<p>Apparently, Nevaeh (Heaven spelled backwards) is a new trendy name. I even had to baptise one a couple years ago. </p>
<p>Also trendy - place names. I’ve baptised a London, a Paris, a Denver, and lots of Austins in that past few years. </p>
<p>And I used to work with Sandy Beach (she married into it). And my brother played baseball with Brick Wall. Husband dated Sue Kuehne (last name pronounced Keenie).</p>
<p>I worry about children whose parents gave them trendy names or manufactured names or unusual names that will inevitably be questioned/mispronounced/misspelled.</p>
<p>I have friends (from Alabama) who recently named their daughter Finnula. I know it’s a fairly common Irish name and is a truly beautiful name, but she will spend her life correcting people and explaining her name!</p>
<p>I have a friend Anil. Means prince of the wind. Americans tend to stress the a wrong. Accent is on the second syllable.</p>
<p>I have a friend “Ollie” whose name is Ali. </p>
<p>I have a friend Hyme who people think is Latino. And I know a “Jamie” who is a Latino guy named Jaime.</p>
<p>A boy in my seventh grade class was named Gray Brown.</p>
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<p>I love Welsh names, although that one is normally spelled Ceridwen, in my experience. My favorite girl’s name is Angharad, another Welsh name, which is beautiful IF you know how to pronounce it, so maybe it is lucky I never had a girl! :)</p>
<p>I’ve known a Sequoia, and someone I know has a grandchild named Ocean and another named Lion. When I hear Ocean, I think of Oisin, which is pronounced more or less the same way, a famous name from Irish legend. I recently met a baby Neveah. The parents explained the name to me.</p>
<p>I love Welsh names>>>>>>></p>
<p>I do, too. One of my favorites is Bronwen. LOVE that name.</p>
<p>An OB/Gyn I knew had to dissuade his pregnant patient from naming her twin girls “Syphillus” and “Ghonorea” pronounced to accentuate this way: syPHYLlis, ghoNORea. She saw the words on a pamphlet in his waiting room, and thought they sounded pretty for names.</p>
<p>Both my girls have gaelic names. My eldest was born in Scotland and has a silent d in her name. Had we known she would be raised in the states we would have Americanized the spelling. I think she adopts a different spelling when she signs in at restaurants etc</p>
<p>She was impressed when she started college that one of the professors had taken the time to google her name and the pronunciation. </p>
<p>We smile at the attempts at her name over the years!</p>
<p>I knew a Snow White. I always thought Mrs. White was either cruel or very stupid for doing that to her daughter.</p>
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<p>Same with “Benedict” - a common enough name to this day in much of Europe including Britain. But it fell into complete disuse in the US after the Revolutionary War, and in >235 succeeding years it has never managed a comeback.</p>
<p>My grandmother had a doctor who was Dr. M. I. Fine. (And that’s what he went by.)</p>
<p>Lergmon–I must have missed something. What was it about Gaetano that seemed weird to you? (I know that it was a decade or so ago, but it still sounds like a normal Mediterranean based name, not that weird.)</p>
<p>Between African-Americans, Russians, and Greeks I’ve known, Demetrius and all versions (Demitris, Demitri, Dmetris, etc) are so common that they totally don’t bring up mythic connotations from me.</p>
<p>I think that living in an extremely culturally/ethnically diverse area, I’m so used to names not being ones I know, that I’ve gotten beyond the idea that unfamiliar names are weird. There’s still the occasional odd-sounding one in my class-lists, but most are just normally different, if that makes sense.</p>
<p>When DH and I were pregnant for the first time, we got a silly book out of the library with odd but allegedly real names. The one that had us literally rolling on the floor laughing with tears coming out of our eyes:</p>
<p>Phillie B. DeBoo</p>
<p>{"I played softball with a girl named Chardonnay Champaign. Kinda curious about where she ended up now… "}</p>
<p>my daughter met a girl at a gymnastics meet years ago whose name was Brandy Champaign. I wonder if they were sisters!</p>
<p>I saw a name in the local paper this morning: Unique Gould. It caught my eye as I watch Stargate reruns from time to time.</p>
<p>DS went to school with a girl named Rice Rice. There was an accent over the first name and it was pronounced Rickay Reese.</p>
<p>I’ve known several little girls named for both grandmothers with a merged name, one being Tamarina, another Annaleah, and Mehtalee. I also know a Catheranne . </p>
<p>There were always some kids with made up names, but now it seems like unusual names have gone mainstream. I know a Credance, River, Creed, all new borns. The other thing that is that more baby boys are getting unusual names. It used to be that though the girls’ names tended to go trendy, the boys’ names stayed more stable. No more.</p>
<p>Having taught thousands of kids over the years, I have come across a lot of unique names. One I remember from decades ago was a boy named Columbus.</p>
<p>The trendy Nevaeh seems odd to me since spelling something backwards seems to imply that it is the OPPOSITE of the meaning of the original word. Hmmm.</p>
<p>One of my favorites recently is the name Lyric. So pretty.</p>
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<p>This one would make me crazy. I am (as are my two children) synesthetic, meaning I have a visual association between colors and letters. I “see” colors when I think about words or letters. So names already have a color to me. My own name is orange. One of the reasons that I never liked it. It also starts with a vowel and ends with a consonant which leaves it open on one end and closed on the other. Visually very disturbing to me. I think that being named Gray Brown would be worse though. I wonder if he is noncommittal about everything? :)</p>
<p>I am synesthetic also. I see the colors of names. I also see time in shapes and colors. I used to memorize phone numbers (back when we did that) partly through their shapes.</p>
<p>(back to topic…:))</p>
<p>Oooh! Garland! We’ll have to talk.</p>
<p>My Dad’s dentist was named Dr. Molar. No lie.</p>