Edited for privacy.
I’m not a name nerd but fascinated by baby naming trends, and on the hunt for a name for my baby due in [name]August[/name].
I met a patient yesterday, with a baby boy named [name]Ethan[/name], being polite I said what a lovely handsome name you chose for your baby. And she lamented how she didn’t know it was so popular when she named him that (this I don’t get, like how do you not know how popular a name is when you decide to give your child a name he/she will wear for the rest of their life?? mind boggling to me). I said, well its #2 in our province but there were only 59 other [name]Ethan[/name] born in 2012, so in a population of one million, that’s not so bad. She just looked at me like I was a complete weirdo. I wished I hadn’t said that out loud, she obviously didn’t really care about how popular it was and I just sounded like a huge, huge nerd.
Edited for privacy.
If I comment about a name rising and people think it’s weird/nerdy, I try to cite something “common knowledge” to cover my exposure: [name]Kate[/name] Middleton, the Duggars, primary school geography, the Beckhams, etc. Sometimes this works better than others.
Absolutely!!!
I meet a girl named Abisola the other day and I love Abiola (huge GP). I accidentally blurted out “Are you Nigerian or did your parents just choose a traditional Nigeran name?”. She thought it was kind of cool but everyone else around thought I was an alien. lol.
Also my friend’s niece was just born and she was so excited about little [name]Ava[/name] [name]Grace[/name] and how original the combo was. Thank god she texted me cause my first reaction was “it’s pretty but ‘yeah that’s original’” <note the sarcasm>
At a swim meet, a group of kids around my age from another team (who I didn’t know) were talking about how their friend [name]Finn[/name] hated swimming, and it was ironic because of his name. Without hesitation, I jumped in and said, “Actually, [name]Finn[/name] is short for an Irish surname that means ‘white shoulder’. It has nothing to with the English word ‘fin’.”
They stared at me like I had two heads, and I hastily told a white lie and said my newborn cousin’s name was [name]Finn[/name].
Edited for privacy.
My sisters both want to name a son [name]William[/name] (one loves the nn [name]Will[/name], the other prefers [name]Liam[/name]. [name]Both[/name] wrinkled their noses at my suggestion of [name]Wim[/name])…neither of them believe me that [name]William[/name] is in the top ten, or that the nicknames are very common as well.
[name]One[/name] sister suggested [name]Scarlett[/name] for a future daughter and i squealed over how they’d all have a color name, and then had to admit that, yes, i look up the meanings of names in my spare time.