For the past couple of years, Charlotte has been at or near the top of the list of Berry favorites, and it’s not hard to see why.  It’s a name at the very center of the Sweet Spot of names with a ton of great attributes and references—literary, historic, and royal.  She’s demure, yet solid and strong, classic but not stuffy, British with the slightest trace of a French accent–one of the very best classic girls’ names.

She has so much going for her that we thought that she deserved a whole blog to herself.

History

Like her cousin Caroline, Charlotte is a feminine form of Charles, but arrived there in a roundabout way.  Charlotte is actually the English and French version of the Italian Carlotta, itself a feminine version of Carlo, the Italian Charles, and has been in English-speaking use since the seventeenth century.  In the fifteenth century, Carlotta of Savoy married King Louis XI of France, where her name became Gallicized as Charlotte, a form which then emigrated to England during the next century.

Read More

Appellation Mountain‘s Abby Sandel wonders if maybe we’re overthinking the naming process, and in this week’s The Nameberry 9 she gives some examples of celebs who have gone back to basics.

Has it really become harder to name a child?

It seems to be the theme in recent days.  Over at Offbeat Mama, Caitlin wrote about her struggles to name – and eventually rename – her youngest child.  The New Zealand Herald reported the same thing, noting a 12% increase in parents filing to legally change a child’s name prior to his or her second birthday.

My maternal grandparents named their first three children in accordance with family and cultural custom.  My dad’s mom, undecided, pulled his middle name out of a hat.  As for my parents, they felt no obligation to honor anyone, and chose short, peppy, upbeat names for their three daughters – until along came a son, and suddenly, family names mattered.  If any child ever went nameless for months, or if aunts were divided over accusations of name theft, I’ve never heard the tale.

Read More

Read More

Time again for one of my absolute favorite activities—rounding up the names that Berries have chosen over the past three-month period.  These are the winning picks after all the options were weighed– so often the result of enlightened discussions with and suggestions from fellowberries.

Today’s Quarterly Report includes an even more than usual range of fabulous choices, for both singletons and multiples–and we often get to see the sibsets these newbies fit into.

We also have some multiples of our own: three Spring babyberries each named Ivy and Miles, and two each called Charlotte, Cora, Eloise, Jasper, Leo, Oliver and Samuel.  Plus the similar but differently spelled Alice and Alys, Eleanor and Elinore, Mathilde and Matilda, Vivien and Vivienne, and Edmond and Edmund.

Some of the more intriguingly unusual choices: girls named Bennett , Connelly and Greyson, boys named Hawthorne and Jones, and distinctive middle names Sherlock, Capri, Dover, Huckleberry, and Adventure.

Read More

This week, Appellation Mountain‘s Abby Sandel talks about the almost-names that might have been if circumstances were just a little bit different. 

Do you ever imagine an alternate life?  Specifically, what you might have been named, or what you might have named your children if your life was just slightly different?

My husband’s taste in given names is buckets more conservative than mine.  From the color of their eyes to the shape of their toes, I cannot imagine our children even a scintilla changed.  And yet imagine just one twist in life’s journey, and all of a sudden they’re Dexter and Domino instead of Alex and Clio.

The given name that I so actively disliked as a child was chosen, in large part, because of a clumsy surname, poorly exported into English without harmonizing the improbable consonant clusters.  What if my parents had decided to overlook the glaring limitations of a let-me-spell-it-for-you last name?  Or what if my ancestors had blanded out their surname to something that accommodated any number of appellations?

Read More