Name pet peeves
One thing reading the BNW book and blog has done for me is made me a lot more name-tolerant than I was before. That said, I still cringe sometimes when I hear a new baby's name.
My personal name pet peeve is when the first and middle name do not go together at all, especially when the first name is very trendy and the middle name is clearly a grandparent's name. Names like Brylee Arlene and Zaiden Gerald drive me up the wall for some reason!
Do you all have any name pet peeves?
By Jill
Tue, 04/17/2012 - 1:37pm
Tue, 04/17/2012 - 1:37pm
Replies
I'm sure you'll get a lot of material with this question!
I'll go. I teach humanities at an elite college on the East Coast and my classes are composed almost entirely of female students. So I guess I have some peeves with the namers of a particular (primarily quite high) socio-economic class 18-21 years ago... so 1991?! Wow, these kids are young.
One thing I've noticed is a preponderance of vowel-consonant(s)-vowel girls' names. Like Ada, Eva, Ava, Emma. And these girls must be at the forefront of the trend, so there will only be more and more of them in my classes in the comming years.
The problem with them is that they're really difficult to remember and tell apart. So I find I'm often confusing them.
Apart from that, I've had two classes where the other most common name category was a variant of Claire-Clara/Clare etc., either as a first name or middle name.
It's made it very difficult to keep my students straight. I know Laura's written about how namers are increasingly looking for unique names while also following dominant trends in sound. So I guess my peeve, to summarize, is how similar and indistinguishable all these 'unique' names end up being.
(whoops, posting mishap!)
Along the same lines, my son's kindergarten teacher was sayings she's always confusing Owen, Logan, and Evan. Even though at first blush, they are quite different, the vowel pattern is similar. I can see how it would be trying.
Names don't need to be all that similar to get confusing. I had a job once where the guys in back were Chris, Brian, and Scott; it took me months to get them straight. The only thing those name share is their level of general popularity.
I have the same problem, and you can add Eric, Kevin, Dan, and Mike to that list for me. I once had two coworkers named Eric and Kevin, and one was a 6'5" African American weight lifter, and the other was a short blonde guy, and I kept mixing up their names for months. They probably thought I was insane, since they had no real similarities other than the fact that their names seemed like the same genre to me at the time.
When my husband and I started our undergraduate careers, the joke about the Computer Science department was that it had more Daves than women. (It was true, too. CS majors in my undergrad year had, iirc, 11 Daves and 9 women. Out of about 110 students.)
That's so funny!
I did my undergrad in psychology and there were seriously about 4 males out of several hundred students in my year of the program. And now in my grad program, one of my friends has arranged a few events with the engineering department so that people can interact with those of the opposite sex.
This may have been mentioned but I didn't see it in the thread. I dislike given names that are ethnically different from their surnames. Like Paloma Schmidt. Athena Hernandez. Olga Ferguson. These are extreme examples but you get some popular names like Megan, Michelle, Colleen, Renee, etc. that are just added willy nilly to any last name without consideration that it turns into an ethnic muddle. Of course, once a girl gets married and takes her husband's ethnic name, all rules fly out the window...
My husband has a very German sounding surname so we chose German sounding names for our children. Although before marrying him I had dreams of using some of my Scottish heritage names. Seamus Berlitz just doesn't sound right.
I don't care for cross gender names. (Girls used on boys OR boys used on girls) I've said it before. I also don't care for some noun names. Apple is a fruit not a girl's name. Some are okay though so the exposure is definitely blurring the lines for me.
I don't care for names that are deliberately spelled alternately or uniquely just to be creative. Using a variant of a name from another culture I quite like, so just because something isn't a standard spelling doesn't mean it annoys me. I just don't like the being creative for the sake of it.
I am also not a fan of the boys names on girls trend either. I don't hate it, just not a big fan. I really just don't see the point. There are lots of great girls names and why is it that it's ok for girls to act like/be like boys but it's not OK for it to be the other way around? So, I guess that is a pet peeve.
Unlike the previous poster, I don't hate the mis-matched first and middle name too much. I get that some people like to use a family name for the middle and they don't always go together that well. What annoys me is mismatched first names and surnames. As in, the first name just sounds awful with the surname. I have several friends that have named their kids things that really don't run together well and it's made me wonder why. Especially when there doesn't seem to be any particular significance to the names they picked. Your first name and last name get said together a lot, so to me it matters.
