon last name for one that is much more common. The idea of being less findable is acually sort of comforting in this era. I think the real need is for balance.

However, the idea of letting 18-year-olds choose their own names might produce interesting results. I'm of the opinion that, at 18, while we are able to make some adult choices (those pesky contracts), we are still developing who we are as individuals. A name chosen at 18 (and before college) might not be as developed as one might choose to take on later, when those college days are behind them and people reach a new developmental point of their lives.

That said, I would have loved to change my name at 18. I would now be Julia. In my 20s, I grew to accept my given name, which I find too common and too trendy. What would other people be named if they had changed at 18?

I took my husband's surname when we married, and I've thought a lot about the process of becoming this new person and name. While it was the right decision for me and our family, it took time and effort to legally become this new person with the state and federal government, my schools, the credit card companies, and even the airlines with my frequent flier cards.

It may be that the time comes that young people change their names, and I imagine if it becomes a more frequent occurrence, that it will become easier.

I also wonder about the idea of hiding youthful indiscretion when becoming an "adult." It's easy to assume that means turning 18 or graduating from high school. But I know plenty of people who do stupid things in college. Some of those people are also in internships or have already begun their career while they are still doing things they may wish they could erase with a new name. I wonder how the need to balance positive professional experience will interact with taking a new name as part of a new identity.

I'm with Adrienne. Growing up as Jennifer Jones caused lots of identity confusion. Mixed up dental records, mixed up insurance records, being refused insurance based on another person's health history, and on top of that I have a twin. Ay yi yi.

Better to lean toward the unusual, IMO.

My name is also a common line of dresses carried at stores like JC Penney and Dillards...so if you google me, you get thousands of dress store results. It makes me sort of happy to be rather anonymous online, because you have to really be hunting to find me, and not the dresses...

That being said, I am pretty happy that I changed my name at marriage. My current last name is still common, but my maiden name was REALLY common, and in my high school there was me, Jessica, and a Jennifer who had the same middle and last name as me...so of course we always got each other's report cards and letters. Freaked my parents out the first time, since she was not nearly as good a student as I was! :)

I grew up with a very unusual last name (I am the only result for my name on Google, and most people in the US with my LN are related to me, however distantly). That, however, didn't prevent someone else's name from showing up on my credit report under the "other names used" section. That person? My sister, who shared my initials and at one point also my address (duh—we grew up in the same home). But still.

Now I have my husband's very common last name. I have to say, the identity-confusion bit scares me more than the easily-traceable bit, as thus far there is nothing embarrassing about me on the internet (so far as I know).

I agree that if we were instituting an age at which everyone gets a freebie name-change, 18 wouldn't work so well as far as erasing incriminating internet content—most of that is probably generated by college students. But then, a change at 22 wouldn't work so well either, because then the name on your college transcripts wouldn't match the name on your job or grad school applications. The way it works now, by the way, at least with grad school applications, is that if you've changed your name, you need to submit a legal document that verifies the change, and thus contains both your old and new names. Therefore, the schools to which you're applying still know your original name, rendering it a very ineffective way of hiding your past.

What a very interesting post! My husband and I choose uncommon names for our children b/c DH and I both have common names and never really liked having five other kids with the same name in our class. This article does make me think more about choosing uncommon names, but I don't think that being easily traceable is a reason not to use a rarely used name you like. Like another poster mentioned, if you lead a good life and are a good person, people aren't going to find anything against you online. My husband and I have always strived to be good, responsible people and will raise our children to be the same way. Again, a very interesting post! I really enjoyed reading it and thinking it over some. :)

On to names...hehe. Our little girl will be here 6 weeks from today, via c-section. As many of you know, the name we have chosen is Mabel Susannah. But we are taking a list of "just in case" names to the hospital with us in case Mabel just doesn't seem to fit her or in case "she" turns out to be a "he". I thought I'd share some of these names with you all to get your take on them. Like I mentioned, we like our kids to have uncommon names, and it seems these days like everyone else is seeking the same thing when naming their kids. So I don't really feel safe with any name b/c I feel any rare name is just destined to be re-discovered and become popular again (like Evelyn did). So here they are...

Agnes Rosalind
Eloise Pearl
Elsa Clementine
Louisa Bess
Marianne Daisy
Rosalind Jane
Rosemary Blythe

Ambrose William
Amos Conrad
Atticus Jude
Conrad Elias
Edmund Grant (or Edmund Pierce)
Gareth William
Gregor Elias (or Gregor Malachi)
Lawrence Asher - our last name starts with an 'S', so this could come across as "Lauren" :/
Phineas John
William Ambrose

We have a son named Solomon.

