EmilyG
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And to confirm my idea that the whole meaning thing is flexible anyways, I just googled for the meaning of my son's name (Kevin) and got: "Handsome beloved" "Beautiful at birth" "Kind, honest, and handsome birth" "Gentle and kind" and "Handsome" (and that's just the first five entries...)
Angela, you read my mind! I think exactly the same way. Not choosing a name because of some possibly negative connotation in the meaning that nobody even knows anyways is silly. I guess some people are somewhat superstitous about the meanings, but for me its just a positive. Especially since people tend to bend the meanings/origins of names all the time.
Ha ha, that was my exact same thought!
Great post! I have two interesting personal anecdotes about this. First of all, my grandfather never knew that he had two middle names, until my father, who was a "junior" was about to get his medical degree, and wondering how to deal with the "II" + "MD" and upon digging, realized my grandfather actually had two middle names, so he really wasn't the second after all! He just dropped the "II" and added the "MD". As for myself, my given name is Emily middlename lastname. Never any confusion, until I traveled abroad. I was an exchange student in Germany in high school, and when I got there, all my paperwork, etc. from the program had me down as Emily ROSE lastname. Rose is not anything even remotely similar to my actual middle name, and I had NO IDEA how it got there. Even after telling the program director multiple times etc. it was still wrong. So my visa ended up wrong too! To this day I wonder how it happened, and I like to joke about how I had an "alter ego" in Germany....
Another association with the name Watson is James Watson, who discovered the double helix shape of DNA along with Francis Crick, which I think also is fitting.
Did anyone here watch JAG? This immediately made me think of when Bud and Harriet named their son James Kirk Roberts, and it turned out Harriet didn't know that was the name of Captain Kirk, and got mad at Bud! For me, I would never go geeky on a human child's name, but I love to do geeky names for pets, like when my stickfish was named Bregalad, which is the formal name of the Ent known as Quickbeam in Lord of the Rings. Get it, a stickfish....hahaha. It was obscure enough though that I stumped my mother, who is quite an LOTR aficionado.
Ugh, personally I don't get into naming a baby (first name) after someone in the family, we like using the middle name for that and giving the baby their own unique (to the family at least) first name. I don't understand why you would want to go to such great lengths to try to MAKE a name work for the opposite sex. Either use it as a middle name (I know plenty of females with middle names like James etc. and that works fine!) or name the child after a female relative and wait to see if you have a boy next time. I've got some wonderful names picked out for girls (including namesake middle names) but we had a boy so we picked a boys name for him, and if we never have a girl, so be it! You've got to work with what you get! I apologize if I come across strong, really to each his/her own, this just really strikes me as silly!
High concept names I've encountered- Triplet sisters with the last name R@ines: Spr!ng Lac!, Storm! Trac!, and Sunn! Kac! The Rayles (pronounced rail) named their daughter Ginger My mom went to school with brothers with LN Tom: Timothy and Thomas And I've mentioned this one before, after having girls with normal names like Krystal, the Park family named their son Fenway. I don't even think these kinds of names are remotely cute, I think they're cruel!!
Man, I don't get the Renesmee hatred. I certainly wouldn't pick it for my child, but I thought it was perfect for the book. I've read all of the books (because I try to keep up with what my teenage students are obsessing about!) and there were definitely other things that annoyed me, but that wasn't one of them at all. Personally, as a science teacher, it was the lame attempt to discuss DNA and chromosome numbers that bugged the heck out of me! Back to the other topics, I think that the fantasy sibling set issue highlights one of the problems always faced with any kind of user-input tool. Some people abuse it, either putting in totally ridiculous data or constantly reentering the same data. I think Laura is on the right track to try to mediate that. Personally, I never even thought of it- I guess I'm too straight-laced, I just input my own siblings' names on each of our name pages and thought, wow I contributed! Re: Gunnar that's one of those names that I didn't even care for in the first place, but was completely ruined forever by having a little terror of a student with the name...instances like that make me wonder if the name increases the likelihood of a certain personality, it's just coincidence that we read too much into, or what!
Hehehe the street name thing is funny- I could have Michigan and Mountain, or Park and Diamond....sometimes it works or sometimes it just doesn't! Right now we live on a country road, so that isn't any fun at all!
So, the Park family from my town had all girls with normal names, like Krystal, and then along came their first boy. His name is Fenway Park. No, I am not joking, and this isn't just a "I heard from somebody..." story. My little brother played little league with him. I always felt so bad for the kid, because the announcers would laugh when they got to his name! So, believe it folks, people really do use stadiums as names!!
I want to second knp's analysis of the post- I think it's much much more likely that it's just that people are hearing these names more, and so they're thinking about them when they are coming up with name ideas for their children, rather than "oh, let's name our baby after ____" When my husband and I were brainstorming, sometimes the first names to come to mind weren't because we liked them so much but more we'd heard them a lot lately- for good or bad!
@Aybee: Funny thing is, it took me a minute to even realize what the name Cailan was! At first glance I was seeing a boy's name, then as I looked more carefully and sounded it out I got it. The only one I've ever known is (again a student...) Kalyn, so your spelling was totally foreign to me!! @emilyrae: I agree with you that our name fits the classic definition pretty well, it's been way up there in the last decade or so, but has been around for a LONG time too. Can be a bit annoying when there are several Emilys in a group/workplace/etc. but I like that it's a pretty universally liked, easily pronounced and spelled name. (Only variation I see occasionally is Emilee, and that's usually on younger ones.
To add to the Kaylee list, I have a student that spells it Kali, I didn't see that on your list. (I also have a Kaylee, and knew her first, which is why that's the first spelling I thought of!)
Okay, just want to say hi, now that I officially created a username. I've posted a few times as a guest (most recently I wrote about our choice of Adelaide Jean and my idea for a 2nd girl to be Eleanor Kathryn). Now I'm no longer blending in with all the other guests! @Anne with an E: I prefer Eleanor solely based on what is the "correct" spelling to me. Although Elinor is a pretty accepted spelling (it's not like the extremely creative names that drive me nuts...notice I can't even handle creatively spelling creative lol!) to me Eleanor is the traditional spelling. I feel like Elinor might be the traditional spelling in other countries however, and it does remind me of Lord of the Rings, because I think that might be how Sam Gamgee spells his daughter's name. So if you like that spelling, I'd say go for it! As far as pronunciation I don't think they're different at all, and any differences you might hear would probably be just due to people's accents etc.