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The French are notoriously uptight about what one can and cannot name their baby, but they've decided to let one newborn keep his name, even though his parents heard it on an American show aimed at teenagers. In November Lionel and Blandine Defontaine dubbed their boy "Daemon" after the character Damon on The Vampire Diaries. The "e" was added to make the name sound more French, and it seems that was enough to convince the court. They may have let it slide this time, but don't think you can name your baby Pilot Inspektoré and get away with it. More »
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Horrifyingly, the Kardashians no longer need to reproduce in order to populate the country with their unique brand of krazy nomenklature. This year's first babies sport a klutch of kreative K names, perhaps inspired by the fame-hungry family. More »
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Looks like parents nowadays aren't afraid to get baby name inspiration from a source that literally sucks— books about vampires. More »
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It seems like there is no end to the amount of bad baby names in the world. Who can forget tiny Adolf Hitler Campbell and his sister JoyceLynn Aryan Nation? And let's not even talk about all of the children who are named after their parent's favorite fast food restaurant or luxury brand; or those whose parents took a normal name and changed 7 or 8 of its letter to create a new, more unpronounceable name; and, of course, let us keep the children of celebrities in our hearts. More »
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Are you planning on giving birth, adopting, or flat out stealing a baby in 2012? If so, you should probably start worrying about whether the wee one's name will be as weird as the names that all the other parents are giving their kids. More »
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It's hard to imagine anyone in the United States naming a child "unwanted" and getting away with it. (Of course we name our kids things like Moroccan and Pilot Inspektor and nobody bats an eye, but that's another story.) In India, however, the cruel practice of naming a daughter the Hindi equivalent of "unwanted" is, sadly, not uncommon. More »
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It's almost disappointing when a celebrity names their baby something normal like Michelle or Richard, but while stars may briefly delight us with their Pilot Inspektors and Fifi Trixibelles it seems more and more parents are realizing that you just can't put Jermajesty on a job application (so it's a good thing no Jackson kid will ever apply to be a barista at Starbucks). A new survey found that about one in 10 parents eventually decide that their attempt to bestow a unique name on their precious progeny has backfired. More »
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An Irish bookmaker has helpfully drawn up a list of possible names for Beyoncé and Jay-Z's baby, complete with odds. Let the gambling begin! More »
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The Palins aren't the only Alaskans dishing out wacky baby names. A study found that parents in newer states tend to pick less common baby names, while parents in the original 13 states stick with popular names. More »
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An Egyptian man has named his newborn daughter "Facebook" Jamal Ibrahim to celebrate the role the site played in the revolt. According to Tech Crunch's translation, an article in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram reported: More »
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A Canadian professor reports a rise in gender-neutral names. Which is awesome — maybe. More »
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"Sophia" and "Aiden" are the winners; sorry, all of you no-longer-special kids with those names! And it's the sixth year in a row that Aiden/Aidan has been the winner, suggesting that the SATC long tail is worse than we thought. More »
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Now you know what to write in your "congratulations" cards to John Travolta and Kelly Preston, whose son's arriving very soon! It'll be a "silent Scientology-style" birth—unless Preston's not really pregnant. Travolta's currently in Australia, partying with Quantas. More »
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According to the book Frou-Frou, Frisby, And Brick, a compilation of unusual baby names picked from official records, there are children out there named "Anna Sassin" and "Lettice Pray," which would both make pretty decent derby names, no? More »
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1. In Germany, Matti is an unacceptable boy's name, but Legolas is cool. 2. 15-20% of new baby names are rejected each year in Denmark. 3. There is a kid somewhere in New Zealand named "Midnight Chardonnay." [Mental Floss] More »
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Once I met a woman with a beautiful newborn girl. "What's her name?" I asked. "Murray," said her mother happily. "Murray Olivia." Thank God for middle names. But "Murray" did not make the list of most-regretted girl's names. What did? More »
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According to the list of 2009's most popular baby names, parents are drawing inspiration from pop culture. Specifically, Twilight: Cullen skyrocketed in popularity and Isabella's the top girl name. But other celeb-inspired names are out, namely Lindsay, Kimora, and Rihanna. More »