I agree with emeryjo. It's better to live your life in a way that you feel proud of than to try and change your name legally or create another "version" of yourself for alternate activites.

Empathy-I like Ambrose William I don't think that will reach "Aidan" proportions any time soon. I also like Phineas John and Eloise Pearl to match with Solomon.

As a recent graduate of college, I have a lot of friends who have changed their names on social networking sites to avoid being found by potential employers. (One friend, for example, goes by something like Joel Astname on Facebook instead of Joe Lastname.) The problem with this is that it also makes it harder for friends and family to find them.

I also took my husband's surname when I married, and went from being the only person with my full name on Facebook to being 1 of 8. When you google my new name, nothing that relates to me comes up, while googling my maiden name mostly brings up academic and athletic accomplishments of mine from high school. It's actually kind of disappointing having those achievements no longer directly attached to my name.
However, I do love the length of my new last name. Much shorter and easier to sign. :)

(also, hello! I've been reading this blog and the discussions in the comments for months, but I've never posted before. I found this website while trying to help my brother and his girlfriend find a name for their baby when they were expecting. My niece has since been born - they chose Charlotte Alice for her name, by the way - but this blog has me hooked. :) I even went back and read every previous blog post since it's beginning, haha. Love it!)

I agree that identity confusion is a real problem, and I did talk about that in the 2005 column, too. (I used to be Laura Miller, which led to plenty of mixups.)

But I feel very strongly that just "living a life you can be proud of" is NOT an answer to the privacy risks of having an unusual name. For example...

A historian I know published a scholarly article in a top academic journal. The article came to the attention of a fiery political messageboard which didn't like where the research pointed...and so took aim at the researcher, personally. He had an unusual name, so it took only minutes for posters on the messageboard to publish complete details on his life, from his home and work addresses to his fiancee's name and their wedding registry.

IOW, you don't have to have something to hide to require privacy.

I don't think it's all about "lead a good life and then you won't care if people can google you." I know someone, for instance, who was the victim of a rather serious crime over a decade ago, and was responsible for then helping to have the criminal put in jail. This person has a justifiable concern of the criminal holding a grudge and trying to cause more problems once he is released. As a result, this person (with a pretty unusual name) will not use social networking sites and otherwise tries to avoid being googleable.

This may sound like an extreme case, but it's unfortunately not so uncommon that having your name and various personal information about you out on the internet for anyone to see can create security risks for you, whether it's identity theft or an estranged ex or some other sort of creep.

The way things are heading, I think it may end up being a real advantage to be a "Jennifer Smith" rather than a "Theophanes Petrushkin" or whatever.

I'm fairly satisfied with my own googleability. My name is common enough that there are about 40 people with the same name just on Facebook, and there are many people by my name who come up on google before me, but it's unique enough to still find me if you know me. I have some old friends I'd love to get in touch with, but their names are so hopelessly common that googling them is pretty much impossible (or at least more time consuming than I'm willing to deal with)--I wouldn't want to be THAT anonymous.

Oops, I see Laura beat me to the punch on the spirit of my comment.

I heard something related on Prairie Home Companion this weekend--the Guy Noir character (a private investigator) had taken a job investigating very menial complaints at a county fair, and mentioned that he was out of work/partially unemployed because Google and Facebook now easily uncover the sort of information that used to require the help of a private investigator. So true, and things seemed a bit safer the old way, I think.

Empathy- My favorites (AFTER Mabel, which tops my list for sure) are Eloise Pearl, Rosalind Jane, and Amos Conrad. Can't wait to hear if Mabel stays a Mabel! :)Good luck with delivery.

My name is uncommon, and everyone with the same last name in the U.S. is related to my husband, however distantly. I was interviewed by a website about a book blog that I write, when the subject of my son's name came up. He was named for a character in a novel. Since he's the only G_B_ in the U.S., and possibly in the world, I asked the interviewer to either cut the whole conversation about his name, or to refrain from using my last name. Very kindly, they didn't use my last name. If he's going to be Google-able, I'd rather it be for something he did, not me.

I blog under my first name only, Facebook under my real name, but I do have a few other online accounts (LiveJournal, etc) where I use an online alias. It's where any material potential employers might find questionable goes.

