Here’s A New Way to Honor Grandpa

I think -son names are very handsome on boys. I agree that it makes a nice take on a ‘Junior’ name or as a way of honouring ancestors.
I dislike them on girls, to be honest, mostly because I can’t get past the “son of” part. I feel the same way about “Mc/Mac” names on girls for the same reason.

Speaking of which, I think a lot of “son of” surnames from other countries also make pretty cool names for boys.
“Mc”, “Fitz” and “-sen” names, for example, as well as the blended Welsh ‘ap/ab’ names (Bowen, Bevan, Broderick, Powell, Price).

I agree with Elea – a “son” name for a girl makes me do a mental double-take. (Except Allison, which has been around since medieval times at least.) But I do like these names on boys when they’re family names.

My son’s name is Kelson. It’s a nautical name. I think son names on a girl are absolutely ludicrous.

I see these more as last names, or if you are using your maiden name as their middle name.

My son’s name is Kelson. It’s a nautical name. I’m definitely not a fan of -son names on a girl. Even Allison.

My son’s name is Harrison after his grandfather Harry. My father-in-law was named after his uncle who died during the liberation of Holland in WWII. Me and my husband both love connections to our family.

Me and my husband just finished watching Dexter season four and Dexter names his son Harrison after his father Harry. We look like super Dexter fans! haha

I love -son names. Unfortunately it would be cruel for us to use one. Johnson isn’t a name you want to place on a growing boy!
I don’t mind Alison and Adison for females, but Mason on a girl is just wrong.

I do not feel strongly against a girl having a -son name at all. We do not have patronymic surnames here, and we don’t have an analog -dr or -dottir, etc. kinds of names for girls. A girl is given her father’s last name as a matter of custom, and if he is not actually Harry’s son and doesn’t know who Harry was, if his daughter’s last name can be Harrison, so can her first name. It’s just my opinion.

There are other patronymics that are not quite so obvious in English, -son MEANING SON, but perhaps aren’t also used in given names as much. I think it might be peculiar to some cultures to even use a surname for a first name, particularly a patronymic with no real association to the pater whose nym it was, I mean many many generations removed.

I think this is a case where females lose again culturally – most surnames sound like a masculine name, at least in the Western World, and people are uncomfortable mixing it up, and it’s true that parents of boys are shy to give him a name some girls have (why are we uptight about it?), but a boy, according to custom, always can keep his surname, and he can keep another surname as his first name “just because it sounds like a boy’s name”, while a girl will change her name to her husband’s (again, according to custom) and will be accused of stealing or having an inappropriate name if she has a surname for a first name. I don’t know why we can’t be open and share names and not divide the gender-quality of names so severely. If a girl can have a last name with -son, she can have it as a first name as well. “Feminizing it” like making it -cyn or -sanne is sort of arbitrary, but I guess it helps people who are hung up on the -son part and are still trying to use a name they like for a girl in spite of its “meaning,” and I say it’s good.

I have never heard Dennison before. I guess we could use it if we have another boy since my father in law’s name is Dennis. But Dennison is definetly not my favorite of the -son names.

My niece would have been named Edison if she had been a boy. Named after an old relative named Edison. My nephew’s name is Gustav nn Gus, so if they would have had Edison then they would have had Gus and Ed. Glad she was a girl!

Good point, Karen. We do not have patronymic surnames in America, so does the -son ending really matter that much? Isn’t a -son name on a girl just as arbitrary as, say, Jameson on a boy with a father named Eric? The “son of” meaning doesn’t apply for either name, you know? Just sayin’.

I agree with Karen and Robot. We should cut and paste Karen’s reply every time this issue comes up, just to show the other side.

I don’t think the nonexistence of a patronymic naming system means that the meaning of a name becomes totally oblivious. There are still a lot of people who know that the name means son of XY. And especially because patronymic names are very common in English speaking countries (in Wikipedia’s list of the most common US surenames there are 11 patronomyc names among the top 20 – 8 if you don’t count the Spanish ones: Johnson, Williams, Jones, Davis, Wilson, Anderson, Jackson, Thompson, Rodriguez, Hernandez and Martinez) I don’t think it’s a great idea to give your daughter a name like “Emerson Jones” or “Addison Taylor”. But I might be a little biased because where I live (Germany) you don’t even use last names on boys; but then again Müller, Schneider and Jäger would sound a lot worse than Miller, Taylor and Hunter…

I personally myself don’t like – Son- names on girls. My Nephews name is Mason, and I just couldn’t picture this on a little girl. I love the name Kelson, this is what i’m going to be naming my son, when I have one. Some of other -son-name I like are:- Grayson, Kayson, Harrison.

I think that, with a few exceptions like Alison and Madison, all other “son” names should remain on the masculine side of the naming coin. A good, unique boys name is getting harder to find. Can’t we just agree to leave these to the boys?

I really can’t stand Tennyson, Addison, and Mason on a girl! The obvious unisex names like Ryan and Alex are tried and true. Parents need to stop taking all the good boys names and trying to make them into unique girls names. Because then we get to the point where the name is just uncomfortable for either to deal with, are you a boy or a girl?

I actually know a 40-something woman named Dennison. Her parents were WAY ahead of their time.

And I do want to point out that Allison doesn’t have the same origins as the “-son” surnames. Allison is a medieval English diminutive of the French form of Alice. It has always been feminine.

My 9 yo son is named Gibson. We named him after my uncle,grandfather and great grandfather. Other than in my family I had never heard of it as a first name.(It was my g,g,g grandma’s maiden name) I liked it because it was a family name and it wasn’t hard to spell/pronounce. Now there are 2 characters on TV with that first name. I was shocked the first time I heard the kids name on iCarly. A lot of these names are great strong names. I’m so glad they are becoming more popular.

Has anyone explored the different naming traditions in the North and the South? (East/West, too, for that matter.) In the context of these posts, however, what strikes me is how much more usual it is in the South to name a girl using a family last name–often her mother’s. Names that come to my mind are: Landis, Drayton, Larkin, Ripley, Curtis; these are all women whom I know.

I think it’s all about preference. How many people give their children ethnic names when the children have none of that particular ethnicity. My sister and I have Irish names, our brother Hebrew. We aren’t either. We’re of German, English and Native American decent.

@Annika- aw… “Emerson Jones” is at the top of our girls list. nn Emme. With one of the Top 8 most common last names on Earth… we need someone uncommon where we live. While she won’t be popular in Germany, Emerson sounds great here.

I also have a fondness for names ending in “N.” I think they mostly sound well together. we have an “-in”, “-an”, and “-on” and they roll nicely together.