I knew of a new age-named set of siblings - Terran, Oceana and Forest (the last one is a guy).
Mominva, re post 678: The distinction you make between Sherry and Shari is interesting. In California we pronounce them exactly the same, the same way we pronounce Erin and Aaron the same or Mary/ marry/ merry the same. Another twist in this whole name thing!
Same in the midwest- Shari and Sherrie are the same.
Yep, that’s how I’d pronounce it but people with a mid-Atlantic accent would distinguish between the two vowel sounds. We just have one vowel sound where they have two.
Madison, do you pronounce Aaron and Erin the same? I do.
I knew two people who insisted their names were pronounced differently - Loren and Lauren. Lauren was apparently pronounced Law-rin, while Loren was pronounced Lore-ren. Took me a while to wrap my head around.
Oceane is actually a popular girls name in France. The only Forrests I’ever known were old men, so that doesn’t strike me as particularly new-agey. But all together the three names do have that vibe.
Forest and its alterate spelling Forrest have BOTH been in the to 1,000 boys names fairly consistenly since 1900. See post 27 for SSA link. I went to college with someone named Forrest. Sometimes the names people think are new-agey are very old names reborn.
As for Dakota, I have an awful theory. The baby books will say it came from the state or the Native American tribe. However, there’s “The Dakota,” one of the ritziest co-ops in NYC. John Lennon lived there and was murdered outside it in December 1980. I think the popularity of the name began when some Beetles fans named their kids Dakota in honor of Lennon after he was murdered. (The name John was too common for the homage to be evident.)
My dad had a relative named Hyman. They called him Hymie, like thats much better 
At least that didn’t sound like a body part
Hymie is a derogatory word for Jew. Jessie Jackson got in a lot of trouble when he referred to NYC as Hymietown.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/jackson.htm
I almost posted the exact same thing about Dakota and the apartment building on Central Park West!
I had a good friend in college named Claudia who was infuriated that I could not pronounce her name correctly. She would try to correct me every time I said her name.
In my dialect (West Coast US) the choices were:
CLOD-ia (like dirt clod), or
CLOUDY-a (like cloudy skies).
She wanted something in between. The problem was, for me (and my linguistic people), the vowel in “claw” and “clod” sounds exactly the same.
I finally figured out that if I said her name with a fake, cartoonishly exaggerated Brooklyn accent, she was satisfied. So that’s what I did!
He was jewish. And that was the family nickname for him, Sometimes he was called “Hi” but within the family, probably from when he was young, it was “Hymie”. Like Rob is Robby in the family, Bill is Billy, Sam is Sammy, Ed is Eddy, etc. DH still calls one relative “Stevie”.
Interesting thoughts. When I hear the name “Dustin” I think of Dustin Hoffman, not faux cowboy.
I had a friend who had a son named Dustin, who was in a horrible car accident right after he got his driver’s license. He was terribly brain damaged and died about a year later. That could also affect my perception of the name.
nottelling and madison,
ah as in cat for Shari and Aaron,
eh as in met for Sherrie and Erin
That sounds exactly like the issue I had with the Loren/Lauren pronounciation. My similarly West Coast US dialect doesn’t really convey any difference between the “or” and “aur”.
“I finally figured out that if I said her name with a fake, cartoonishly exaggerated Brooklyn accent”
I grew up in NH, and my kids and I had a very Boston-like accent. We were visiting my grandmother when S was about 8, at her life-long NY home. S was trying to get her dog (who was VERY smart) to do one of his tricks-giving his paw. But he just wouldn’t. Think of S saying “Give me your pa,” the way it would sound in Boston. Then S remembered a story I’d told him about a French teacher I’d had who could only get her relative’s dog to sit if she said it in French, as the family was from the French-speaking part of Canada. So he said, with a fake, cartoony NY accent, “Give me your PAAW.” Dog lifted his paw right up.
“He was jewish.”
Yes. My parents had several Hyman’s in their social circle. All were called Hy - but I have no idea what they were called when they were children but wouldn’t surprise me if they were called Hymie.
Yes, exactly. We say paw and pot and law and lot with the same vowel. Therefore, Lauren and Loren sound the same.
Mominva, you are making a distinction that doesn’t exist in our dialect/accent. Kerry and Carrie are pronounced the same. We do pronounce “car” with a different vowel, but that vowel would not be used in Carrie.
Mominva, did you grow up in in the NJ, Eastern PA, Delaware, or Maryland areas? That is where that vowel distinction is strongest, followed by New England.