Girl's Gone Child: GGC Contemplates the Original Name Movement

Ever since 4th grade I have been compiling a list of "baby names." It was a fun lunchtime activity, a great WILDCARD journal entry before bed when I had nothing else to write about and STILL even after having a child I work on my "list" frequently. I am writing this post because I have a feeling that I'm not alone, that most of you have done/still do the same thing.

How I know? I know many of your baby/kid's names and they are not "Chris and Sarah." And if they are, Sarah is probably the boys name and Chris, the girls. It's cool. Trust me, I'm into the whole boy-name-for-girls thing. If Archer was a girl his name was going to be "Doug." I digress. When I first found out I was pregnant, even before I made the teary journey down Melrose to break the news to my boyfriend, I had a list about nineteen pages long of baby names. Archer was not on that list. Neither was Sage. But that is neither here nor there. The point is that original names seem to be not only extremely common but pretty much a prerequisite for parents giving birth today.

Growing up in my town every boy's name was Chris, Mike or Jason. I dated five Chris' and about 657 Jasons. Every other girl was a Kelly, Sarah or Nicole so if you ever had a "female emergency" in the girl's bathroom you could pretty much shout any of the above girl's names and within seconds a tampon would roll into your stall. No one went by first names because it was so confusing so everyone started going by last names. (Smith and Cooper and Richards) And although I was one of only two Rebeccas at high school, the other Rebecca had the exact same schedule as me pretty much all four years. I hated her. She was always bare-foot and she talked really loud and said nothing. To break off all association, I went by Becca.

When I presented my list of baby names to the ol' man he rejected every single one them.

"What? You don't like Paper? I think it's a cute name for a girl!"
"Are you carrying an extra chromosome, woman?"

Right,well HE was more interested in names like:

Axyl Monkeywrench
Captain Freightrain
Cougar Whistleblower
Power Toolbelt
Awesome (no middle name needed)

Archer Sage was the ONLY somewhat-original name not on both our lists that we agreed on and to this day we are very happy.

I am convinced that the reason everyone is naming their children fantastic, interesting names is because, well, our parents just weren't very original. We are rebelling, parent friends!!! Fuck yeah.

...Now, if you will excuse me I have some bad-ass baby-name lists to attend to and it's okay, you can get back to your lists as well. Ready? Break!

GGC

9 comments:

Anonymous | 2:24 PM: We don't have any kids yet(except for our 2 boxers), but my husband and I talk about names all of the time. Rarely if ever do we agree. For boys I like Milo, Jack, and Owen. For girls Ruby. He is more on the side of names like Rainbow Vibration, Stephanie, and John. I am suprised we agreed on a name for our new puppy, Isabel Maia Dogwoo II.
coolbeans | 2:35 PM: My kids have fairly original-ish names. My daughter's name saw a BOOM in the same month we named her, but it's still not Jennifer. Or Sarah.

I am dying to tell you The Toddler's name, but GAH! Can't! I will in email, though.

Anyway, I used to have a list. Someday I will have a small thing in my house named Piper. Or Pippa. Probably a dog.

Happy De-lurking Week!
GIRL'S GONE CHILD | 2:57 PM: Piper and Pippa are cute. See? Paper isn't THAT far off!
Alisyn | 3:34 PM: Oh, yeah, the name game! I, too, have been naming my children for about 20 years. Neither Hazel nor Violet was on any of my lists, of course. But I'm as glad as my hubz said I'd be, that neither of them is named Plum or Honey (two names I really liked at one time.) I still mentally collect boy names, even though we're done breeding. It's a hard habit to break.
Anonymous | 4:54 PM: My mother wanted to name me Dagmar from an Ayn Rand novel so I am a little relieved that she veered away from that original road...
GIRL'S GONE CHILD | 5:32 PM: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
the stefanie formerly known as stefanierj | 6:18 PM: I am all for the original baby names (though the one we picked for D-unit is original only 'cause it's a family name), but you have GOT to check out this website that somebody sent me before I even got pregnant. Some people's idea of clever baby names are downright cruel.
http://notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/index.html

I *particularly* like "When you're in love, the whole world's Welsh"--scroll down to the huge list of Welsh names and read the author's comments (hers are in red--she copies this stuff from baby naming boards and adds her own commentary in red). I was LMAO.
jdg | 10:30 AM: girl, did we go to the same high school?
Crazy Baby Lady | 8:08 PM: Being one of those common name kids (it can't get much worse than Amanda) I wanted something original for my kids. Being the chicken that I am Layla and Finn[egan] was as far as I was willing to go. Pretty good for mid-western America though, I think. Proof of being that both times our family's response was "That's interesting."