Name Your Baby Wisely

I really wish people would think long and hard when naming their baby. I remember when my sister worked for an agency many years ago where she saw the names parents gave their children. There were some that were harmless and funny, and then there were some that were sad. Sad that they chose to saddle their child with a name that would cause them problems by teasing and maybe even bullying. Is it that important to these parents to seem witty and different at the expense of the welfare of their child?


There are the Rita and Tara Page's of the world that have perfectly "normal" first names and may never feel the effect of a witty parent when they named their daughters. Celebrities tend to be the front runners with the weird names, Moon Unit, Apple, Scout, Rumor etc. These children may even be ok with their given names because their parents are celebrities and people will just let it be. A current celebrity named his daughter James (after his father) and all I could think of was that this poor little girl will be mistaken for a boy her whole life. Then there are the children with the made up names. There is actually a list of the top 100 made up names including, Jennavecia, Sheriza, Aerabella, Laken and Zyler. Do we really need to feel like our children are that unique that we have to make up names for them. What happened to naming our children after a loving relative?

Then there are those parents that decided they were going for an old standard, and they then have to change the spelling. WHY!!!! Did you know that there could be more than 2 ways to spell Amy (Ami, Aimee, Amee, Aymee, Amie, Amey), and I am sure there are more. When I was a kid and someone asked your name and you said, "Amy", they would never have asked you how to spell it. I worked in a Middle school for years and whenever a parent would call in and give their student's name I would always ask, "How do you spell that?" You would be surprised how many ways people would come up with the spelling of their child's "common" name.

You may be wondering why I have such a strong opinion on the subject. I was born with the name Genevieve and given the nickname Gigi, which neither was never pronounced or spelled correctly. I do love both of them, but they have given me headaches in my life. I remember all my teachers in school stopping and pausing when they got to my name in the attendance roll call.  When I got older, before they butchered my name, or the rest of the kids could laugh at the effort of the teacher to pronounce Genevieve, I would call our "Here, and you can call me Gigi!". Currently several people have called me Judy after giving my name over the phone. My husband has been surprised to receive returned calls from people that had talked to his wife Judy. This has happened enough that my husband jokingly has called me Judy at home.

Or is it Judi? Or Judee? Or Judie? Or Judeigh?

I grow weary.