Oftentimes when someone asks about a name, a parent of a child with the name will chime in with something like “I named my son/daughter ______ and we always get complements on it!”
To me that’s a pretty useless comment. I can’t imagine there are very many people who, upon meeting a child, say, “Oh, cute baby. Hideous name.” I’ve observed friends and family doing the “Oh. That’s…nice.” when people announce that they’re naming their child something they don’t like. Yes, it’s a complement, but not a sincere one. I think people just don’t know what else to say- it’s pointless and rude to explain why [name]Nevaeh[/name] is awful when baby [name]Nevaeh[/name] is sitting happily in her parent’s arms, so they just say something simple and insincere.
But I wonder- has anyone had experiences where people tell you they don’t like your child’s name or outright criticize you for it?
I don’t have any children yet, but I almost always run the names on our list by my Dad. He very often asks questions like, “What’s wrong with [name]Sarah[/name]?” or, “Why not just call them Aluminum, Broccoli, and Tooth?”, but he’s always very honest with what he thinks between the snarky bits. According to him [name]Vivi[/name] is “classy-skanky” and “sounds like someone who would wear feather boas”. We think it’s a name for a sweet, hyper, brilliant woman.
My sister tends to make the names I like into a stand-up routine. [name]Even[/name] if she likes the name it belongs to any random stereotype she feels like acting out that day, and sometimes a dog. My Mom usually says “Well, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen it, but you already know what I chose”, or “Not my kid, Kiddo”, so she never says she hates them as much as I know she does.
I think those are the only people I’ve ever discussed names with, besides SO of course. He tends to get hung up on random associations no one else would make. “Oh, no, that one was a minor character in this movie from 1994”. It can be frustrating, but he’s pretty good at separating which ones do and don’t matter when I point it out to him.
So, no real criticism, but I’m sure they wouldn’t be perfectly polite if they didn’t like it.
When people say they always get compliments on their children’s name I assume the compliment goes something like “oh wow ___ is a great name, I’ve always loved the name, what a sweet name, etc…” then they genuinely like it.
I think every knows when someone learns a child’s name and says “oh…wow…that’s so nice, interesting, where did you find that name” that they really dont like it.
Good point. Sometimes people will post that they get compliments on their kid’s awful name, I just think “Well what do you expect?” If the birth certificate is already signed who’s going to tell you that your kids name is terrible?
Of course people close to you maybe more comfortable critizing but strangers generally won’t. [name]Both[/name] of my siblings and my friends know I don’t like their kids names and we joke about it.
When I came across bad names while I worked in childcare my response was “Oh! OK, well it’s nice to meet you.” Then I’d try to use the name as little as possible or give them a nn.
I haven’t personally, but my mom was sitting in the lunch room at work and one of the younger ladies was talking about names for her upcoming daughter.
[name]One[/name] of the names was [name]Emily[/name] and my mom made a face and said why would you want to name your baby [name]Emily[/name]??
The couple had little [name]Emily[/name] 3 months later.
I never get compliments on my younger son’s name. I get stuff like “Oh, that’s unusual” or “Oh! Where did you hear that name?” lol
His name is [name]Hale[/name], I think it’s great, and it was mentioned in the blog recently, but I certainly don’t get compliments on it.
We have gotten actual compliments, and then some of those “ooOOooh… that’s cute…” type reactions as well. It’s most often with my [name]Duncan[/name]- people either love it or don’t know what to say. It makes me laugh. My other kids have names that are relatively inoffensive, I guess. Lol.
I always say roughly the same thing “oh that’s lovely/very pretty” regardless of whether I like the name or not. Can’t really say “that’s awful/have you ever read a book/that’s very common” once the baby has arrived and been named.
I’m fairly sure a fair few won’t like the names I eventually choose,I’m not really a top 100 fan.
Also pp…where do you live for people to find [name]Duncan[/name] strange? It’s a great name,heard fairly often in [name]England[/name]/[name]Wales[/name] and probably a lot more in [name]Scotland[/name]!
I am not one to lie. I am not one to compliment when I don’t like a name. But I wouldn’t rubbish it either.
If a parent said this is “so n so” and I thought “YUCK!” I would probably smile and say “Hello so n so! What a gorgeous girl/handsome boy you are!”. (The old ‘if you haven’t got anything nice to say don’t say anything at all’ approach).
If a parent outright asked me my opinion (and I didn’t like a name) I would say something broad like “Not my usual style but it certainly suits him/her”.
If it were a modern ultra trendy name (which I disliked) I might say “Oh so n so, that is very modern!”.
If it were a vintage name I didn’t like I would say “So n so? Vintage names are really making a comeback.”
So I guess I wouldn’t outright lie. Sometimes I will say I like a name, but that doesn’t mean I would USE the name. Big difference.
I have a lot of people tell me that they love my son’s name, but it’s very popular, so I think a lot of people just like it. (It’s [name]Caleb[/name]). I wish I hadn’t used it, though - I did it to please other people, I wish I had gone with MY choice, which I know not everyone swoons over. ([name]Maxwell[/name]).