Oh and I also am expecting a baby in February! Once we find out the gender (in about four weeks) I'll definitely be back here for help with names. My husband refuses to talk names until we know what we're having. It's making me want to tear my hair out!

I ran across this interesting website http://www.isthisyour.name/ while I was checking the "googleability" of my maiden name and married name. There are supposed to be 13 people with my maiden name in the US but I am the only one with my married name according to them.

When I search on www.intelius.com which is a great site to use if in fact you DO want to find someone. I find this to be true. It is unfortunate that people need to steal others identities and personal information and occasionally do harm to their person or property. I'm sure that a common name makes it more difficult to be traceable but there are still ways to find "the right Laura Miller" given the right tools.

This is a very interesting article. Something I have been thinking about quite often lately.
I have been one of the parents to choose more unique names because I just liked them and I like them being unique. Unfortunately I have seen how traceable some of my children are going to be. I am one of those people that google a name or names for fun when considering it for a child. I am not concerned about their actions being traced but more so in safety.

The suggestion of changing your name at 18 to "hide" youthful indiscretions puts me in a tither. That is just one more excuse for youth to not take responsibility in their actions because "oh well, I can just change my name and it will be gone, poof!". That is really going to teach them how to be responsible adults. Oh yea.

I also agree with Laura how we can't just "abandon" our names. How hurt will those parents be? Look how all of us here put so much thought into names our children. I for one would be very hurt if my children wanted to change their names. Of course other people already pointed out how silly that is when it comes to transcripts and such. Then there would be no point to work hard in HS.

Yes, this is something on my mind right now. Should I go with something unusual like Mayim or Nesya or stick to more common classics like Elizabeth and Abigail?

Empathy-My favorites from your list are:

Eloise Pearl
and

Ambrose William.

I also like Amos but would like to warn you that it could easily be heard as Anus.

I'm still partial to Louisa Bess and Edmund Grant.

I do think that the rise of social media makes things more difficult for people to remain anonymous. I have led a relatively tame life, but there were a few times when an ill-timed photograph publicly posted would have been embarrassing. With cameras in every cell phone, and teens posting photos online without their friends' knowledge or consent, I am sympathetic to some young people wanting to erase their online past. I'm glad there are no public photos of me with my college boyfriend. I'm glad that I'm only getting tagged in photos in middle age.

Interesting. My name is inbetween -- not unusual or overly common. On Facebook there are about 25 people with my first and last name (and a few others who have listed a second last name, presumably their married or maiden name). I've been lucky not to have had many problems with my name, so I find it all to be in fun. Who are these other people with my name and what are they like? Are they smarter than me? Prettier? Richer?

About ten years ago I found out, while googling my name, that a character with my name is the star of a (soft core) romance novel. I'm not a fan of the genre but I had to have a copy. I emailed the author, who was tickled.

I've also made sure, now that I know there are more of us out there, that when my name is googled, I am the first one on the list. I am a published scientist, and being easy to find is important in my field. Being known means a lot when your product is the papers you write (I suppose this is true for all authors). Will this make me a target in some other way? Maybe, but I need to be accessible to my colleagues.

I think about this often because as small business owners it is necessary to use our full names in many situations. With a mention of our children once in a while, our entire family is vulnerable.

My maiden surname is very very common and I have a common first name. My married surname, however, is very uncommon and all people with that surname are related to my husband's family. So I have gone from 1 extreme to the other!

I like to remain private online. I use a different screen name for every different site I use. I also don't use my real name on facebook. I haven't done anything I'm not proud of, but I don't like all and sundry to find information about me without my knowledge. Not using your real name on facebook also has it's advantages, I don't get friend requests from random people or schoolmates from 20 years ago. That would just annoy me!

@Empathy - I love Mabel Susannah but of your other options my favourites would be:
Eloise Pearl
Agnes Rosalind
Louisa Bess
Abrose William
Conrad Elias

I do like pretty much all of your options though, we have similar taste :)

Another thing on the idea that if you lead a good life you have nothing to hide...

I have a fairly uncommon name, but there are a few other people with both my first and last name. If you do a google search on me, nothing comes up about me specifically, but a lot comes up about college-aged girls partying and one girl who was apparently a stripper. Since my name seems very uncommon, I wonder if potential employers think that one of these girls is me. If my name was more common I think it would be much more difficult to make that assumption.