2 peeves:
1. Creatyv spellyngz
2. Girls' names that end in -son. (Madison, etc.) They seem so purely, unequivocably masculine to me.
I agree, Guest, but what do you think about Alison? It seems like the one exception to the rule, I guess because it's so very well-established, and is more "Alice" than "son".
Alison/Alysoun is a French diminutive of Alys/Alice. The -s- belongs to the root name, and the ending is -on, not -son. It has nothing whatsoever to do with -son, male offspring. Alison is in the same category as Marion/Marian and Manon, French diminutives.
This doesn't come up too often but when a Chinese celebrity gets called by the wrong name. Like when they call Yao Ming, Mr. Ming, or Bai Ling, Ms. Ling. I know it's confusing but reporters really should be more sensitive.
First peeve: unnecessary "y"s or other letters. I don't think creaytyvee spelyng is necessarily awful - there are a lot of "legitimate" variations on a name like Elisabeth that are simply legit because of the passage of time. However, when it becomes difficult to tell what the base name even is, or how one is supposed to be pronouncing the collection of letters in front of you, that is a huge problem for me.
Second peeve: Male names ending in -son, or beginning with Mc/Mac on girls. I know lots of people get upset at a male name on a girl at all, but since I've got one myself, I can't get too upset about it. Still, those two tags mean specifically "son of" and it really sets my teeth on edge when I encounter it.
Please note that I'd never in a million years actually SAY anything to anyone with a name I'm peevy about, but I do cringe a little on the inside when I encounter them.
The whole "son of" never bothers me because the boys with -son and Mc names are often not sons of (their name) either.
Names that aren't really names but just a collection of letters. Abcde and others like Xxyzx. Let's buy those people some vowels.
It's such a thoroughly losing battle, it hardly even counts as a peeve, but I dislike surnames as given names. Yeah, I know, the Elizabethans were already doing it, but still: Hudson, Lincoln, Mason, and Jackson are not given names, and shouldn't be used as such. (The specific examples listed are my daughter's step-cousins, and the twins across the street.)
(Don't even get me started on naming a twin boy Mason. I have so far heroically resisted the urge to ask, "where's Dixon?")
I also don't care for gender-bending names, especially the ones that combine sins by being male surnames used for girls, like Addison [best friend's neice -- sounds like a disease, to boot!] and Mackenzie.
What's wrong with Mason as a twin boy name? And I don't get the Dixon thing. I mean, I know a Dixon, but what does his name have to do with Mason?
Happy..There is nothing "wrong" with any of these names. It is just personal opinions about things that bug us. No one is trying to insult anyone. I think the previous post was referring to the oddity of twins being named Mason and Dixon and that bringing to mind the Mason-Dixon line which was a demarcation line between the North and South during the Civil War.
As Zoerhenne pointed out, the problem with Mason on a twin is that people with any familiarity with American history immediately think of the Mason-Dixon line, and expect his brother to be Dixon. (In the example cited, the brother is actually Jackson.)
We live about 30 miles north of the line, by the way, which makes it even worse.
this person is probably referring to the Mason Dixon line or even Mason Dixon the celebrity. just reads extremely Southern most likely.
Mine is an offshoot of this one. I'm generally okay with surnames as given names, but when the last name happens to be a popular given name, too, it drives me batty for the first name to be a surname. I work with court documents all day and when I see something like "Jackson Christopher," "Carter James," or "Cameron Thomas" it looks too much like someone missed a comma between the names.
I guess my biggest pet peeve is when the first name and the last name just don't go together at all. Middle names don't bother me much because they're only used at graduations and when you're mad at your kids.
My other personal pet peeve is starting a name (especially a girl's name) with Mc. McKenzie and McKayla make me think of McDonalds. Mackenzie and Makayla/Michaela are 100 times better in my book. I generally just don't like capital letters in the middle of names just for the sake of having capital letters in the middle of your name. Ex. BreeAnne, KaitLynn, and even MacKenzie
Okay, yeah, I'm pretty open, but McKayla is a peeve for me. You take a root name with history (Michaela), and reinterpret it as a modern name (Kayla) and trendify it with an opening Mc-.
Part of the reason for the peeve is that my mother's name is Micaela, and that name has fallen off the radar, to the preference of McKayla.
Creative misspellings of a name (particularly if the name is a classic that's been around forever)
Boy names gone girl. I understand parents wanting their daughters to sound "strong" but why does that mean she has to sound like a boy? I could go on, but I won't. :-)
Names from other cultures used without any cultural sensitivity. Cohen used as a first name by non-Jewish people, using Native American tribal names as first names, etc.
