When I was little, I used to wish that my parents had named me something exotic. Like Lindsay or Tiffany. Those were my favorite names until about the age of eight. Growing up I tended to wish I had a cooler name than the one given to me. Maybe I’d make a good Quinn, or a long name that was shortened into a cool boys name like Alex. Now that half of my girl friends are named Jennifer and the other half are Sarah’s, I’m pretty pleased with Heidi.
If I couldn’t have a really cool name, then I at least wanted a good story about where I got my name. Maybe I was named after a famous movie star or at the very least, a really old relative. No such luck. I have the boring story of, “we just liked the name Heidi.” One thing my parents did consider however was the fact that I was going to have to spell my last name for many, many years. This has turned out to be true. It gives new friends a sense of accomplishment when they have learned to spell my last name. Thank goodness I don’t have to spell my first name for everyone too.
With many friends having babies, I’ve been giving names some thought. If you give your kids an odd name, you better hope that they’re really good at something, be it sports or singing or something else so they don’t get beat up on the playground. During football season, my guy coworkers and I were discussing the trend that to be really good at college football, your name had to either start with Ja or La. LaMichael. Jaquizz. Lebron. Let’s be honest, if those guys weren’t exceptional athletes, someone would have made serious fun of them. My coworkers and I considered adding one of the prefixes to our own names to see if it would help our own athletic endeavors. Thus far, LaHeidi is no more successful than just plain Heidi.
If you want your child to play sports, I highly suggest going with a two-syllable name. Do you know how hard it is to cheer for my friend Melissa? It is a mouthful to get out in the middle of a game. I also recommend going with a name with a spelling that can be deciphered by almost anyone. I started enough games in high school to have heard every possible slaughtered variation of my last name. I’m not sure why anyone would potentially want a third party to not be able to decipher their child’s first name. There is a figure skater who spells her name Caydee. What was wrong with good old fashioned Katie? Most of us stopped spelling phonetically in elementary school.
There are certain names that have been around forever and have been spelled the same way since the dawn of time. Why is this generation thinking that James now needs to have a y in it? And when did we start using x’s instead of ck’s? And what is with all the hippie names? Like Rain? Do you want your child to grow up to make her own clothes out of hemp? Plus, people only like rain on occasion, not all the time. And as much as I like the name Brooklyn, that is a borough, not a name for a person. If you’re going to name your child after a city or state or country, I would hope that the place had significant meaning to you and your significant other. It would be odd to name your child Canada if you’ve never even been there.
Someday if I ever have children, it is pretty safe to say that I will not have an Apple or a Kenya or anything with six e’s instead of a y. I may be able to work with the three syllable thing. Despite spending my childhood wishing for an exotic name, as an adult I’m pretty happy with the one given to me. It’s not too common and not too obscure. It’s just right. And yes, one of my nicknames is Goldilocks.
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