I don't want to name my girl something that would make her sound like a cotillion-hopping socialite. Madison, Ashley, Taylor, and Arianna are all girls names in the top 100 for popularity in 2005, according to the US Social Security Administration (Arianna!?). Madison, Ashley, and Taylor have been bugging me to death since I first started frequently hearing these names, in the past ten or fifteen years. To me, these are the female equivalents to the upper-class-sounding boys names to which I so strongly objected in my last post: Hunter, Tyler (and while we're at it, lets throw in Logan). Others of this ilk are Brooke, Mackenzie, and Savannah. If my daughter wants to join the snotty cliqueish set I'll accept it, but I don't want the world to think I intended her to, and named her so that she'd fit-in. Savannah. Pff.
I'm not so intent on giving a daughter an uncommon name as I am on giving a son such a name. I don't know why. If I needed to I could probably cite family tradition, and that may be part of it, but I don't think it's the whole story. Maybe it's because I'm male, so I feel my own opinions have greater relevance to boys than girls, and since I personally like having an uncommon name, I naturally feel a son would as well, but don't feel comfortable making that assumption for a girl. Whatever the reason, for a girl, I'm entirely open to names that don't sound as if they were the middle names of Victorian-age ancestors.
Therefore, the field is much more open for girls than boys. But there are certain non-starters, as I just noted, above. Another category to exclude - for either gender - would be biblical names. Mary and I aren't religious, and Mary, having the most common (in our world) religious name for a girl, has never quite forgiven her parents. The odd thing is that they're not religious either, so it's a mystery.
Obviously, for a girl, we must also exclude stripper-names. Crystal (especially when spelled with K), Brandy, Destiny, etc. These are out.
Names that sound like they're making a comeback from the 1920's don't resonate with me either. I call these the flapper-names. Lily is one of these. So is Evelyn.
There was a time when it was popular to name your daughters (especially if you had a series of daughters) after the "virtues" (or whatever): Hope, Chastity, Charity, Prudence. No. My sister the journalist (due in a couple of months) jokes that she'll name her daughter Brevity. Now that's wit.
There's another category I'd like to take off the table. I'm not quite sure how to define it, but they're a set of names popular with my friends... we'll call them the names of the daughters of the east-coast, liberal, educated... wanted to give their daughter a cute name, but with a hint of class, not too snotty, not completely "out there". Maybe they should be called the Anglophile names. Chloe, Mia, Zoe. Also Lucy. I'll add Maya and Madeline to the list too. I realize these aren't English names, but I think you get the point. They're fine names, but too... too easy, somehow. Too "expected", too on-the-nose. These are the names my friends have been using, and I don't want to pull from the same pool.
When I was a kid, there were at least two families I knew of who had many kids (four or more) where every kid in the family had a name beginning with the letter K. Kyle, Kristen, Kevin, Kayla, Kirsten, etc. I always thought that was ridiculous, and it's left me with the completely unreasonable prejudice that K-names are somehow common, unsophisticated... the names of townies, if you will. Utterly middle-America. Recall what I did with Crystal vs. Krystal, when discussing stripper-names, above. So in the past, whenever I've thought about it or discussed it with Mary, my instinct has been to stay away from K names.
I once knew a girl (or rather, my sister did) named Grey. I always liked that. It's not a family name for me or Mary. It could possibly be classified a hippie-name if spelled Gray. By the rules I've set-up, I just can't claim it. It's a bit dark for a first name, anyway, and not perfect with Faulkner. Mary and I have a secret plan to perhaps use it as a middle name, and just tell people it's a family name, always pointing to the other spouse's family.
For some reason, I want my daughter to have the name Katie. Never mind the K! That's what I would plan to call her, though we'd set her up with the option of going more formal, by giving her the name Katherine. I'd have said Catherine, given my prejudice against K names, but Mary has a fiercely strong aesthetic reaction to Catherine Faulkner as opposed to Katherine Faulkner. Apparently, the K's balance in the latter formulation, and it somehow doesn't work in the former, and how can I be so dense as to not understand that? I'm fine with that, though I bet my aunt and cousin, both of whom went by Celia Faulkner before they were married, would have a hard time understanding the problem with a C-name resolving to Faulkner. But if I'm OK with the K in Katie, how can I possibly object to a K in Katharine? I don't.
So for now, until we can find a workable middle name, the front-runner is Katherine Grey Faulkner. Little Katie. Cute. Clean. Lovable. But without weakness or vulnerability. I like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment