During the baby-naming process, I consider a lot of things. I check out what the Baby Name Wizard has to say about it. I take a look at NameVoyager. I run it through Nymbler. I try it out with our last name. I see how it travels, and I make sure it matches with any existing children I've named.
However, I've never given much thought to the major impact future phone conversations could have on the name of an unborn child. My friend Amanda has. Lots. And while I don't have a lot of examples of names being disqualified in very creative ways, there have been a few names that I've really wanted to use that haven't made the cut for various reasons.
Here's a list of a few baby name castoffs. I can pretty much guarantee you that we will never use these names, as evidenced by the fact that I am disclosing them to you. We don't tell anyone our babies' names before they're born (we don't necessarily know it ourselves), so if I'm telling you these names, it means they're out of commission.
Petra. Oh how I love this name. It even made it onto the short list with Sasha 2.0, who was later named Magdalena. But when it came down to it I could not, in good conscience, give a girl with last name Palmer, the first name Petra.
Palmyra. Another victim of our otherwise low-maintenance last name. It's too bad, especially since it would have been a great tribute to Syria, Upstate New York, and Mormonism, all in one name!
Vesper. Jeremy really tried to make this one work but in the end, combined with our last name, it just sounded like one big string of vocalic r.
Cora. This one was eliminated when Jeremy's brother and his wife used it on their daughter, which was kind of a freak coincidence since neither of us had told the other that we liked this name. So much for an homage to The Last of the Mohicans.
Rania. I think this one was mostly in the running with Sasha 1.0 (Miriam), and it is the name of Jordan's current queen (you may have seen her on Oprah a few years ago). At some point, I realized that most people in America would not pronounce it as prettily as they do in the Middle East. So it got scrapped.
Veronica. This was the name that made it to the final two, along with Miriam. Obviously, we chose Miriam, and by the time Sasha 2.0 came around three years later, Veronica seemed like cold leftovers.
But just because I can't use these names doesn't mean you can't! A friend of ours had a baby recently and they named her Petra. I was happy for them and also jealous. My friend's sister has a Vesper so I get to live vicariously through her a little bit. And there is a Cora running around with our last name, but I've gotten used to her not being mine.
What are your baby name castoffs that you're willing to share?
(And no, I'm not pregnant. I just like talking about names.)
Petra. Oh how I love this name. It even made it onto the short list with Sasha 2.0, who was later named Magdalena. But when it came down to it I could not, in good conscience, give a girl with last name Palmer, the first name Petra.
Palmyra. Another victim of our otherwise low-maintenance last name. It's too bad, especially since it would have been a great tribute to Syria, Upstate New York, and Mormonism, all in one name!
Vesper. Jeremy really tried to make this one work but in the end, combined with our last name, it just sounded like one big string of vocalic r.
Cora. This one was eliminated when Jeremy's brother and his wife used it on their daughter, which was kind of a freak coincidence since neither of us had told the other that we liked this name. So much for an homage to The Last of the Mohicans.
Rania. I think this one was mostly in the running with Sasha 1.0 (Miriam), and it is the name of Jordan's current queen (you may have seen her on Oprah a few years ago). At some point, I realized that most people in America would not pronounce it as prettily as they do in the Middle East. So it got scrapped.
Veronica. This was the name that made it to the final two, along with Miriam. Obviously, we chose Miriam, and by the time Sasha 2.0 came around three years later, Veronica seemed like cold leftovers.
But just because I can't use these names doesn't mean you can't! A friend of ours had a baby recently and they named her Petra. I was happy for them and also jealous. My friend's sister has a Vesper so I get to live vicariously through her a little bit. And there is a Cora running around with our last name, but I've gotten used to her not being mine.
What are your baby name castoffs that you're willing to share?
(And no, I'm not pregnant. I just like talking about names.)