I like some weird & wonderful names, as I’m sure many Berries do. I come to this site fully expecting not to have heard of some names before, or not being able to pronounce them. To me that’s part of the fun!
[name]One[/name] of the features that I like about Nameberry is that it automatically links a name in a forum to name page with all the background behind it so that you don’t even have to search the name if you haven’t heard before. Therefore it irks me when people comment on a name saying something along the lines of: “I don’t even know what that is” or “It sounds made up”.
You literally only have to click a button on the forum post and the site will take you right to the source of the name. If you can go to the effort to write a comment, surely you can click a button and read a couple of sentences? Isn’t that the point of the site?
It irks me too. I get that very often when I post about Basque names (some of my favourites, but I avoid talking about them here). [name]Just[/name] because they aren’t English doesn’t mean they’re made up or of any less value.
“Yuck, how do you even say that? Looks made up to me” makes me super irritated. [name]How[/name] aboutcha go google for 5 seconds to find out how it’s pronounced, what it means, and where it’s from, and THEN decide if it’s yuck, because it certainly isn’t just a useless jumble of letters
I see what you mean, but in the real world, most people aren’t berries. Most people on here have come across a lot of names, and if their gut reaction is that a name looks made up…you can feel pretty confident that a lot of people in their country are going to feel the same. That’s certainly something I would want to take into consideration with a name, and I think it has a value in that sense. Not that there’s anything wrong with trying to be nice about it.
If a name isn’t highlighted as a link, sometimes it’s hard to tell if a name is made up or not. There are some great names (sometimes foreign names) that can initially seem “made up”, so I understand why people think this sometimes. Also, if people react that way on a name website, they’ll probably react similarly in real life, especially if they don’t have someone there to explain the name to them.
Ditto @sarahmezz. “It sounds made up” is a legitimate criticism whether or not it actually is made up. For example: even though I know [name]Grayson[/name] is an actual surname, it feels made up to me, possibly because the parts of the name ([name]Gray[/name] and -son) each have a trendy vibe.
However, I think it’s pretty uncool for “It sounds made up” to be the [i]all[i] there is to somebody’s comment. It’s just not very helpful or constructive. And “I don’t even know what that is” makes me wonder: Why did you bother writing anything at all?
“I don’t even know what that is” irks me like crazy, so I agree with you on this one
“It sounds made up” doesn’t irk me at all. If it was “Why would you make up a name”? or “That’s a horribly made up name” or something similar I’d be a little bothered, but I think simply saying “It SOUNDS made up” is a bit different and a legitimate criticism as tawnysaurus pointed out.
Yeah ok, I can see how ‘It sounds made up’ can be a legitimate criticism & perfectly good reason why someone might not like a name (must have had my grumpy boots on when I started this post!). I still don’t find it very constructive though when that’s all that’s said. After all, every name is ‘made up’ if you go far enough back.
However I don’t necessarily think that posters on here are particularly representative of their country of origin as a whole. For a start the majority of posters are female, & in a recent thread that asked how old berries were, the majority of responders were in their teens or early twenties. That’s a pretty specific demographic. Also, from my own experience of having lived in both a huge city ([name]London[/name]) & a small village as a child, I know that people from different cities can be exposed to vastly different names even if they are from the same country. If I wanted an opinion on how a name I liked would go down in my country of origin specifically, I would post on UK sites & try to canvas a wider pool than just naming sites. I post on Nameberry to get a broader perspective from people all over the world who like names for their own sake. Therefore I get a bit disappointed when self proclaimed ‘name nerds’ aren’t interested in looking into or asking about an unfamiliar name that they are commenting on.
Fully aware that this is my own pet peeve & I should suck it up, but it feels good to vent sometimes!
No, names develop over time; they have a family tree of other names and other words behind them, rooting them in the language they emerged from. It’s called etymology. Sitting down and saying ‘I think Bafijkinna would make a good name’ is not the same as the creation of Catherine.
The problem with this, is that a lot of the time Nameberry’s database is wrong, you can’t trust what it says at all. BehindtheName is the place I go to get accurate information regarding a name’s history.
I second this. I always go to Behind the Name if someone asks about the origins of a name. It’s one of the most accurate, if not the most accurate, name sources on the web. It is also usually a lot more detailed than other sites, including NB.
