I find the stats that the Social Security Administration (SSA) releases on baby name trends to be fascinating. I love looking at the names that were popular in the 1980's (the decade God decided I should grace the world with my presence) compared to the present day. I vividly remember having a lot of little girl friends who were named "Crystal" in elementary school. We lived in Grand Forks, North Dakota at the time so maybe a lot of the mothers having little girls were fans of the TV soap Dynasty but whatever it was I have never known so many Crystal's as I did when we lived there. Curious about this insignificant detail I decided to look at the top names the SSA has recorded for 1980 - 1989. Crystal is listed as number 20 which is based on the number of Social Security cards that were registered with that name; in case you were wondering 140, 989 little girls were named Crystal during the 80's.
Now let's look again at Crystal but this time look at the spelling - you have Crystal, Crystel, Krystle, Krystal, etc. There are so many different ways to spell a baby's name. When we decided to name our daughter, "Kendall," my husband and I had a long discussion on how we would spell her name. I, always wanting to be different (I mean really, I do go by the name "Bert" even though my given name is Elizabeth), wanted to spell her name "Kendyl" while my husband liked the traditional spelling "Kendall." He said that my spelling of the name reminded him of a pickle. No one's going to argue with the imagery of a pickle now are they? I think not thank you very much. We also named our oldest boy, Brennan; that could have been spelled "Brennen." So my question, does the spelling of the name change the "personality" that's associated with the person who has the name? No, a rose, if by another name would still be as sweet; Shakespeare was right about that one.
My given name, "Elizabeth," has such a formal, classy persona attached to it; people see my given name and place me into a category. I don't consider myself to be formal or classy which is why "Bert" seems to fit better than my given name. My mom hates this; she calls me "Beth" and had always wanted a little girl named "Beth." Thinking about this always makes me feel a little guilty. I mean how would I feel if my daughter chose to go by another name? I've had her name picked out since I was 13 years old. Would a rose still smell as sweet?
Whether we choose to use an obscure spelling of a traditional name (ahem, like Khloe) or a popular name (anyone know a ton of Jessica's like I do?), our children will have the final say in what they are called. We can choose a name but the name doesn't make the person after all, a rose if called by any other name would still smell as sweet, don't you think?
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I have to spell my name for everyone, even though it is not terribly unusual…. I don’t ever plan on naming my child something that they will have to spell for everyone for the rest of their life!
I have to say that I’m RELIEVED at what seems to be a return to more traditional (or conventional?) names after what seemed like a decade of made up names and intentional misspellings. When our niece was born several years ago we learned her name via my BIL’s facebook post. I called my DH and said “Don’t write out the card yet! I’m pretty sure your brother made a typo from his blackberry and put in an extra ‘r’.” I was wrong…….
My name is quite unique, and can be shortened well. Growing up the different pronunciations of people trying to figure out my name by feel instead of phonetics was tiring. I really enjoy the uniqueness now. Only about 3 times in my life has anyone guess correctly that it’s in the bible.
My kids’ names are Kevin and Heidi. I aim for traditional names that are common enough that people will recognize them, but I avoid the ones that are too popular. I also don’t like the trendy names. And I go with the traditional spelling. My mom chose my name because it was unique, and I like it, but it is kind of a pain to always tell people how to spell it and how to pronounce it.
I am a huge fan of classic names and I have a hard time with common names that are spelled uncommonly. The book Freakanomics had an interesting chapter about why there was such a rise in unusual spelling of common names which boiled down to socio-economic statuses and the desire to have their children stand out. I would feel bad to give my child a name that would always be mis-spelled or confused.
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