I agree with everyone who has complained about weird spellings, and I also want to add unusual pronunciations to well-known names (I work with Elena pronounced eh-LEE-nuh for example).
I don't like it when girls are named Michael. There are already plenty of female names in the same family (like Michelle and Michaela) and even Micah is becoming popular as a female name.
I've known a lot of boys with the initials BS (eg Bradley Smith); this seems like it would be obvious enough to most people so I guess parents just don't care?
Also: parents who name their children with the intention of primarily using their middle name. I understand it in the case of a child named after one of their parents because it's a way to make it clear who you're talking to, but otherwise it doesn't make sense.
I agree with everyone who has complained about weird spellings, and I also want to add unusual pronunciations to well-known names (I work with Elena pronounced eh-LEE-nuh for example).
I don't like it when girls are named Michael. There are already plenty of female names in the same family (like Michelle and Michaela) and even Micah is becoming popular as a female name.
I've known a lot of boys with the initials BS (eg Bradley Smith); this seems like it would be obvious enough to most people so I guess parents just don't care?
Also: parents who name their children with the intention of primarily using their middle name. I understand it in the case of a child named after one of their parents because it's a way to make it clear who you're talking to, but otherwise it doesn't make sense.
Yep--we love the name Benjamin. I just cannot do that since our last name starts with an "S".
i've gotten overwhelmed by all the names beginning with Mc and ending in Ly, Lee or Leigh, like McKinley, for example.
Poor pronunciation and lack of enunciation. For example I love classic English names. My daughter is Elizabeth. Not Liz-buth, emphasis on buth, as commonly pronounced in this region. The names I was considering otherwise thought terribly common, are enough to deter usage if I ever need to name a person again. Examples are as follows:
Henry= hin-Ree
Elinor= Ella-noor
Margaret= Mar-grit
William= Well-yum
Astrid= Ass-triiiid (you have to really stretch the first syllable and the i to get the local sound)
Heaven forbid I try to use Anges or Genevive, as I prefer their French pronunciations.
Wow, I couldn't handle being surrounded by such speech on a regular basis! When I vacation in certain regions, I laugh and cringe at many of the pronunciations, but know that I will soon be returning home, where clear enunciation and rather phonetic pronunciation rule. I feel for you!
There's a woman in my neighborhood with a daughter named Amelia, whom I regularly hear shouting out "uh-MILL-yuh!" It makes me cringe every time.
how do you pronounce amelia?
I would say it uh-MEE-lee-uh. Sometimes the last two syllables get elided together a bit, but they're still there. It's something about the combination of the MILL and the single-syllable yuh (which makes me think "yuck") that sets my teeth on edge.
(It's also really annoying to listen to someone screaming at their kid outside my window, so there's that, too... might be enough to make me dislike any name/pronunciation).
Evie, I may be guilty of that yuh, yuck thing, lol. however, i also may be an Astrid offender. aside from ass-trid, i can't imagine how else to pronounce it. is it Az-trid? luckily for everyone's ears, i don't know an Amelia, currently or an Astrid, for that matter. i prefer Amelie and have no trouble sorting out those syllables in a distinctive manner, but have a laziness with yuh type endings. i'm from the northeast (u.s.), but have spent years in fla. as well as s.c. before my return to this region.
I also really like the Spanish pronounciation, something like ah-MEL-ee-ah.
Related pet peeve, when this sort of mispronunciation causes totally different names to be considered as one name. Example, Elena (eh-LEN-ah) and Alaynna (uh-LAY-nuh). In response to my saying one of these names, the other adults would inevitably ask "Which Alaynna?" Agh, there's only one! The other girl you're referencing has a totally different name... it tended to go on like a "who's on first" routine. And this went on all school year. (!)
Although maybe I'm expecting too much here? I know I can be particular about odd things, I just could not understand how almost no one could hear the difference.
Except that uh-LAY-nuh is the standard American English pronunciation of Elena (see: Justice Elena Kagan), so I understand why people would be making that mistake for that particular Elena. eh-LEN-ah is Spanish, and EH-len-ah is Italian and sometimes also used in the U.K. Alaynna is just a kreatively spelled version of the same name.
I do agree that the Spanish pronunciation of Amelia is pretty, though.
The Spanish pronunciation actually approximates eh-LAY-nuh much more than it does eh-LEN-ah.
This sounds like accents, not poor pronunciation. I am Texan and I say all of those names the way you spelled them out. That's just they way language and prounciation WORK in that region. We say ya'll, we're fixin to do stuff, and we say Margaret as "Mar-grit."
