What’s in a name?

I was browsing MySpace — yikes, what a mess — to stir up inspiration. I stumbled across a few posts of prospective moms asking input on baby names. It stopped me in my tracks. Bear with me while I share my experience.

(Flash back to the seventies.)

As I child, I was teased often for the name Roland. (It’s incredible the number of ways other stupid kids could make fun of it/me. I even begged my parents to change my name to Ronald before entering High School because I didn’t want more hassles. I seriously thought about using my middle name in High School just because I wanted a ‘normal’ name like the other guys, i.e. Michael, Anthony, David, Scott, Eric, James, Paul, Kevin, etc. (I think every class had at least three of each.)

It wasn’t until my twenties that I became comfortable with my name. I still get angry thinking back on how miserable others made me feel as a child.

(Fast forward to the late nineties.)

When my wife and I were planning to have children, I insisted we stick with strong names. No cute spellings. No obscure names. No names of months (April, August), colors (Magenta, Cyann, Sienna, Chartreuse), moods (Harmony, Sunny) or fruit (Apple). I wanted one syllable names that didn’t rhyme with any body parts. She agreed.

(Skip to 2007)

We have 4 boys, ages 3.75 to 7.75. We try to do everything possible to make our four boys feel strong and confident and remove annoying obstacles. I want them to have a good childhood to remember positively.

In my humble opinion…

I believe some parents get wrapped up in a weird distortion field where they believe a cute and truly unique name is best. But sometimes they fail to think about the baggage associated with names.

Before you start venting about raising children to be self-confident and thick skinned so name calling wont affect them, consider this. Being a child now is much harder than ever before. Children have enough to learn (education / social skills / physical skills) without having to be knocked down in confidence about their names.

It’s sad, but true. Other children can be terribly cruel, whether in Elementary or High School. It’s heart breaking to explain to my son why another child is constantly mean to them. I’ve had to start having those conversations lately. But that’s a different topic.

By the way, I know I’m not alone in this opinion. I know a half dozen adults who don’t use their first names. They’ve substituted nick names or middle names because they hate their first names.

What are your thoughts? I’d really like to hear your opinions on baby naming.
Roland

Related links:
Check out BabyNamer.com. They have a searchable database. Search on a name and click on “Teasing Drawbacks” (used to be called “baggage”) to see negative connotations associated with a proper name.