Anonymous wrote:I know a family who told their children that they were named for the cities in which they were conceived. Whether that's the truth or not, I don't know or care to know.

I think that’s what former Real Housewife of Orange County Peggy Tanous did. Kids are named London and Capri.

Lol, I wrote the previous post, too. Can you tell I watch too much reality TV??

There was a contestant on Project Runway recently named Chasity. It must be a thing.

I know a family who told their children that they were named for the cities in which they were conceived. Whether that's the truth or not, I don't know or care to know.

I saw the other day some idiot on tiktok who named her baby Poot. That -- POOT -- is this human being's actual, legal name. That is just objectively and unequivocally cruel.

The difficult spellings like you describe OP, that seem incorrect but are actually how the name is spelled, have to be a total PITA for a kid and as an adult too. I don't, and never will, get it.

My kid has a more popular (top 100) name and it did not occur to me to give her a very unusual name. Like I didn't think "I will give her a popular name", it's just when we made our name lists, they were all basically recognizable names of varying levels of popularity but nothing that someone would say "wait, I didn't know that was a name." I haven't looked, but I'd bet most of the names we considered were in the top 1000, probably more like top 300. I've also noticed that a few of what we considered to be more unusual names at the time (this was 2016) are now the names of kids I have encountered in my child's classes and activities. Names like June, Beatrice, Thea, and Josephine. These were names on our list in part because they were names we liked that we'd never known anyone to have, but now I know kids with all these names. So even when we thought we were branching out, we were still very much within the zeitgeist of what people were doing with names.

Having said that, over the years I've encountered kids with much more unusual names and while it felt out there at first, I've come to really like and enjoy them. Some are names that if you'd suggested them to me when I was pregnant, I would have though "oh, awful", it turns out are pretty great names once you experience them as assigned to a child you actually know. I've also realized that a lot of names that sound unusual are actually very similar to names that sound "normal" to me. Like I met a little girl name Beauty and thought "really?" and then realized that I know people named Hope and Grace and those names seem downright basic to me, so why not Beauty (she was a very pretty child, for the record). I met a kid named Indiana and that felt out there, and then realized that he could be named for the state or the movie character, so actually it's kind of normal. And so on.

The process of naming a kid is weird an I found it intimidating -- I didn't want to screw it up. Which is probably why we defaulted to a narrower universe of known names. And I have no regrets -- I love my DD's name and so does she. But what I've learned is that naming kids isn't as hard as I think I made it out to be. Kids really do just kind of make their names their own, and as long as the name is normalized and embraced by the family and the broader community (we live in a very diverse community where criticizing an unusual name would be considered pretty bad), it works out. I probably could have loosened up about our name process a little bit, and if we have another, I will.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do some people name their children really wild card names?

Just merely curious.

For example, my child has a friend in her class whose name is Chasity. Pretty enough, faith based perhaps. Then DD told me her sister's name is Voracity. Interesting, I think.

But besides that example, people name their children all sorts of names. My DD's name is in the top atleast 20-50 girl names.

I don't mean, wild card as in different based on someone's ethnic origin but perhaps just wild or different for that sake.

You've never spent time in Mormon country if you think those names are kooky. Whenever we visit family in Utah and go to places where there are parents and children, I always hear a new one that makes me gag. Like, "Kinterly" which is probably spelled "Kynntyrli."

My coworker about 2003 went off on a racist tangent about names and then it turned out that the children in question were White and Mormon.

I find a lot of style overlap between kreeatyv black names and kreeatyv Mormon names. I think with social media exposing everyone to everyone else, each culture definitely influences the other.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do some people name their children really wild card names?

Just merely curious.

For example, my child has a friend in her class whose name is Chasity. Pretty enough, faith based perhaps. Then DD told me her sister's name is Voracity. Interesting, I think.

But besides that example, people name their children all sorts of names. My DD's name is in the top atleast 20-50 girl names.

I don't mean, wild card as in different based on someone's ethnic origin but perhaps just wild or different for that sake.

You've never spent time in Mormon country if you think those names are kooky. Whenever we visit family in Utah and go to places where there are parents and children, I always hear a new one that makes me gag. Like, "Kinterly" which is probably spelled "Kynntyrli."

My coworker about 2003 went off on a racist tangent about names and then it turned out that the children in question were White and Mormon.

Anonymous wrote:Why do some people name their children really wild card names?

Just merely curious.

For example, my child has a friend in her class whose name is Chasity. Pretty enough, faith based perhaps. Then DD told me her sister's name is Voracity. Interesting, I think.

But besides that example, people name their children all sorts of names. My DD's name is in the top atleast 20-50 girl names.

I don't mean, wild card as in different based on someone's ethnic origin but perhaps just wild or different for that sake.

You've never spent time in Mormon country if you think those names are kooky. Whenever we visit family in Utah and go to places where there are parents and children, I always hear a new one that makes me gag. Like, "Kinterly" which is probably spelled "Kynntyrli."

Anonymous wrote:It's probably veracity (meaning truthfulness) not voracity (meaning hunger). Is it Chasity, which isn't a word, or Chastity?

Ha ha This is probably correct? It seems to fit the pattern. It is spelled Chasity per a gift bag she wrote her name on.

Anonymous wrote:It's probably veracity (meaning truthfulness) not voracity (meaning hunger). Is it Chasity, which isn't a word, or Chastity?

And anyway, Verity is the more traditional name meaning truth. It's really old-fashioned, but not wild. Veracity just sounds cringe. I'd rather be called Velociraptor.

Anonymous wrote:Why do some people name their children really wild card names?

Just merely curious.

For example, my child has a friend in her class whose name is Chasity. Pretty enough, faith based perhaps. Then DD told me her sister's name is Voracity. Interesting, I think.

But besides that example, people name their children all sorts of names. My DD's name is in the top atleast 20-50 girl names.

I don't mean, wild card as in different based on someone's ethnic origin but perhaps just wild or different for that sake.

I've never heard of anyone named Voracity, but "Chasity" spelled the way you did, is usually the result of someone who is woefully uneducated trying to name their child "Chastity."

It's probably veracity (meaning truthfulness) not voracity (meaning hunger). Is it Chasity, which isn't a word, or Chastity?

Some people are more creative than others.

Why do some people name their children really wild card names?

Just merely curious.

For example, my child has a friend in her class whose name is Chasity. Pretty enough, faith based perhaps. Then DD told me her sister's name is Voracity. Interesting, I think.

But besides that example, people name their children all sorts of names. My DD's name is in the top atleast 20-50 girl names.

I don't mean, wild card as in different based on someone's ethnic origin but perhaps just wild or different for that sake.