I think that names are becoming a little more fluid in the younger generations (and I speak as a young 20-something), with the need for screen names and user names in daily communication. Though a given name has all the history and personal connection you mention, it's not as connected to your identity as it might have been in the past simply because a kid has the right to choose other names.

As for parents being hurt due to their children wanting to change their name - I'm not sure I understand this. I'm not a parent myself, and have never had the opportunity to bestow a name upon an infant, but doesn't a child have the right to go by a name that they prefer? (based on a reason other than hiding drunk pictures on facebook, obviously) While changing your name doesn't erase your past, it can psychologically aid an identity change, hopefully towards the better.

zoerhenne - I found http://www.isthisyour.name/ really interesting. It really highlighted how using less common spellings makes your name more unique. Our last name is fairly common and my sons are named P@ul and M@rk. The site guessed that there were over 300 Americans with their name. The guess for my daughters named Cl@re and K@th@rine was that fewer than 10 Americans share their name. For us we gave the girls "unique" names unintentionally as we used the spelling of specific Catholic saints that we wished to honor.

My surname is so rare (my married surname that is) that even my husband Michael with his super not-unique name is guesstimated to be the only American with the name by that website!

really interesting post!

i agree with those who said that the idea of automatically being able to change your name at a certain age to hide your past is a little bizarre. it definitely does not encourage responsibility, right? it seems like a bad idea to me. and i do agree that your name is your identity and should not be thrown around willy-nilly (though obviously there are many, many exceptions--i certainly don't think everyone who changes their name does so carelessly). i also do think that even if i did want to change my name (i don't), i would fear hurting my parents feelings. i mean they did *choose* it for me, and it's mine. i personally couldn't undo that unless i had a pretty weighty reason.

many thanks go laura and hyz for pointing out that being a responsible person doesn't mean that you don't need privacy; i hadn't thought of either of your scenarios and was glad you brought them up.

also, the weekend before last, i spent a saturday watching children at a daycare for my alma mater's move-in day. i wrote down all the names obviously. :] i *think* most of these are children of professors, though i'm not positive. it is a private school in the midwest. ages are in parentheses.

Jonas (3)
Ell@ and D@le (twin girls-6.5)
Clara (20 months)
Rebecca (5.5)
Sim0n, Jac0b and Mic@h (all boys, 10, 8, 2, micah is pronounced mee-kuh)
Oliver, Iris, Eleanor (8, 6.5, 4)
Milo (2, pronounced mee-lo, presumably due to the fact that his parents are french)
Alex (boy, 19 months, may or may not be short for alexander)
Lincoln (6)
Madeline (10)

things i thought were interesting:

a girl named d@le! to me this indicates that a) apparently some people do think it is a girls' name (as previously discussed) and b) most people in my generation (i'm 25) seem to think it is a boys' name, as i mentioned it to quite a few of my friends and they all said, "d@le on a girl??" either way, i find it an odd choice with 3lla.

i found it interesting that we had a micah pronounced mee-kuh and a milo pronounced mee-lo. with milo's french heritage, the pronunciation made sense, but i can't make heads or tails of the little boy named mee-kuh. based on his brothers, it strikes me as a very nice OT sibset, but the pronunciation throws me. i thought the OT name was pretty universally pronounced my-kuh.

oliv3r, iris, and elean0r....LOVE that one. just love it!

super not-unique FIRSTNAME Michael that is. After looking that up my husband and I figured that we can name our child a unique name because he/she will be googlable unless their surname changes.

By comparison, using my maiden name gives me 40 Americans with my name. If my husband would have taken my name, he would statistically be one of over 1000 Americans with the name.

and empathy, Mabel is such a perfect balance with Solomon. I adore your names. Especially:
Eloise Pearl
Elsa Clementine
Louisa Bess
Rosemary Blythe (reminds me somehow of Anne of Green Gables...Gilbert's mom? no...)
Conrad Elias
Edmund Grant
Gareth William

Ok, I really screwed it up for my kids if they want to stay anonymous!! I just went to that site and for all members of my family except one it was all 5 and under. A few of them came up as the only one and only one person came up as 10 people. This really makes me think differently about future children. A common name doesn't sound so bad after all.

Wow..I didn't realized my married name was so uncommon.

Love, Oilv3r, Iris, and Eleanor!

I just have to add, that due to these recent changes in my thinking. One of my long time favorite names (for 15 years!) is back on the table.

