Unusual baby names are becoming more and more, well, common these days. A mere one percent of babies are named Emma or Jacob, the most popular names, and only about ten percent are given one of the Top Ten names.  Compare that to a hundred years ago, when FIVE percent of babies were given the most popular names John or Mary, and 30 percent of boys and 20 percent of girls received one of the Top Ten Names.  For the first time, less than half of all babies get one of the Top 50 names.

And it’s not only American parents who are choosing unusual baby names.  Chinese parents, seeking individuality in a country with 1.3 billion people sharing only 129 surnames, are turning to unconventional combinations of letters, numbers and symbols for their children’s names.  One couple wanted to name their baby 1A while others use the @ symbol, pronounced “aita” and meaning “love him” in Chinese.

Many European countries restrict the pool of possible names, though many parents are testing the centuries-old boundaries.  But Belgium, with no such laws, over half of children receive such unique names as Testimony, Cherub, and Edelweiss.

If you’re considering giving your baby an unusual name, your biggest question may be: How will an unusual name affect my child for better and worse throughout his or her life?

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Guest blogger Mary Elizabeth Barr Mann’s family has always called her Bessie, a name she deems fit only for torch singers, great beauties….or cows.

My birth certificate reads “Mary Elizabeth” . Perhaps more importantly in my family, my baptismal certificate reads “Mary Elizabeth”. But, to my father and my brother, I am “Bessie.”

My mother’s name is Mary, and so my father has never called me such. Dr. Freud would approve. And while my extended family makes the distinction by calling me “Mary Beth,” somehow my dad came up with Bessie and thought it was adorable. When my parents discovered that Bessie was easy for my toddler brother to pronounce, it stuck. At least on the nuclear level.

As you might imagine, in my adolescence, I did not like being Bessie. It was not, nor is it yet again, popular. While the U.S. Census pegged Bessie as the 13th most popular girls’ name in 1880, it plummeted out of the top 100 by 1930 and nosedived from the top 1000 by 1970.

Worse yet for my teenage years, Bessie is neither sleek, nor sexy. It is not stylish. Not a single model in Seventeen magazine ever had that name. And, though somewhere in a corner of Park Slope there may be an urban hipster mother plotting to bring back the name is a burst of ugly-chic, to this day Bessie remains shunned.

The nickname didn’t bother me as a very young child. Heck, I was surrounded by relatives with equally unattractive, ragged-old-laundry-hanging-in-the-back-alley names—like Reenie (for Irene) and Mossie (for Martha). But by my teenage years, I really, really wanted my dad and my brother—and by now my younger sisters who had gotten in on the act—to quit it. The worst was when my brother’s friends would tease me about the name: “Bessie the cow.” “Old Bess, my gun.” (And this from a kid with a big schnoz whose surname was Finnochio. Sheesh.)

Sure, there was Bessie Smith. And Bess Myerson—the first Jewish Miss America. But that was IT. Unless you were belting out the blues with a voice full of sorrow and steel, or you were transcendentally beautiful, this was not a good name. With my reedy soprano, eyeglasses and frizzy hair, I was none of these things (although I have since graduated to contact lenses!).

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Hate your name?  Feeling less-than-wonderful about your own moniker can inspire a larger love of a different kind of name, says guest blogger Jill Barnett.

I was four years old, and dressed in my best Wonder Woman Underoos, complete with lasso and headband. I had just finished watching my favorite Saturday morning cartoon featuring superheroes known as the Wonder Twins, and I decided to act out their “Wonder Twins, activate! Wonder Twins, deactivate!” super power ritual with my stuffed monkey, Marvin. (Marvin was a passive, but willing, participant.) After a few rounds of this, followed by a first-rate lasso routine, I came to the logical conclusion that I had acquired the ability to fly.

I climbed on top of a tall cabinet, adjusted my cape for optimum glide, waved to Marvin, and launched myself into the air, horizontal to the hardwood flooring below. Suffice it to say, en route to falling victim to gravity, I experienced the first “Holy @#$%&!” moment of my life.

If you could bottle the feeling of sheer panic and doom I experienced as I plummeted to Earth, you’d have a pretty good idea of the terror and dread I feel whenever I’m asked to reveal my full name. Most people love to share their names with others, but the mere thought of discussing my middle moniker reduces me to a trembling, airborne four-year-old.

Granted, Jill, my first name, rhymes with ill, kill, pill, and shrill, and is associated with a little girl who lacks the ability to successfully walk down a hill, but despite these challenges, I actually prefer Jill to my more melodic middle name. (more…)

Yesterday, as I was writing about the favorite names on nameberry, it seemed as if all was in perfect harmony and solidarity, complete sweetness and sunshine on the site, and that nameberry.com was as tranquil a place as Mayberry R.F.D.

Not totally true.

