I was thinking the other night, and I wonder, how did all of your name obsessions start? Mine started in 6th grade, when we were studying Greek Mythology. We each had to write our own myth. I wrote about the daughter of [name_u]Artemis[/name_u], who wanted to become a star, but to do so, had to discover the meaning of her name. I took probably 4 hours searching for the perfect name, and finally settled on [name_f]Olena[/name_f], which means bright, shining one. And ever since then I’ve been obsessed.
4th grade (2002) when my aunt was pregnant with her first child. She had a name picked out for him that no one in my family liked. My mom thought it would be funny if she bought me a baby name book and I made her a list of names and sent it to her. I had SO much fun making that list and my aunt even chose a name off of it! I’ve been making baby name lists ever since.
My sister is 12 years older than me and had my nephew when I was 8. After she had him, she gave me her baby book of names. I started making lists all the time and was completely obsessed with going through it. I’d circle names I loved and cross out ones I hated. I still have it somewhere and I’d love to find it and see what I liked as a kid. We moved recently though and I’m not sure what box it’s in.
I had a sylvanian rabbit family when I was young (10-12 maybe). In my head they were a Victorian family and had names like [name_f]Clara[/name_f], [name_f]Rosalie[/name_f], [name_f]Lucy[/name_f]/[name_f]Lulu[/name_f], [name_f]Annabel[/name_f], [name_m]Peter[/name_m] and [name_m]Joshua[/name_m].
I looked for appropriate names in my mums baby name book
I guess I’m a late bloomer. My obsession started in highschool. While we were reading Frankenstein, my teacher had us look up the meaning of our names, and then the meaning of various characters in the book. When I realized characters names might actually symbolize something bigger, I was hooked. Whenever I would write a story, I would look up name meanings in my mom’s old baby name book. I think it freaked my Dad out to see his teenage daughter pouring over baby names!
I’ve always liked names. When I was little all of my toys had their own names that I thought suited their “personality”. Then in junior high we had to look up the meanings of our names for a project. I never liked my name growing up (still don’t) but I love what it means. From that point on I have been hooked on names and their meanings.
I’ve pretty much always been obsessed with names. My first memory of my name obsession is meeting a little girl called [name_f]Ava[/name_f] when I was about 4 or 5 and I just fell in love with her name and vowed to name my child [name_f]Ava[/name_f] one day (unfortunately that is unlikely to happen now seeing as it’s so popular). After that I would always pay attention to the names of people I met and try to listen out to what people around me were called and then think about whether I liked it or not (I’ve always been pretty opinionated when it comes to names). Then when I was older I started researching names I heard and trying to find names I liked. And then I found nameberry…
I’m not really sure. Growing up everything had to have a name and it was never the perfect one. Then I started looking into meanings, found more interesting names, and so on. I also spent about half the time finding names when I started writing if I didn’t have any ideas. Poor SO has been vetoing combinations since I was about 14 and got up the courage to explain that I was only interested in the names. His parents didn’t really believe that, though. My parents freaked out about baby name lists and had a talk with me when I was about 15, but they were never unsupportive of the interest.
I may have been born with it. I would always talk to strangers about their names, despite being shy, and I would name and rename my dolls. [name_f]Uma[/name_f] [name_m]Thurman[/name_m] had nothing on 7-year-old me; some of my dolls had strings of names 8 to 10 names long. My mother, who was probably tired of being badgered for names, bought me a baby name book, one of those little pocket-sized books they sell by the grocery checkout. That was that–I was an name addict for life!
I read incessantly as a child and also wrote stories. I remember getting my first baby name book (I bought it myself) in order to choose names for the stories I was working on at the time. That first baby name book started a flame in my heart and the fire is still burning over forty years later. I should be ashamed to say but when I reached the magic number of one hundred books (including surnames, saint names, international names etc…),. I made a vow to stop counting. I figure: some people collect stamps; I collect names. My guilt is gone.
I used to read Yahoo! News and they would publish articles about name popularity when the SSA list came out every year. Once I clicked a link on one of the articles that led to Nameberry, found it interesting, and started spending more and more time on here! So I guess Nameberry made me a namenerd
I used to make ‘yearbooks’ for made-up schools with kid’s pictures I’d cut out of magazines or newspaper ads. That must have been when I was 6 or seven, so 9 or 10 years ago. I would name them crazy, ridiculous names and then when I was about 12 I decided I needed to give my yearbook kids real names. So I did
I’ve had an interest in names since I was about four or five. I hated my name as a little girl (still do) and was always jealous of kids who had more interesting names. I would make a point to remember them to use on my dolls. It wasn’t until middle school when I started writing stories that I actually started making lists and having favorite names.
I’m not exactly sure when I started obsessing over them. I was at least about 10 or 11 years old. There wasn’t anything specific that got me hooked on them… I was just very interested and wondered why some were so popular and why others weren’t so much.
Mine peaked in 2nd grade. My grandparents got a book for [name_u]Christmas[/name_u] detailing a bunch of facts about the year, and one of the sections had the list for most popular boy’s and girl’s names. I took that book to school practically everyday for the rest of the school year. I never looked at any of the other pages, or sections, just the names.
Also, some time during elementary school (I believe it was 4th grade) I bought a baby name book with some money I had saved. At the time, I was really into playing The Sims, and I needed to broaden away from the list in the book I mentioned before. That book went everywhere with me. On vacations, to school. One day, I left it outside in the rain, and I begged my grandmother not to throw the soggy thing out. It’s coverless today, and the pages are all curled up and brown. It eventually helped name 3 of my cousins and my youngest brother, so it was definitely a worth while investment, even if it bothered my parents how obsessed I was with it!
Mine began in grade 5, I believe. My friends and I were in school, and for the first little bit of [name_f]September[/name_f] all we talked about was NAMES. I was the only one who stuck with it though, and to this day I’m a name nerd, name lover.
