Dear God, please don’t name your children Renesmee!
Calling all Prospective Parents and Currently Pregnant Couples:
Please. I’m begging you. DO NOT name your poor, little girls Renesmee.
Maybe it’s the fact that I have a lot of friends who are pregnant with their first child or just that I’ve seen a rash of bizarrely spelled baby names, but I really feel the need to make a heartfelt appeal here.
Years ago, I remember seeing an article in a Star Wars fan magazine (yes, I went through a SW phase) about a man naming his daughter Padme Amidala. Of course it was next to a picture of a guy who had a full-color Star Wars poster tattooed over his entire back, so the girl’s name was hardly the worst choice on the spread. But why name your child after a poorly written character in a b-grade prequel?
Because there is nothing sacred anymore. You realize these kids are going to grow up with these names, right? Will get teased and mispronounced for years? But surely, the odds of someone naming their child after a supernatural, vampire-human hybrid are small. Or perhaps not.
Why am I concerned about little Renesmees popping up all over the country?
- More Parents Naming Their Children After Twilight Characters?
- People Are Naming Their Poor Children After Twilight Characters
- Did you name your baby Bella?
And if that’s not bad enough, apparently I should prepared to meet a whole slew of Neytiris and Toruks in the coming years.
This article manages to hit all my baby naming hot buttons, simultaneously. Naming your children afterTwilight characters AND naming your kids after celebrities.
Here’s another one…
Not to mention the names celebrities come up with for their own children! Should you really be mimicking these nitwits?
Sometimes real life is even scarier than fiction:
I have a friend that I met in college who has a daughter named Patience. When I found out she had a little girl and was told the name I remember thinking, “wow, that’s unique, but I kind of like it.” Then I saw it spelled.
Pa’shence.
A little part of me died inside.
My friend, I have to add this, in the unlikely event that you ever read this. Your daughter is lucky to have you for a mother. She is a smart, beautiful, credit to your parenting abilities. But seriously, an apostrophe?! And I’m not even going to talk about the spelling.
If only that was an isolated incident. Let me give a shout out to a great blog that chronicles the horrifically spelled and the bizarrely constructed - The Bad Baby Names Blog.
But the most damning evidence that the problem has surpassed endemic proportions can be found on the pages hospital birth announcements. These are names given to the progeny of ordinary people, people who might be living in a town near you.
- Sapheryn Leona
- Jennavecea Rachelle Linn
- Starmer Nevaeh
- Lynaiah Marnisha
- Olivehia Hope
- Serenity HunnyGirl Judy-Saleisiana (I don’t even know where to start with this one)
- Chevelle Ryder
- Paityn Kamaleianuhea
- Ratana Cassidy Jayma
- Ra’shad James (who somehow wound up with a twin named Michael Alexander, go figure)
- Slaidyn Jaice
- Brady Cayabyab
- Maleena Sensamilia Ta’Ufo’Ou
- Keyon Armani’ Gene (not sure what the random apostrophe is about)
- Paramour Ninabella (Are the parents relatives of Stephanie Meyer?)
- Zedricjeff
- Veronika Zeimele
And if the actual names people are giving their children haven’t got you quivering in fear, take a gander at these truly surreal conversations between moms and moms-to-be about spelling variations.
- do you like the name kirra for a girl?
- Girls name! (Only in the last post does someone point out that none of the spellings in the poll are actually correct.)
So please parents, think before you name. Consider spelling your child’s name in a way that at least acknowledges the existence of phonetics. And above all, hold off on the punctuation.
3 Comments
Jump to comment form | comment rss [?] | trackback uri [?]