From the May 5 New Scientist: "Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish." Psychologist Albert Mehrabian of the University of California, Los Angeles, on his study looking at how people reacted to names. Traditional names aroused positive feelings, but alternative names did badly (The Guardian, London, 29 April)
We used to have a kid in HIGH SCHOOL he played football and some other sports his name was SPARROW TANG kind of like the little bird and speaking on birds i have a book THE BIRD ALMANAC and the authors name is DAVID BIRD
umnm kayy , i have a weird name and im not a loser , and i do have alot of friendsmy moms not weird either , kayy .... i like weird names and it doesnt mean im ignorant !i think people like different names , it makes me feel special that im differenti am popular , and i just think that what you said is wrong ! ,not being rude because some weird names are just embaressing for kids but i think if you use your common sense andchoose a good and different name , it doesnt mean anythingg except you dont like being plain and boring like names like sarah or bob or brittany ,
hey, I think some odd names are alright such as Fiona, Autumn, Elliot, Jonah, or Ariel, for example. I do think that some names are cruel, such as LaFonda, Kalinka, or Hermianette (all names of people I know) can be seen as beautiful by the parent, but terrible by others. The names may also mean something to the family, so despite the stupid name, they want to keep it going. The only person I really have a problem with is someone who perposfully names their child something as a joke, like Lemonjello, Lilbo Peep, or Ima Hog.
I suspect that a name followed by some other impression-generating act will get a more useful result if the name is unusual.
An unusual name definitely makes for a superior byline (and alliteration probably doesn't hurt). My experience is that it can subject the bearer to suspicions that he chose it himself to attract attention. Some people seem to find this idea admirable; others may be left with a vague impression of phoniness, though no one's ever come out and said so to my face.
My very practical brother and his wife named my nephew according to the following method: they took the statistics of Swedish first names from the previous year, sorted it according to name frequency and deleted the top and bottom thirds. Then they deleted names with national characters or otherwise not suited for international life, names longer than a certain number of syllables, names that were hard to pronounce or or had non-unique spellings. Each step consisted of winnowing the list according to some new heuristic, which after a while became rather idiosyncratic (no names ending in 'y'). In the end they whittled it down to a few candidates and selected a favorite. That was how my nephew came to be named 'Arvid'. His name is - given their criteria - optimal.
I knew a couple named Charles and Diana (no, not them) who wanted to name a child "Up" so they could introduce themselves as "Up, Chuck, and Di". True story.
Eliezer's joke about being named Hen3ry teh 3 is silent is an old Tom Lehrer gag. His is a great story and his albums very funny if you can find them.
As one commentator mentioned, Freakonomics take on this issue was that the parents who selected odd names were the reason these kids performed poorly.
I gave my daughter a very odd name. My only thought at the time is that I wanted to name her something utterly unique (or at least not found on google), because that's what I felt she was. In defending it to my relatives and in-laws, I also developed all sorts of reasons-- it makes you stand out, which develops confidence and a bigger sense of self. I grew up with an extremely odd name, so I based my defense on my experience. But at the end of the day, I just liked the name.
The reaction to her name was pretty uniform-- people 10 years younger than me liked it, those older where aghast. My peers (30s) split accross cultural lines-- nouveau hippies, shiftless ne'er do wells, african-americans and the crunchies enjoyed it, but the striving moneyed up-and-comers (what used to be called Yuppies) worried that we had irretreivably handicapped her, but supported it in the kind of bland, relativistic accepting ways of Westside liberal society.
My (rare, male) name ends in 'a' -- and this has caused me no end of trouble as a child. My parents say the thought that this might happen has never occured to them. So I would have to add unworldly to the ignorant -- arrogant -- folish scale.
Research is on the topic is unequivocal (or so says the baby name book my wife and I consulted when naming our own children): children with unusual names nearly always prefer common names; children with common names are happy with their name.
Well, names are fundamentally arbitrary, and there are costs involved in changing your name (such as the need to tell everyone else about the change). There actually is one currently existing tradition of name changes in the United States, though - women who marry often change their last name to match that of their husband. Also, with the rise of the Internet, people actually are choosing names for themselves (with occasionally absurd results) whenever they get an email address or AIM screen name. I've been "CronoDAS" and "Ronfar" on various Internet-based discussion systems, although I've been using "Doug S." on this blog.
Keith, I've also wondered if taking a new name at 21 will become a tradition over the next generation or so - after people's angry, misspelled blog entries they wrote at the age of nine start showing up on their first page of Google hits.
Robin, I have no real desire to cause decreased popularity, although I don't see popularity as something I much care about. Popularity makes things easier, which has goods and bads, just as unpopularity has goods and bads. I'm not sure there's one I desire more for my child than the other, but I'm not sure that unpopularity is always correlated with distinctiveness. Kids can be mean about names, but I think it's usually only when they want to be mean. If they want to be friendly, the name won't be an issue. But I'm not a child psychologist.
This is not directly related to the question, but it seems odd that most of us keep the name we were called at birth, a time long before we develop anything remotely like a personality, never mind specific interests, or a definition of ourselves. I have half-jokingly advocated giving kids provisional names at birth with the expectation that parents offer them a chance to change their names later to something the kids like better. Every time I bring up this idea it is received with scorn. It seems most people believe kids would choose ridiculous names. My response is, probably no more often than parents do.
because the convention is to list authors alphabetically by last name, it is a career advantage in terms of citations to have a last name that falls early in the alphabet, I now regret not having amended my lastname to something like Aatschoegl.
Adrian, let me know if you ever do that, and I'll be happy to coauthor a paper with you!