Liliana-now if I can just get past the term frillianna, I will be all good. :)

Dale on a girl:

My grandmother who has been deceased for many years now was named Lucy Dale S___. She has had a few grandchildren named after her - male and female.

Also, I have a fairly common name - if you google me, you'll find many of me - but not actually me. My husband on the other hand is the one and only - we have different last names.

Interesting question. I think there are pros and cons on both sides.

I've known several women named Dale. Admittedly they are all over 40. I don't know a single male Dale! So it doesn't seem weird to me at all. Dale and Ella together seem a little off though.

I agree that Oliver, Iris and Eleanor together are fabulous!

emilyrae-- "Ell@" and "D@le" also struck me as incongruous, style-wise, yet there is one thing I like about the combo: It somehow reminded me of the lilting phrase, "hill and dale", suggesting pastoral English poetry...

But the styles are too different for my taste. I wonder if the children are namesakes for older relatives or friends, which would account for the dissimilarity?

Don't any of you get the retro TV channels that run old episodes of "Roy Rogers and Dale Evans"? Dale Evans was the wife of famed cowboy actor Roy Rogers, and an affable cowgirl actress herself. I would imagine that "Dale" got more of a workout as a girl's name after Dale Evans was professionally active in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties...

Speaking of seemingly male names used for girls, I recently spotted a young woman writer for "Human Events", I think, named Jedediah Bila.

I've always wanted male Biblical names to stay male, and don't like it when traditional Hebrew boy names like "Elisha" and "Michael" are used for girls. You can see why parents might be drawn to "Jedediah" for a daughter, (and I liked the aforementioned Jedediah Bila very much, so I was torn at first), but still can't approve the practice!

eo,
yes, i think the last time we discussed the name dale, dale evans was brought up as "the" example of a female dale. i of course then countered with chip 'n' dale rescue rangers. :] and dale earnhardt, though i have to admit that i'm a bigger fan of cartoons than i am of nascar. anyway, i think at the time we postulated that dale evans was a big reason why some older generations think of it as a girls' name (and why most of the female dales people know are over 40). i had never heard of dale evans though, and i would hazard a guess that my friends haven't either.

oh, but i liked your comment about "hill and dale"--that is a nice image. :]

and i'm with you on biblical male names. all that talk of ezra and levi and elisha on girls made me a bit crazy.

My maiden name is much less common than my married surname. A search on Facebook for my fn-maiden name combo yields only me while a search for my fn-married name brings up 617 people. I'm pretty anonymous now!

However, my daughter has a very uncommon fn. On Facebook I find 3 people with her fn-ln combo and www.isthisyour.name suggests there may be 6 Americans with the same name.

While I do use my real name on FB, I don't include my maiden name (I think it finds me in searches, though, because others have tagged me with that name). I know people who use aliases (e.g., Telephone Booth), but they are by and large my age rather than those who would be more prone to youthful indiscretion. My nieces and nephews all use their real names exclusively.

I can't actually imagine people in the future will seek to jettison their given names with any greater frequency than they do now. I do think the Internet in general and social networking in particular change notions of privacy, and this is especially true for generations who grow up with this technology. I'm certainly not suggesting people shouldn't be judicious about how they present themselves online, but I wouldn't be surprised if today's 10- or 15-yr-old will have different privacy concerns around this issue as an adult than I do.

@Empathy, you have such similar taste to mine it was difficult selecting favorites from your back-up list. Best of luck with your delivery and let us know what name you end up with!

Agnes Rosalind
Eloise Pearl
Elsa Clementine
Louisa Bess

Ambrose William
Amos Conrad
Conrad Elias
Edmund Grant (or Edmund Pierce)

okay, i have a challenge! i don't know why i didn't think to ask you guys before. within the next couple weeks, i'm taking home a new puppy (dalmatian, female, as i mentioned many months ago, i believe). the breeder loves to find matchy registered names vs. the name that the dog is actually called, which i think is fun. for example: having a dog's registered name be "burning down the house" and calling him "arson." or, to use an example i think hyz used a while back, having a dog's registered name be "get smart" and calling him "max." there are plenty of fun examples out there. anyway, the challenge is: i'm pretty settled on calling my dog pippa (traditionally short for philippa, as you know, which means "friend to horses" or "lover of horses"--very apt!). the problem is that pippa doesn't really lend itself to clever registered names, probably because it's just not that common in the states and no one really has any associations with it. this is the farthest thing from urgent, but i thought i'd present it to you and see if you came up with anything. it's kind of a fun game. i find myself coming up with lots of fun ideas, but nothing that works with pippa. thoughts?

