Boy named Sue: Baby-name regret is on the rise, expert says (Yahoo article)

General Name Discussion
1

I just saw this on Yahoo. Not got time to comment myself yet, but hope to get back on later. Interested in others thoughts on the article.

2

I don’t think people should be judged by their names, but it definitely makes me think twice about the names that are quite “out-there”, like Prosperpina and [name]Maple[/name].

3

Good article, except that the “Boy Named [name]Sue[/name]” study they keep citing is not very valid in my opinion (see what I said back in 2010 at my blog, which I believe I’ve mentioned before here on Nameberry).

4

'The chances that you need to look beyond the 25,000 best names is very slim," Wattenberg said, adding that after a certain point, baby name books are just throwing in “the dregs.”

Hah! I wonder how many names beloved on Nameberry qualify as ‘the dregs’?

5

I tend to agree… I’m expecting and am on this site a LOT. [name]Even[/name] though by the end of it I am usually more confused than ever. So many names, so many different opinions, can definitely add to the stress.

6

This. I love talking names but when your actually pregnant and trying to choose the “perfect” name that is also the “perfect” name in daddy’s eye, you can make it far more stressful by over-thinking it.

7

I agree with much of this article. We can cry ‘no fair’ when talking about name stereotyping but that doesn’t change the fact that it does happen. My husband has a terrible name and it has impacted his career and social life at times.

I also agree that more choice is not necessarily helpful. I bought one of these dictionaries while pregnant and it just left me frustrated and confused. I found a more reasonably sized book to be much better. I doubt that many of the nameberry favourites would be the ‘dregs’. In my experience these books seem to be stuffed with cre8ive spelling options for the same list of actual names.

As for regrets - I think that perhaps we put too much emphasis on just the right choice. The reality is that most names are compromises of some sort and that is ok. A good name is fine - it doesn’t have to be ‘perfect’.

edit

Also for those who feel stressed by all the choices. My hubby and I found it helpful to clearly define what we were looking for and then only look at names that met those criteria, this narrowed the choice markedly and made the search a lot less stressful ( I think we ended up choosing from about a dozen name choices for each gender).