Follow me for awful baby names Monday-Friday. @Horridbabynames
We used to have a kid in HIGH SCHOOL he played football and some other sports his name was SPARROW TANG kind of like the little bird and speaking on birds i have a book THE BIRD ALMANAC and the authors name is DAVID BIRD
umnm kayy , i have a weird name and im not a loser , and i do have alot of friendsmy moms not weird either , kayy .... i like weird names and it doesnt mean im ignorant !i think people like different names , it makes me feel special that im differenti am popular , and i just think that what you said is wrong ! ,not being rude because some weird names are just embaressing for kids but i think if you use your common sense andchoose a good and different name , it doesnt mean anythingg except you dont like being plain and boring like names like sarah or bob or brittany ,
hey, I think some odd names are alright such as Fiona, Autumn, Elliot, Jonah, or Ariel, for example. I do think that some names are cruel, such as LaFonda, Kalinka, or Hermianette (all names of people I know) can be seen as beautiful by the parent, but terrible by others. The names may also mean something to the family, so despite the stupid name, they want to keep it going. The only person I really have a problem with is someone who perposfully names their child something as a joke, like Lemonjello, Lilbo Peep, or Ima Hog.
I suspect that a name followed by some other impression-generating act will get a more useful result if the name is unusual.
An unusual name definitely makes for a superior byline (and alliteration probably doesn't hurt). My experience is that it can subject the bearer to suspicions that he chose it himself to attract attention. Some people seem to find this idea admirable; others may be left with a vague impression of phoniness, though no one's ever come out and said so to my face.
My very practical brother and his wife named my nephew according to the following method: they took the statistics of Swedish first names from the previous year, sorted it according to name frequency and deleted the top and bottom thirds. Then they deleted names with national characters or otherwise not suited for international life, names longer than a certain number of syllables, names that were hard to pronounce or or had non-unique spellings. Each step consisted of winnowing the list according to some new heuristic, which after a while became rather idiosyncratic (no names ending in 'y'). In the end they whittled it down to a few candidates and selected a favorite. That was how my nephew came to be named 'Arvid'. His name is - given their criteria - optimal.
I knew a couple named Charles and Diana (no, not them) who wanted to name a child "Up" so they could introduce themselves as "Up, Chuck, and Di". True story.
I think I'll give Johnny Cash the last word.
A Boy Named Sue
Eliezer's joke about being named Hen3ry teh 3 is silent is an old Tom Lehrer gag. His is a great story and his albums very funny if you can find them.
As one commentator mentioned, Freakonomics take on this issue was that the parents who selected odd names were the reason these kids performed poorly.
I gave my daughter a very odd name. My only thought at the time is that I wanted to name her something utterly unique (or at least not found on google), because that's what I felt she was. In defending it to my relatives and in-laws, I also developed all sorts of reasons-- it makes you stand out, which develops confidence and a bigger sense of self. I grew up with an extremely odd name, so I based my defense on my experience. But at the end of the day, I just liked the name.
The reaction to her name was pretty uniform-- people 10 years younger than me liked it, those older where aghast. My peers (30s) split accross cultural lines-- nouveau hippies, shiftless ne'er do wells, african-americans and the crunchies enjoyed it, but the striving moneyed up-and-comers (what used to be called Yuppies) worried that we had irretreivably handicapped her, but supported it in the kind of bland, relativistic accepting ways of Westside liberal society.
My (rare, male) name ends in 'a' -- and this has caused me no end of trouble as a child. My parents say the thought that this might happen has never occured to them. So I would have to add unworldly to the ignorant -- arrogant -- folish scale.
Research is on the topic is unequivocal (or so says the baby name book my wife and I consulted when naming our own children): children with unusual names nearly always prefer common names; children with common names are happy with their name.
Well, names are fundamentally arbitrary, and there are costs involved in changing your name (such as the need to tell everyone else about the change). There actually is one currently existing tradition of name changes in the United States, though - women who marry often change their last name to match that of their husband. Also, with the rise of the Internet, people actually are choosing names for themselves (with occasionally absurd results) whenever they get an email address or AIM screen name. I've been "CronoDAS" and "Ronfar" on various Internet-based discussion systems, although I've been using "Doug S." on this blog.
Keith, I've also wondered if taking a new name at 21 will become a tradition over the next generation or so - after people's angry, misspelled blog entries they wrote at the age of nine start showing up on their first page of Google hits.
Robin, I have no real desire to cause decreased popularity, although I don't see popularity as something I much care about. Popularity makes things easier, which has goods and bads, just as unpopularity has goods and bads. I'm not sure there's one I desire more for my child than the other, but I'm not sure that unpopularity is always correlated with distinctiveness. Kids can be mean about names, but I think it's usually only when they want to be mean. If they want to be friendly, the name won't be an issue. But I'm not a child psychologist.
This is not directly related to the question, but it seems odd that most of us keep the name we were called at birth, a time long before we develop anything remotely like a personality, never mind specific interests, or a definition of ourselves. I have half-jokingly advocated giving kids provisional names at birth with the expectation that parents offer them a chance to change their names later to something the kids like better. Every time I bring up this idea it is received with scorn. It seems most people believe kids would choose ridiculous names. My response is, probably no more often than parents do.
This business of boys' names drifting to being girls' names seems to bea widespread phenomenon. Curiously, we never see it going the other way.
So, I guess parents will have to work to come up with new boys' namesto keep the supply up as the girls keep imperializing the boys' names.
because the convention is to list authors alphabetically by last name, it is a career advantage in terms of citations to have a last name that falls early in the alphabet, I now regret not having amended my lastname to something like Aatschoegl.
Adrian, let me know if you ever do that, and I'll be happy to coauthor a paper with you!