Re: Dale--I must've missed the recent Dale conversation. It's funny, bc a few months ago when we were discussing Taylor, Jordan, Peyton, and other gender neutral names, I was going to mention Dale as one that used to be gender neutral, and is now almost always masculine. I looked, and in the 1950s it peaked for both genders, in the 250s for girls and #49 for boys. But Dale as a girls' name disappeared from the top 1000 in the 1970s, and it's still on the charts for boys.

I'm trying to think of another example where the girl version came within 200 of the boy, and then completely disappeared again?

emilyrae-Fun! The first thing I think of is Pippi Longstocking even though you decided on PippA. So I found the full name: Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking. LOL! Maybe you can do something with that.

I will think more on the lover of horses aspect and try something with that too. I do think Longstocking should be in there though. It just seems cute for a dalmation given their spots. It's unexpected!

EDIT: Just remembered that a spotted horse is an Appaloosa. Kinda looks like a dalmation in a way ;)

for what it's worth, dale for girls isn't even in the beyond-the-top-1000 data for 2009, meaning 4 or less baby girls were given the name. so....that's pretty uncommon!

oooh, zoerhenne, thanks! i think doing something with pippi could be really fun!

Astrid Appaloosa Longstocking-has a nice ring to it! Totally cute!

zoerhenne,
that is a hilariously and wonderfully quirky combo! love it! hmm...you've opened my mind to a whole area i hadn't thought of. the only idea i'd had so far was to reference the movie "the private lives of pippa lee," which would be neat if you were a big fan of the movie or something, but i've never seen it, so it feels a bit hollow to me to reference it.

I work at a math and reading center with kids who range from about 4 to 8 years old, and thought people might be interested in seeing some of their names. These are the ones I can remember:

Violet
Cooper
Christian
Aaron
Dana
Af@f & Noorh@n (sisters)
@rjun
Geneva
Sori@h and Amir@ (twin sisters)
Pooja
Fesseh@ and K1dus (brothers)
Sara
Victor
Christopher
N@kshatr nn Naks (boy - not sure how his full name is pronounced, but the nn sounds like "nox")
H@rini
Guy@thri
Olivia
Jesse and Jason (brothers)
Samantha
Neil (2 times)
Isabella (2 times - one nn Izzy and one Bella, plus another just Bella)
Lucy
Evan (2 times)
Aid@n & Eliz@beth
Ava
M@dhav
Ad@m and Mi@ (twins)
Tiffany
Terrance nn Terry
Emmanuel (girl)
@shmit
Hailey
James
Sh@ilen (boy)
Simr@n nn Simi (girl)
Yasmine
Rishi
Dawson
Julian

I was surprised to see Emmanuel for a girl! I asked her what she liked to be called, thinking maybe she went by a nickname, but she thought for a few seconds and decided, "I would like to be called Isabella." haha

I do think that the ability to hide your past is important, actually. We all have minor mistakes in our past which in past times would have had few records and been relegated to the status of a family anecdote. Now, however, they get recorded and published in detail for anyone to see.

To that end, I plan to select an "internet name" for my children when they are first allowed online - new first name, new last name (I may even get a credit card for out account with the internet last name), new birthday, everything. If they never have anything to be ashamed of it'll be a minor weirdness. If, however, they do get cyber-bullied, or get drunk at a party, or get photographed in their underwear, it'll be nice to know that we can just dump that identity and start clean. Teenage pranks shouldn't carry permanent consequences.

I've heard theories that in the future, everyone will have embarrassing stuff about them online, to the point that employers (for example) really won't be able to use that to judge who to hire. I think this may be from danah boyd; not sure.

SLV: I feel like I've heard of Emmanuel on a girl before. Oh I know, I think there's an actress or model or something named Emmanuelle Chriqui. (Ok, grateful that google helped me with that spelling.)

i believe emmanuel (for a boy) and emmanuelle (for a girl) are not uncommon in france...? at least i was under this impression.

emilyrae: Actually, now that you mention it, I remember having a teacher's assistant in one of my college classes named Emmanuelle, and she was from France. Maybe I didn't find it strange then because her French background was pretty obvious (she had a very noticeable accent.) The little Emmanuel where I work is African American, but obviously she could have a French background as well that is just not so noticeable.