Turns out that some visitors are as passionately opposed to some of the popular names on the site as others are passionately in favor of them.  And so a kind of rebel thread was set up called Secret Name Heresies, where people could voice–make that vent–their negative feelings.  And vent is what they/you have been doing, often in EMPHATIC CAPITAL letters.  Not surprisingly, since our opinions are formed from our individual experiences, there were some who disliked a particular name because of, say, an unshakable association with an obnoxious high school classmate, or with a Disney character they will forever attach to its name.  Or in some cases a simple dislike of its image or sound.

Here, from the varied responses, are a few choice, disgruntled, examples–some of which we found hilarious:

GIRLS

ARABELLA   –  Sounds like some made-up Disney princess who lives in Arabia.

ASTRID  –  I liked this before The Office.

BRONWYN  –  I knew a very odd Bronwyn in high school.  I only ever think of her.

CECILIA  –  I have a slight lisp–Ce-ce-lia sounds AWFUL when I say it.

CHARLOTTE  –  Whenever I see Charlotte, I just see cHARLOTte,

DAISY –  I love this name but for a pet.

DELILAH  — I’m not a Delilah fan.  If I’m not reminded of the Biblical story, I’m reminded of that annoying radio host, Delilah.

EVELYN  –  It’s still 100% nursing home to me.

FREYA  –  I HATE Freya!  I only think of frayed fabric.

GUINEVERE  –  Waaay too regal.

JUNE  –  I’m not a fan of June, but love Jane.

OLIVE  –  Olive?  As in black olives, green olives and extra virgin olive oil?  No thank you.
– I just don’t understand why you would name your daughter after a small green appetizer.

OPHELIA  –  I’m not an Ophelia fan, not only because of the “I’ll feel ya” teasing but because I have a habit of putting the prefixes of “hem” and “ped” before it.

POPPY –  I’m all for nature names but this is way too close to “puppy,” not to mention the association with opiates.
– The words “seed muffin” follow this in my head.
– This is what we call my Dad instead of Grandpa, so no.

SADIE  –  Reminds me of S & M.

VIOLA  –  Means rape in Spanish.

WILLOW  –  This would be a massive problem if she was chubby.
– I HATE Willow! It’s a 100% Palin to me, and just…ick.

BOYS

DUNCAN  –  Donuts.
             — Sounds like it should be the name of a thick, chubby boy.

ELIJAH  –  The only Elijah I have ever known was a girl, so it sounds really girly to me

EZRA  –  It looks like a typo.

FELIX  –  This is a cat’s name only.

GUS  –  Just ugly and not right for a little boy–reminds me of Augustus Gloop.
          — The big, fat mouse from Cinderella to me–Gus-Gus

JASPER  –  Seems like a girl’s name to me.
— 101 Dalmatians, anyone?

KILLIAN  –  Not a fan of Killian or any other name beginning with a synonym of murder

OSCAR  –Oscar is still 100% grouch to me.

OTIS  –  Too hickish for someone who lives in rural Nebraska and gets labeled a hick for that alone.

SEBASTIAN  –  Crab from Disney movie.

THEO  –  I hate Theo!  I love Theodore but won’t use it because I hate Theo!

Sometimes pre-natal nickname stories have a happy ending. For instance, when my British mother-in-law was pregnant with my husband, she was planning to follow the family tradition of using the initials C and R for the names of the boys in the family. Dad was Roy Colin, and they settled on Roger Clive for their first son. The only thing was that all through the pregnancy, her in-laws insisting on referring to the fetus as Christopher Robin, as in “How’s little Christopher Robin doing?” In the end, they heard this so often that when the time came, he couldn’t be anything but Christopher Robin–and their second son became Roger Clive.

Granted, that isn’t really a nickname example–this is more about the sometimes silly pet names we give our babies-to-be which shouldn’t be allowed into the delivery room. Think of little Peanut Rademacher, son of General Hospital star Ingo. Now picture him calling up a girl for a date and saying “Hi, my name is Peanut Rademacher.” It seems that, according to the dad, “We were calling him that when he was in mommy” and they couldn’t let it go.

Of course the individual names people use in pregnancy are infinite, but here are a few not-to-go-on-the-birth-certificate examples I’ve run across. (And bear in mind the title of one of our favorite blogs–”You can’t call it ‘it’!”

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BABY DUMPLING
BEAN
BINKY
BOOBIE
BUMPKIN, LUMPKIN, PUMPKIN
BUMPO
BUMPY, JUMPY
BUNNY
CHICKPEA
CLETUS (the fetus)
EMBRY
FISHY
FRISKY
GIBLET, NIBLET
GREMLIN
JUNEBUG
JUNIOR
LAMBKIN
LOLLIPOP
MONKEY
MUNCHKIN
NUGGET
PEANUT
PEEWEE
PIE
POPPET
PIXEL, PIXIE
POOH
PUDDING
SCHMOO
SHRIMP
SMIDGE
SNOOKIE, SNOOKS
SPROUT
SQUIRT
SWEETPEA
TOOTSIE, TOOTSIE ROLL
WEENIE

You probably have one or two of your own to add to the list.