What's in a Name?

I have been led to believe that we need to name our child once she is born.  This is quite a responsibility.  As you can imagine, it is something that I have spent time worrying about.  If we get it wrong, then it will be our daughter, not us, who has to live with the consequences of having a bizarre, wacky, unusual or inappropriate name.

A few years ago, my wife and I lived and worked in New Zealand for a year and I met some very 'interestingly' named children.  It surprised me then, to find out, that New Zealand actually has a banned baby name list.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/06/new-zealand-justice-baby-names

In fact, I worked with a child with one of these 'banned' names.  And with many more children with even more unusual names.  The idea, however, of such a list, surely makes sense.  But it would not stop the problems when you put a poorly selected Christian name with certain surnames.  For example, Emma is a perfectly pleasant name.  It obviously wouldn't make it on to a banned names list, but if it was teamed with the surname Roids, then someone would be in for a lifetime of name-related trauma.  There's nothing wrong with the name Annette, unless your surname is Curtain.  If your surname is Time or Case, then you'd be wise to avoid the name Justin for you son.  You can do a search of silly names on the internet and keep yourself amused for hours.  Many of them are undoubtedly made up.  But some must be true.

Then there is the celebrity trend (which in my experience, extends beyond just the rich and famous) of giving your children a 'unique' name.  If you knew your child was going to have to live their life in the media spotlight, wouldn't you want to avoid a name which was open to ridicule?  Apparently not!

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/05/21/klay-rooney-funny-celebrity-baby-names_n_3312603.html

I'm confident that when William and Kate name their child later this summer it won't be bizarre or unusual.  I'm glad about this.  I don't think a future king or queen should be named after an American city, a fruit or even a colour.

I've clearly become distracted.  I wanted to write about our difficulties with names and I haven't so far!  We have a list of names for our daughter.  It is a heavily guarded secret.  We don't want to be put off of the names we like by people's reactions.

When we didn't know whether we were having a boy or a girl, we had a firm favourite if it was a boy.  Now, I will admit, it did fall in the unusual bracket.  There is a reason for this.  My wife is Welsh.  It seemed to us that if we gave our child a Welsh name it would be a great way for them to be reminded of their heritage.  This, we felt, was especially important as we will be bringing them up in England.  So we discussed many Welsh names.  Some we loved, others we didn't.  Much like any other list of names.  Then we found one we really liked.

The name we liked was Idris.  Actually, we still like this name.  It is a traditional Welsh name.  But we won't be using it for our daughter!  The problem was that, when we shared this name with a certain close relative, who shall remain nameless, they reacted rather poorly.  You would have thought we were suggesting that our child might be named Lucifer or Adolf.  We instantly knew that we could not name our child this.

By the time we found out we were having a girl, the nameless relative had changed their mind.  They now claim that they think it is a lovely name.  I think that may just be a little too convenient.  It doesn't matter now.  It is no longer relevant.  But the experience has made us wary.

It is difficult enough to find names you like when you are a teacher and are from a huge family.  My mum has five siblings and my dad has four.  I have over 20 cousins and many of them have their own children.  That's a lot of names.  A lot of names we cannot choose for our own child.  I have been teaching for 10 years.  During that time I have met many, many wonderful children.  I have also met some who have displayed challenging behaviour in class or around school.  I would find it difficult to name my child after particular children.  I can't imagine I would name my child after the pupil who whacked me with some branches he'd ripped off a tree.  Or the one who'd graffitied rather unpleasantly about me in the toilets (at least he'd spelled the key swear words correctly!)  Or the child who hit me in the face with a very well hit tennis ball during a game of cricket!

Now we have chosen the names on our shortlist, we know that we have to keep them quiet so that people don't have chance to criticise them or react poorly to them.  We figure that it will be more difficult for them to do this when they are told our daughter's name after she is born, rather than just some ideas we have for her name.  Let's hope that is the case!