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• Two high school teachers from Winnipeg have been suspended for performing a lap dance at a pep rally. School officials say the dance was "totally inappropriate" and a 12th grade student called it "dirty." Video after the jump. • More »
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A pregnant reader has written in looking for advice on the name "Jezebel": "It sounds pretty and to me, it represents a girl who is bold... is it a really bad idea to name a girl Jezebel?" More »
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For over $1,500, a London-based translation firm will perform a "baby-name audit" for parents, checking the meaning of a name in 100 languages or more. According to their linguists, Suri means "pickpocket," "turned sour" and "horse mackerels." [Reuters] More »
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According to new research, parents tend to choose baby names that have recently risen in popularity, not those "on the way out." But parents don't want "overused" names, which might explain the number of "Brooklyns" and "Destinys" in 2008. [USAToday] More »
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In a story for Time magazine, Jeffrey Kluger writes that Latin/Hispanic names — like Juan, Juanita, Guillermo and Manuel — are dropping in popularity. More »
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Anna N. has been chronicling popular names for a few weeks now, discussing traits and misconceptions attributed to certain monikers. But can a child's name really shape who they become? Melanie McDonagh of the Times of London says yes. More »
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When her second child was born, Lena Corner struggled to name him. After six weeks of struggling, she and her husband finally settled on the name Ralph. Six months later, she decided Ralph was all wrong. More »
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Brooklyn, the name of the Victoria Beckham's 10-year-old son, was first used in 1870; Gwyneth should know there was an Apple born in 1853; and some especially cruel 19th-century parents chose the name Peaches for their son. [Daily Express] More »
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Emma has supplanted Emily as the #1 girl's baby name, while Jacob continues its ten-year winning streak, the Social Secruity Administration has announced. Meanwhile, Barack moved up 10,126 spots to # 2,409. [AP] More »
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Any suggestions of names for this baby gorilla born at the San Francisco Zoo? "Cutie" is all we're coming up with. (Click for embedded video.) [Breitbart] More »
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Barack Obama's rise to the presidency has sparked several mothers in Kenya, his father's homeland, to name their newborn boys after the U.S. president-elect. A couple in Florida have also announced that they named their child after the president-elect. And Barack isn't the only one getting baby-naming attention, one mother in Kenya named her daughter Michelle Obama after our future First Lady. [Reuters] More »
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Here's a list of the most popular "hipster baby names" as defined by aging-hepcat areas like Brooklyn, Madison and Austin. As one might expect, the rents either kick it old school (Olive, Orson, Violet, Sadie (ugh), Silas), literary (Atticus, Dashiell), musical (Lennon, Kingston) misleadingly ethnic (Leopold, Stellan) or frankly pet-like (Butch, Ike, Elvis, Dixie, Duke.) Oddly, "Sarah Palin McCain" has not made the list. We just can't wait until all these poor tykes are doctors and lawyers — not that their parents would want such a square fate for their offspring. [Nameberry] More »
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A new father has named his baby girl Sarah McCain Palin as an endorsement for Republican ticket...and without his wife's consent. Mark Ciptak of Tennessee says he picked the name to "get the word out" for McCain-Palin because he can't give a lot of money to the campaign. "I took one for the cause," he said. He wrote the name on the documents for his daughter's birth certificate, ignoring the name his wife picked, Ava Grace. “I don’t think she believes me yet,” said Ciptak. “It’s going to take some more convincing.” Yeah, it'll probably sink in when she sees the name written in the divorce documents. [The Knox News] More »
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Attacks from the McCain-Palin campaign aren't just for Barack Obama, Joe Biden and the nation of Russia anymore! The Repubs have moved onto bashing Hillary Clinton and, um, Spain. Luckily, Jason Linkins and I don't move on as well as the GOP, so we talk more about Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and her many, many friends of African-American heritage, Grenada, sangria, Palin and Ahmadenijad's love-that-dare-not-speak-it's-name, blow jobs, rapes, unwanted babies and very, very unwanted baby names. More »
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This story may paint Michigan as being "unique" from the rest of the nation in terms of baby names for girls, but it turns out that state-by-state, Michigan is not all that different: Last year 8 other states also recorded Ava (Michigan's most popular) as the most popular moniker for girls. Surprisingly, there was not one state with a uniquely popular name for girls last year (the name Addison was ranked No. 1 twice in Kansas and Nebraska). United we name? [UPI & SSA] More »
