If you think making a name for yourself is hard, try making one for someone else.
Once a mere reflection of the times, baby names are now considered shorthand for everything from the parents’ values to the likelihood of future child-therapy bills. Choosing a title that’s at once unique but not precious, stylish but not trendy, meaningful but not obscure, is seen by many expectant moms and dads as the first test of their prowess as parents.
It’s not quite a prenatal exam, but it feels like one.
“It used to be that a very large percentage of parents wanted a good, solid, ordinary name for their child,” says Laura Wattenberg, a noted name researcher. “But today, parents treat ordinary as a dirty word.”
The appeal of unusual baby names drew international attention last week, when news broke that a New Zealand judge had ordered a nine-year-old girl be made a ward of the court long enough to change her name: Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.
A 2007 California State University study of turnover rates in baby names found fashions change because of a small minority of innovators amidst a majority of copycats. Tweaking the spelling of conventional names has become a predominant trend in Canada because it allows parents to choose an in-vogue moniker that still seems unique. Madison, for example, can become Madisson, Madisyn, Madisynne, or Madison.
“We all want our kids to be distinctive, and that’s created a kind of arms race because we might want to be different from one another but our tastes are very much the same,” says Wattenberg.
While parents have always suffered some degree of prenatal naming anxiety, the digital age has upped the ante exponentially.
Over 100 niche baby-name websites offer everything from popularity graphs to searchable databases, opinion polls and historical birth certificate data; For about $50, online consultants will do name research on parents’ behalf. At sites such as Celebrity Baby Blog, parents can obsess over the choices pop icons are making, which this year have included Ignatius (Cate Blanchett), Knox (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie), Clementine (Ethan Hawke), Sunday (Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban) and Callum Lyon (Kyle MacLachlan).
“Parents type a first and last name into Google and feel panicked when it’s taken, or when the domain name is taken,” says Wattenberg, founder of babynamewizard.com.
“When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt named their daughter Vivienne, I had multiple people writing to me who had that name, or a similar name, chosen and felt like it had been ruined.”
Factor in the cultural din of academics whose research warns of the damage a “bad” name can do to a child, and it’s no wonder parents are stressed before changing their first diaper.
For Jody Szabo, a 29-year-old mother of two from Calgary, the pressure of finding the right names for her sons was “overwhelming.”
“It was difficult, time-consuming and stressful,” she recalls. “There’s nothing worse than being nine months pregnant, due any day, and having no clue what you’re going to call this child.”
After poring over online name databases, combing through thousands of possible monikers in baby books, and launching an epic battle against her husband’s preferred choice of Argus - a name plucked from a Greek myth about a 100-eyed giant - Szabo happily settled on Jeremy for her first-born and Austin for her second.
For her part, 37-year-old Karen Markovics is suffering “namer’s remorse.” Five years after giving birth to Nicole Josephine, the North Carolina mom is considering legally changing the girl’s name to Josephine Marie; she has informally been calling her Josie since she was a year old.
“A lot of people were really cruel when it came out that we wanted to change her name,” says Markovics. Other parents have accused her of being superficial and “a flake” for wanting a mulligan on the birth certificate.
“I just wanted a name that when I yelled it on the playground, I didn’t get 12 kids running.”
Misty Verlik Kelleher, 26, blames a combination of information overload and having too many cooks in the kitchen for her own prenatal naming anxiety.
“These days, it doesn’t seem like any name, no matter how ridiculous, is off the table,” she says, citing actor Jason Lee’s son Pilot Inspecktor as an example.
After taking great pains to create a shortlist of names with her partner, it seemed everyone the Edmonton native knew wanted to weigh in on the couple’s choices.
“Let me tell you, no one was shy in the least,” says Kelleher. “All I heard for months was, ‘I don’t like Brandon, that reminds me of this jerk I went to high school with …’, and on and on it went.”
Kelleher ended up naming her son Valentin (val-in-teen), after her father.
“While I know he’ll definitely be made fun of in school, he’ll still have it easy compared to the kids whose parents named them after some kind of beverage, stereo equipment or someone else’s occupation.”
If current trends persist, however, the kids who stand out won’t be the ones with the exotic names but rather the ones called Ann, Joan, Todd or Ralph, all of which barely register in the most recent Canadian name listings.
Fifty years ago, 40 per cent of boys and 26 per cent of girls had Top 20 names. In 2005, the Top 20 accounted for just 19 per cent of boys’ names and about 14 per cent of girls’ names, according to Harper-Collins’ Best Baby Names for Canadians.
As ludicrous as some contemporary names sound, a leading branding expert says memorable monikers - and especially those with three syllables, such as Moon Zappa, daughter of Frank - can prove valuable later in life.
“People tend to favour the familiar; and unusual names, ironically, are more familiar to people because they only need to hear them once, or perhaps twice, to remember them,” says Harry Beckwith, author of You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself.
Ultimately, the branding advice he gives to businesses - to choose a name with backstory and meaning - applies equally to parents.
“Precious, contrived, meticulously-searched-for names always will eventually reveal their artifice, and artifice loses to authenticity every single time.”
