Curious about Twilight

General Name Discussion
1

I just read through the Names that have been ruined for you (or what it’s called) thread and I need to ask this:

What is so bad about Twilight that [name]Edward[/name] and [name]Isabella[/name] are ruined?

I haven’t read the book or watched the movies, but from what I gather [name]Edward[/name] is a vampire (a pretty nice and cute one) and [name]Isabella[/name] is a smart and pretty girl that fall in love with each other and have some obstacles and some werewolves interfering and what not (yeah you caught me, I’ve seen the trailers). [name]How[/name] cane these movies/book RUIN classic [name]Edward[/name], [name]Isabella[/name], [name]Jacob[/name], [name]Rosalie[/name], [name]Esme[/name] and [name]Jacob[/name]?

[name]Just[/name] curious here… almost so curious I’ll watch the movies…

2

I’m not the best one to answer since I only read the first book, but [name]Bella[/name]'s character bothered me a lot and the relationship is extremely unhealthy/controlling to the point it makes me concerned for young girls who idealize it. So I guess that takes [name]Isabella[/name] down a notch for me, but it wasn’t a favorite before.

[name]Just[/name] my two cents.

3

I think people blow the Twilight connection [name]WAY[/name] out of proportion. If you have 4 children and name them [name]Edward[/name], [name]Isabella[/name], [name]Jacob[/name], and [name]Alice[/name], I MIGHT think Twilight, or I might think you like the names. But I know a little 2yo [name]Isabella[/name] and Twilight is the LAST thing I think of. [name]Jacob[/name] has been a top name for many years- way before Twilight. [name]Edward[/name] and [name]Alice[/name] are classic, timeless names. [name]Isabella[/name] is very popular right now, but [name]Isabel[/name] has a long history as well. If you named a daughter [name]Renesmee[/name], I would think you’re crazy. I think the Twilight author just has good taste in names! (except for [name]Renesmee[/name]… that’s just crazy.)

4

I think it’s more that they shoot up in popularity because they are the talked about names and therefore can actually be considered very trendy.

I think [name]Edward[/name], [name]Jacob[/name] and [name]Isabella[/name] are classic names that have been used for years and years so I don’t actually see the problem and I don’t think Twilight has ruined them except maybe pushed them up the rankings.

[name]Esme[/name] is pretty popular in the UK and I’m sure it lingers around the top 100, but I guess in the US if this name is uncommon and then all of a sudden it shoots up it is automatically considered trendy.

I guess it’s the popularity that ruins a name for that person but it’s not like [name]Edward[/name], [name]Jacob[/name] and [name]Isabella[/name] were completely unknown and unused beforehand these films so in all honesty I don’t know the answer to your question.

5

I don’t know if it has anything to do with the characters or the books/movies themselves (although there is a lot of Twilight hate out there) I think its mostly because of the over exposure of the whole franchise. Using a name like [name]Edward[/name] or the others that are featured prominently while Twilight is at the height of its popularity makes it look like you used it BECAUSE of Twilight (rather than because it’s a great name) and people don’t necessarily want to make that connection. Its too connected to pop-culture right now, and you wouldn’t want to tie an actual human child to pop-culture. I don’t know really, but that’s more what I think it is. Because even if you really hate Twilight, many of those names have so much history that it isn’t really fair to say “I hate the name [name]Edward[/name] now because of this [name]ONE[/name] place I saw it.”

6

For me it has nothing to do with the book but rather the popularity of the named because of the book :slight_smile:

7

This is the reason I hate ‘Twilight’ and it’s shadow ‘50 Shades’. It makes me so angry when I see a girl posting on Facebook that they want their own Edward or Christian. It’s like… what? You want to be stalked and controlled to the point that the other person in the relationship is telling you what to eat and wear and who you can see? That’s abuse!

That and the fact that they’re both DREADFULLY written. "-_-

The only problem I have with the names is that Isabella and Jacob are really popular at the moment.

8

So it’s really the popularity? Twilight didn’t ruin it, but the people naming their kids after Twilight did…

And the relationships are abusive too? Whoa, that’s no good. I mean, I sort of knew, with the whole (I’m assuming) s&m thing (Grey which I haven’t read either) and Bella becoming a vampire. Unhealthy role models. Me, I had Kate Moss.

9

The relationship between [name]Edward[/name] and [name]Bella[/name] is abusive. There have even been studies on the relationship in book proving it to be a very unhealthy relationship. The book itself is poorly written and vampires do not sparkle. - This is coming from a Twilight hater and again is my opinion.

10

The names aren’t ruined for me, they are just way too popular and nms. They’re very nice names, and I wish people wouldn’t let these terrible books ruin them (or [name]Grey[/name] or [name]Anastasia[/name] for that matter from 50 Shades)

As per the books: [name]Bella[/name] likes [name]Edward[/name] because he’s cute and dangerous. She likes [name]Jacob[/name] because he’s cute and dangerous. [name]Edward[/name] mentally abuses her, tells her how to live, what to do, who she’s allowed to be friends with etc. In the second book, he leaves her for no good reason and drives her to put herself in extreme danger (almost killing herself) just to see weird hallucinations of him. It’s like that. There’s no depth at all besides “he’s cute”. She’s also very unintelligent to me, and the books are written like they’re meant for a 10 year old. And vampires do not sparkle in the sunshine like they took a bath in glitter.

