Reply to Thoughts on "hippy" names?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Also, don’t underestimate how annoying it is to have a name where people aren’t sure what they heard. At least with “Apple,” people know they heard Apple. Same with Fox, Sage, Willow, etc. I think with Arrow, people with always be like “did you say Aaron?” It gets old.

[b]My daughter has a name that is pretty simple but sort of uncommon, and people never understand what it is. They always think it’s something else. It’s annoying[/b].[/quote]

So this happens with my daughter's name too, and her name is in the top 50 baby names and comes with a very easy-to-pronounce and recognizable nickname.

I was thinking about this the other day and how it's frustrating when someone asks me her name and then I often get these confused looks when I say it, or people thinking I said something else. But if this is happening with my DD's name, I don't think it's the name. I think it's that names are so varied now, and people don't encounter the same names over and over the way they used to. Unless your kid has one of the few names you really do hear quite a bit (and for girls, there really are only a few of these, and none of them are nearly as ubiquitous as the most popular names in the 70s or 80s), the person you are talking to might have never met someone with that name before. This happens to me constantly. Thinking about my kid's preschool class, I can only think of three names that feel familiar to me, and I don't associate any of them with a specific person. It's more like I have read them in books or heard them on TV. There is a ton of language and ethnic diversity in the names too.

So I think it's just standard now for people to be mildly confused when they hear a kid's name for the first time. It's not a "wait that's a name?" confusion, it's literally just trying to wrap your head around how many different names people have, instead of 50 years ago when half the people you met were named John or Mary or something.

In which case, OP, name your kid what you want. If you are going to get confused looks and mispronunciations with a name like Lucas or Mia (top 10 names), go ahead and name your kid Jupiter or Hero or something. Heck, a lot of hippy names are at least words people are very familiar with because they are nature words or place names. You might get less confusion naming your kid Arrow than someone with a Theodore who is constantly explaining he goes by Theo.[/quote]

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