I'm in a region where it's very common to use a family surname as part of the name. Typically it's traditionalfirstname oldfamilysurname lastname. I've always liked that tradition. However, now so many surnames are given as first names even if it's not a family surname. It didn't really bother me until I married my DH and took his name, which is growing in popularity as a first name. Pull a cool surname from your own family tree, don't just grab it because it sounds cool.
My pet peeve is adults naming a child something that a 13 year old would think is cute. It was perfectly normal for a 13 year old in the 80's to think that Stacee was a great way to spell Stacey, but an adult should not think that Tifannee is acceptable.
Misspelling on purpose that screams my parents aren't sophisticated irks me as it is not the parents who have to constantly say, no with two e's -- it is the innocent child who will actually be an adult longer than he, or more likely she, was a child, and don't get me started on a poor adult having to be Debee or Kellee.
Elle
My pet peeve is when people (or parents of kids) with unusual names get offended when their name is mispronounced or mispelled. This includes foreign names!
I understand that it is annoying to have to correct people constantly about how to say or spell your unusual name, but when it comes down to it, blame your parents, not the innocent bystander!
I was a substitute teacher for years and had to deal with this on an almost daily basis. I lost my temper a few times when the responses to my accidental mispronunciation was too rude to just roll my eyes at.
i met a mother with a four day old baby today and couldn't wait to find out the name. when she told me Braylin, or Braelynn or however she spells it, i was less than dazzled. all the made up Lyn ending names drive me nuts.
also pronounciation wise, i do pronounce my T's crisply, like Hunter. so when i asked (a few years ago) a co-worker how her baby Hunter was doing. she corrected me and said his name was Hunner (we were in the southeast at the time) because "no one really prononces the T anyway, except you Dana" . so gasp, eyeroll, and sympathy to that little boy. also, since i am currently pregnant, and have very Southern in-laws, i avoided name ideas such as Rebecca, because hearing BEYCK-Eeee! would make me cringe. it's bad enough that my first daughter sometimes gets reduced to Clay-er (clair).
I will never look at Abigail the same way again -- It now looks like a shortened version of "a big ailment" to me. =( Or an incorrect spelling of (After a long day I went to the bar and ordered) "a big ale."
Girls names that start with Mc/Mac, or end in son. I find Alison OK, because it seems more normal on a girl because it's the norm, and Madision's not too bad, either. But Jackson on a girl, seriously?
Names with creative spellings. (I don't mind unusual, but traditional in another culture spellings.) Ex: I don't mind Iain for Ian. Interestingly, I used to like "Zachery" for Zachary much better, but now I prefer "Zachary."
Parents who choose to have their kids go by their middle names instead of their first. (I know, jr. isn't the best thing at the end, but why not use, say, "James," as a middle name, instead of a first. Problem solved.) But this could be the tradition in a long line down the generations, so I can see why people might not want to break the pattern.
I usually don't like boys named used for girls (ex: I don't like Logan, Peyton, or Piper on a girl. Riley is OK for both, but more masculine in my oppinion, and I see Jaime as completely unisex.) But strangely, my favourite name for a girl is Caulfield, (I pronounce it Cole-field,) so I can't really call it a pet-peeve anymore...
Unisex names that really don't sound unisex. (ex: Peyton, Logan. Piper is better since I'm used to it now, after exposure to it, but I never liked it on a boy, either.) But again, Caulfield falls into this catagory, depending on the particular person's interpretation.
Parents who don't use a name for their child because it is popular. I get that parents want their kids to have unique names, and they don't want them to be another "Jacob L." But if you're willing to give the name up to popularity or criticism, then you probably don't love it as much as you thought. (I know Caulfield is unusual, and sounds too boyish to some people, but I love it, and other people's comments won't deter me from using it, it's just interesting to hear what other people think.)
Parents who don't use a name for their child because it's too uncommon. See above, but the opposite.
NQ, Alison does not end in -son. It ends in -on. It is a diminutive of Alys (that is, Alice), and not a patronym. Marion is a similar diminutive, of Marie/Mary. Manon is another diminutive of Marie that follows the same pattern.
But don't you ever get sick of something because of overexposure? A song you liked but then got sick of? A food you over-indulged on and can't look at anymore? An article of clothing that you used to love but that has lost its specialness because you've worn it so often? If not, that sort of feeling is very common and what often lies behind the desire to avoid popular names. You can think that a name is objectively nice but that it does not feel special enough to be the one that you select for the singular child you are naming because it's everywhere.