I (think) I always try to do a quick Google of the name. I probably don’t sometimes, but usually I’m genuinely interested in a name. Though I do recommend the OP saying: What do you think of [name]Arya[/name]? It’s an [name]Indian[/name] name- not just a Game of Thrones spelling of [name]Aria[/name], and I love the meaning noble.
I tend to veer to the opposite opinion: That people on here aren’t representative because they care about names and therefore know MORE than the average person. [name]Even[/name] in my teens and early twenties, I still read more thoroughly than the average person, and studied foreign languages. Many of our teenberries are similarly inclined. I’d trust berries to know which names are ‘made up’ and which have a history of use more than I’d trust a group of random people at a bus stop. Also remember that the links don’t appear automatically until shortly after a post comes out. If you’re among the first people posting, you may not be able to check the hyperlink. That said, I’ve been annoyed in the past to see names like [name]Jozef[/name] called a trendy misspelling when a quick bit of research would reveal it to be a standard [name]German[/name] name.
@renrose: I don’t know a lot about etymology, but I would assume for any original name to take off it would need to follow the linguistic rules of its country of origin, which your example does not. As a genuine question: At what point does a name cease to be made up if it follows said language laws and is adopted by more than one person?
For example, say I had two children, a daughter whom I called Orpolena, and a son called Astabyne (both of which follow the linguistic rules of English, but are not names & can’t be found on an exact phrase Google search).
The name Orpolena takes off. Initially it stays as a family name. Subsequent generations may tweak it slightly. My great granddaughter goes by Orpolenie for example. But the root of the name stays. Slowly other members of the immediate community who have grown up with Orpolena’s start to use the name and it’s derivatives too. Suddenly one of my descendants, who goes by the original Orpolena, becomes a household name in her country for writing a best seller (yay illustrious future progeny!). All of a sudden Orpolena, a made up name, enters the top 1000 names. Half a decade later it reaches the top 500, and another decade after that it quietly slips into the top 100.
In contrast, the name Astabyne never gets past on and dies with my son.
Is Orpolena not still a made up name, just like Astabyne? Or does popular usage make it legitimate? I’m not being sarky. I just don’t get how the person who created the oldest root name for [name]Catherine[/name], or perhaps a multitude of names, is not ‘making up’ said name. If something didn’t exist previously, and then does, surely someone in history invented it?
Fair point on BehindTheName being a better source though. I shall try to link any more unusual names to it’s BTN source & write a small intro sentence for future posts.
[name]Aikaterine[/name] (the Greek origin of [name]Catherine[/name]) has been around for two thousand years. If a name ‘made up’ today can last that long then fair play to it, it’s probably a name. Maybe even a hundred years? I don’t know, I wish there was a hard and fast rule. I’d say at the very least it has to be used for a long time by a lot of people
Most names sort of did exist though. There are disputed suggestions for the origin of [name]Catherine[/name]. Some people think it came from the Armenian word ‘Կատար gadar’ meaning peak or summit and some people think it’s from the Greek adjective καθα”ός ‘katharos’, meaning pure. Either way Greek people were naming essentially naming their kids ‘peak’ or ‘pure’. Anyway, my point was, it wasn’t pulled out of thin air, it had a root in another word, which came from yet another word etc etc.
They may have invented it in a sense of ‘lets use this as a name’ but they didn’t string a random set of letters together and start using that.
If this is because I said I don’t know how to pronounce a few names from your other post I’m sorry. You asked for reasons why we didn’t like them and to me they just sound made up. People think the name Tammin is made up and I still love it. Thank you for the reply with the pronounciations BTW
@pemdas - [name]Hi[/name] there! No worries about not knowing how to pronounce some of the names. I think finding out about new names is half of the fun of the site, so I’m never offended if someone doesn’t know how to pronounce a name I like. That just means I get to talk about the name some more!
If it was you that said, ‘I don’t even know what that is’, about one of the names then yes, that did cause me to raise an eyebrow because it didn’t seem like a particularly constructive thing to say when the links were well in place by that stage. Like I said earlier though, I will try and put a bit more thought into my posts by adding some information about the more unusual names on the actual post itself.
Maybe even a hundred years? I don’t know, I wish there was a hard and fast rule. I’d say at the very least it has to be used for a long time by a lot of people 