Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Name: Getting Down to Business
Now that we know we're having a girl, it's time to start getting serious about her name. Yesterday was a day of big progress on that front - so much that it's probably going to take me a few posts to document it. I knew Shelly and I would have a lot of time in the evening to discuss names (we were going out to dinner without the kids, thanks to a babysitting swap we participate in every Saturday), so in the afternoon, I went to the Social Security Administration's website and pulled up the official list of the top 1000 girl names in America for 2008.
I scanned through the list, looking for all the names I would possibly consider. I was struck by a couple of things as I went through it. First, there are a lot of Latino names represented - names like Esperanza, Alejandra, Camila, and Mariana. That's just fine. I was also surprised that some names - like Natalie, Ashley, Neveah, Evelyn, and Jennifer - were as high on the popularity list as they were. Most distressing was the fact that there are a lot of misspelled names, like Makayla (#37! Don't these people know that there isn't a word in the English language with the sequence -aka-?), Lillie (it's in the dictionary!), Madalyn, and Kennedi.
But I was able to come up with a list of 56 names that I had positive feelings about. I used kind of a low standard, so that there would be plenty of names on the list and none would be missed. When in doubt, I wrote the name down. Shelly had no input into the assemblage of this list - she first saw it when I was done. Here is the list I came up with, in order of popularity in 2008 from most popular to least:
Olivia
Natalie
Sarah
Grace
Lily
Victoria
Lauren
Julia
Leah
Katherine
Brooke
Maria
Rachel
Vanessa
Melanie
Charlotte
Paige
Faith
Caroline
Mary
Molly
Nicole
Jenna
Sadie
Rebecca
Amy
Angela
Erin
Piper
Lila
Violet
Tessa
Clara
Scarlett
Hope
Josie
Georgia
Monica
Bethany
Cora
Alice
April
Julie
Hazel
Rose
Helen
Jane
Wendy
Norah
Heather
Marie
Teresa
Tara
Rosemary
Tess
Laurel
I scanned through the list, looking for all the names I would possibly consider. I was struck by a couple of things as I went through it. First, there are a lot of Latino names represented - names like Esperanza, Alejandra, Camila, and Mariana. That's just fine. I was also surprised that some names - like Natalie, Ashley, Neveah, Evelyn, and Jennifer - were as high on the popularity list as they were. Most distressing was the fact that there are a lot of misspelled names, like Makayla (#37! Don't these people know that there isn't a word in the English language with the sequence -aka-?), Lillie (it's in the dictionary!), Madalyn, and Kennedi.
But I was able to come up with a list of 56 names that I had positive feelings about. I used kind of a low standard, so that there would be plenty of names on the list and none would be missed. When in doubt, I wrote the name down. Shelly had no input into the assemblage of this list - she first saw it when I was done. Here is the list I came up with, in order of popularity in 2008 from most popular to least:
Olivia
Natalie
Sarah
Grace
Lily
Victoria
Lauren
Julia
Leah
Katherine
Brooke
Maria
Rachel
Vanessa
Melanie
Charlotte
Paige
Faith
Caroline
Mary
Molly
Nicole
Jenna
Sadie
Rebecca
Amy
Angela
Erin
Piper
Lila
Violet
Tessa
Clara
Scarlett
Hope
Josie
Georgia
Monica
Bethany
Cora
Alice
April
Julie
Hazel
Rose
Helen
Jane
Wendy
Norah
Heather
Marie
Teresa
Tara
Rosemary
Tess
Laurel
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