11

Ok, Twilight sounds hilarious. I never read these type of books, that’s why I was so curious. If they are this bad, and the characters are abusive or idiotic, I totally see why it’s a bad enough association to turn someone off the name.

… vampires that sparkle in the sunshine… LOL

12

Couldn’t agree more. I picked up Twilight with a very open mind-- absolutely expected to enjoy it, in a candyfloss sort of way. Instead I got several hundred pages of a whiny, shallow, self-obsessed, weak teenage girl’s journal. NOTHING FREAKING HAPPENS. We just hear how much [name]Bella[/name] worries people don’t like her, and there’s this hot guy who thinks he’s way too good for her who climbs a tree outside her bedroom window every night to watch her sleep. And the prose is beyond flat, the narration is beyond puerile, the plot, denouement, etc a total afterthought.

It is literally the only book I’ve ever bought that I actually threw in the trash. My husband inadvertently got highlighter marks on it and I couldn’t return it to the bookshop.

13

As much as I hate Twilight (for the same reasons lineska and renrose stated, ie, controlling/abusive relationship, the female lead has no personality/goals/aspirations whatsoever, just straight up badly written), I think it’s silly that people thnk the books/movies have anything to do with the popularity of the names. [name]Isabella[/name] had steadily been on the rise for the past twenty years and entered the top ten the year before Twilight was published. [name]Jacob[/name] has been the number one boy’s name since 1999, six years before Twilight was published. If Twilight really influenced name popularity, then [name]Edward[/name] would also be in the top ten but it’s 100 spots lower then it was 30 years ago. I think [name]Stephanie[/name] [name]Meyer[/name] just choice already popular names for her characters (or names that were on the rise) and now people just wrongly assume that those names are only popular because of the Twilight franchise.

Also, I’d like to add that if people really were naming their children after Twilight characters, it wouldn’t be people having kids right now. It’d be the pre-teens and teenagers who make up the majority of the Twilight fanbase and those people wouldn’t be having kids for another ten years. [name]Just[/name] like how the name [name]Tristan[/name] is getting used now because 18 years ago, a bunch of adolescent girls saw Legends of the Fall and fell in love with [name]Brad[/name] [name]Pitt[/name] (Seriously, I’m in my thirties and I remember so many girls loving that name in junior high because of that movie. Whenever I run into a woman about my age with a son named [name]Tristan[/name], I ask where she got the name from and it’s always Legends of the Fall).

14

He sits in a tree and watches her sleep? That’s beyond creepy!

15

Actually he climbs through her window and sits in he room to watch her sleep before they even really start talking. She’s totally fine with it when she finds out.

16

I wish this wasn’t true, because many of the names in the book are great, but I honestly never liked them and on top of that they arent the best connections now. [name]Add[/name] on the popularity factor and its a no go for me :confused:
On a side note, i didnt understand why the father’s combined names ([name]Carlie[/name]) weren’t used as the first name for [name]Renesmee[/name]. Its a good name AND the fathers have a much larger presence in the book!

17

It’s a Mormon thing. Seriously. Mormons are fascinating namers; it’s relatively common to honor family members by combining names like this. [name]Stephanie[/name] [name]Meyer[/name] probably had no idea how unusual [name]Renesmee[/name] would seem to the rest of the world.

18

I don’t think it was a “Mormon thing” at all. I lived in Salt [name]Lake[/name] City for seveal years as a child and none of my classmates (nor anyone else that I knew in the area) had names that were combination of their relatives’ names. [name]Stephanie[/name] [name]Meyer[/name] stated in an interview that she felt that [name]Bella[/name] and [name]Edward[/name]'s child couldn’t have an ordinary name, so she invented [name]Renesmee[/name] (which is annoying as it is arrogant). She does say that she thinks no one should be using the name in real life though. The article was in Entertainment Weekly but there’s a link to it here: Dotdash Meredith - America's Largest Digital & Print Publisher

19

Here’s an article on their abusive relationship:

20

I really, really like the name [name]Edward[/name]. I did get around to reading the first two books and at the end of that I simply couldn’t last any longer. To be honest, I wanted to leave it after the first three chapters of the first one, but I was curious where such a bland, pointless novel could possibly go, which is also why I even tried to read the second one; I ended skipping huge portions of it. My friend recently dragged me along to watch the latest movie…wasn’t really paying attention, there was some fighting, some kissing, and their little kid Renesmee? Please, Bella, use Renee or Esme, but don’t mash them into one name!

The writing is terrible, the plot is weak, and I am glad to see that it has gotten a lot of hate recently in various realms of the earth (online…I don’t know, I just haven’t seen much OTT happiness about it on the internet lately, thankfully). Isabella and Jacob, main character names in Twilight, are popular, but I personally wouldn’t link them to Twilight. Edward I link a little bit more because it’s not extremely popular and it is a sort of old-fashioned name, but I really, really like it, and sadly won’t use it because I can only think of an idiotic, controlling SPARKLING (I mean, really!!! A vampire that sparkles in the sun?!) vampire!

Overall, there are so many better role models/love stories out there and this is one of the worst. That said, I love the name [name]Alice[/name] and don’t associate it with Twilight automatically, and would be willing to use it. Some of the more main characters, maybe not, but I personally wouldn’t recommend reading the books/watching the movies because it’s a waste of time.

And yes, the relationships are INCREDIBLY abusive. Edward never lets her go anywhere, see her friends (Jacob etc.), and takes away her whole life and is stalker-like and dark and basically cajoles her into marrying him…