I don’t compliment people if I don’t like it, either. I’ll gracefully say something like “[name]Ah[/name], I’ve never heard that before” or whatever, but I won’t say I like something that I don’t.
When strangers ask my girls names and I tell them some of the time, I can sense their disappointment for not making them “twinny” names… one women went so far as to say, “What? You didn’t make them rhyming names?”
Once I blurted out to a mother that I didn’t like her son’s name after I had asked her his name. I could have bitten off my tongue!! He was an angelic blonde child with ringlets and his name was Cecil, here in Oz we say Cess ill not See sill.
When I realised what I had just said I was horrified at my rudeness; but tell me how would you have reacted to that name?
Once I blurted out to a mother that I didn’t like her son’s name after I had asked her his name. I could have bitten off my tongue!! He was an angelic blonde child with ringlets and his name was [name]Cecil[/name], here in [name]Oz[/name] we say Cess ill not See sill. Who would want the word cess (read faeces) in their name??
When I realised what I had just said I was horrified at my rudeness; but tell me how would you have reacted to that name?
My daughter [name]Karin[/name] (kuh-[name]RIN[/name]) occasionally gets her name complimented but not that often and my daughter [name]Delaney[/name] (dee-[name]LANE[/name]-ee) never gets her name complimented. She gets the “different” comment with a couple more memorable comments. [name]One[/name] was “What kind of name is that!?” in a rather negative way from random stranger. [name]One[/name] of my friends thought we’d made it up until she heard it on another child to which I just said “nope, it’s in the baby name books”. [name]Karin[/name] got a negative reaction a couple weeks ago. My brother-in-law’s co-worker asked what her name was, he told her [name]Karin[/name] [name]Renee[/name] (I always introduced her as [name]Karin[/name] [name]Renee[/name]), she said “Oh.” I was sitting around the corner so I heard the exchange though they weren’t all that quiet anyway, not like I was eavesdropping (the other uncle was chasing [name]Karin[/name] around while she was laughing so it was loud in there). Guessing she didn’t care for the name.
[/QUOTE]Also pp…where do you live for people to find [name]Duncan[/name] strange? It’s a great name,heard fairly often in [name]England[/name]/[name]Wales[/name] and probably a lot more in [name]Scotland[/name]![/QUOTE]
I’m Canadian (where [name]Duncan[/name] doesn’t get as much negative reaction, I’ve found) currently living in the US. In my state people seem to name whatever is popular, whereas I name what I love, whether it’s popular or not. My using [name]Duncan[/name] actually came from my sister’s best friends when we were little, a British family with sibs [name]Duncan[/name] and [name]Jane[/name], so I have loved it since I was tiny.
I’m Canadian (where [name]Duncan[/name] doesn’t get as much negative reaction, I’ve found) currently living in the US. In my state people seem to name whatever is popular, whereas I name what I love, whether it’s popular or not. My using [name]Duncan[/name] actually came from my older sister’s best friends when we were little, a British family with sibs [name]Duncan[/name] and [name]Jane[/name], so I have loved it since I was tiny.
I’ve had plenty of people say they don’t like my son’s name ([name]Dashiell[/name] “[name]Dash[/name]”). It happened a lot when he was a newborn, I mean strangers literally looked at me like I was torturing him. He’s 3 now and we get sincere compliments all the time. I don’t know what changed.
I’m pregnant now with a [name]Lincoln[/name] and a woman at the playground asked me what I was going to name the baby. Wow. She went on for about 10 minutes about how much she HATED it. She said she could deal with [name]Dash[/name], but [name]Lincoln[/name] was just the worst name ever and it’s so old and that poor baby and ON AND ON AND ON. I was shocked because everyone else I’ve told it to loves it, and I mean, who the hell says stuff like that anyway? I can’t remember her kids names now but they were super kreativ, so I don’t really value her opinion, lol.
But, yeah. You’d be surprised how many people are comfortable saying bad things about a baby’s name.
@jersey_gray: that’s surprising! [name]Delaney[/name] really isn’t "different"at all. It’s certainly more common than [name]Karin[/name]-[name]Delaney[/name] was 169 in 2004 and is still in the top 300, but [name]Karin[/name] hasn’t ranked since the 80s.
@rollo we say Cess ill in the UK too!
It’s not an attractive name with either pronounciation in my opinion. I’d have probably gone for one of my default answers “oh that’s nice”…change topic quickly!
I get a lot of compliments on the sibset ([name]Alice[/name], [name]Molly[/name], [name]Jane[/name], [name]Lucy[/name]), but my 3rd daughter’s name ([name]Jane[/name]) gets mixed reactions when mentioned on its own. People either seem to love it or hate it. Most people are polite enough not to say anything nasty, but I can tell when someone isn’t crazy about it. [name]Lucy[/name] gets the most positive reactions which does not surprise me since it’s a more popular name.
My using [name]Duncan[/name] actually came from my sister’s best friends when we were little, a British family with sibs [name]Duncan[/name] and [name]Jane[/name], so I have loved it since I was tiny.
My using [name]Duncan[/name] actually came from my older sister’s best friends when we were little, a British family with sibs [name]Duncan[/name] and [name]Jane[/name], so I have loved it since I was tiny.