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A blogger who goes by the name "Daisy" on the internet recently wrote about having a "black" name. She's white, but her mom named her a black-sounding name she thought she had made up. Her whole sad tale of misapplied racism and misinformed job discrimination and shocking amounts of casual N-wordery is hilarious and amazing and delightful and terrible all at once and I can't really do it justice because it's Friday, but it's the best thing I've read all week. Just go, read it. And tell me: is there anything you wouldn't name your kids? Daisy seems to suggest that her mom, a chainsmoking civil rights activist, subliminally named her daughter Rashida or Shaniqua or whatever so she could get a little taste of How Race Is Lived In America. I always figured I would do like my own parents and raise my kids in a shit-poor country for a few years to try and instill in them a suitable amount of white guilt at an early age, but now I see that I could achieve the same result simply by naming my offspring Tawana or Condoleezza or whatever. More »
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In today's New York Times, John Marion Tierney writes about names. Old studies showed that "children with odd names got worse grades and were less popular than other classmates in elementary school," he writes. "In college they were more likely to flunk out or become 'psychoneurotic.'" But more recent research shows that names don't really matter as much as we think. "Names only have a significant influence when that is the only thing you know about the person," says psychologist Dr. Martin Ford. "Add a picture, and the impact of the name recedes. Add information about personality, motivation and ability, and the impact of the name shrinks to minimal significance." But people (and not just celebs) love slapping kids with "odd" names. More »
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Once you decide to have a child, you're faced with another incredibly important decision: What to call the thing. According to CNN, in a recent poll of 1,219 mothers, 10% had baby-name regret and considered changing the kid's name. Pauline and Jeffrey Eadie named their newborn "Emma" — and 8 weeks later, they decided she'd be better off as a "Caroline". Rob Sauber and Suzanne Ramljak named their daughter Sophie — and when she entered preschool, they found that four out of 13 girls had the same name, so, when Sophie was almost 4, her parents asked her if she'd like to be called Isadora instead; she agreed to try it. "She understood our reasoning and liked the name. We weren't going to force her," says Ramljak. More »
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The most popular baby names of 2007 have been announced, and, strangely, it seems that the child-spawning public has taken to paying homage to Will & Grace: Jack is the most popular moniker for boys, Grace for girls. More exciting, though, are the least popular names: "Dior, Diezel, T, Lord, Denim, and Lamar appeared in the "five children or less" category for baby boys. For girls, just five were called Chanell, Queen, Cleopatra, Bailey-Rae, or Genesis." And now we start praying that Jaime-Lynn names her little fetus Denim Dior Genesis Spears. Please. [Times of London] More »
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Having the name Jennifer led to a lot grade school confusion (the teacher would say "Jennifer" and a quarter of the class would reply), but at least everyone assumes you are a girl. Generations to come will deal with the emerging trend of girls getting boy names, claims The New York Times. Names that were historically associated with boys are being given to girls (creating an older generation of bitter old men being told they have girl names!) "Not long after a boy's name catches on with girls, parents shy away from christening sons with it," says the Times. But boys aren't taking on girl names. At "best," names simply become gender neutral. For example: "Jordan has appeared in the Top 100 most popular names for both sexes since 1989, and other modern unisex names coexist peacefully, too. Angel, overwhelmingly male until the mid-'50s, became popular for girls around 1972." It isn't just about changes in taste (names do go in and out of fashion) — are parents perpetuating the myth that only boys are strong? More »
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Last week, we ignited a small (although less than we thought!) firestorm with a certain post about the pros and cons (mostly cons!) of women named Jessica. (Most people agreed! Yay!) We also asked you to weigh in about the whole "what does a name say about a person" business, and we're happy to say that, today, the eve of Independence Day, we have some answers about the business that is branding babies in America. The short summary: Everyone agrees that any male named Chris is to be avoided at all costs. Except for one woman named uh, Jessica, who says she's living with one. Women named "Maggie" and "Molly" suffer from the sad reality of sharing their names with beloved family dogs (often golden retrievers). Michelles: "Festering cunts". Ambers, Tammy/is, Brandys, Lisa are sluts in high school, baby factories afterwards. This is just a sample, kids. Want the long version? Check out some of the best comments after the jump. More »
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