The Scottish Registry General’s Office has released the country’s most popular names for 2009, showing very little change at the top.  Jack and Sophie remained in first place, and the girls’ list wasn’t so dissimilar to ours, with Olivia, Ava, Emily, Chloe and Emma all in the top ten, along with Lucy, Katie, Amy and Erin.  For the boys, there were long-term Scottish favorites heading the list: Lewis, James, Liam, Logan, Ryan, Cameron and Callum (which would have been higher if merged with the Calum spelling) coming up behind Jack, plus the biblical Daniel and Aaron.

It gets more interesting as you look at some of the names that are rising choices for Scots parents.  One of the biggest leaps was taken by Miley (tailed by Mylea, Mylee, Mylie and Myley), which jumped 190 places, showing Hannah Montana’s tremendous international clout.  The biggest climber for the boys was Owen, which is also moving up in the US.

Some of the other noteworthy names on the rise in Scotland–showing a persistent preference for nickname names:

EVIE

GRACIE

LAYLA

LUCIE

MAISIE

MAYA/MYA

MILLIE

POPPY (more…)

Journalist Laura Dunphy, today’s guest blogger, enlightens us on what might not be so bad about your Mom hating your baby’s name.

My mother hates my daughter’s name.

And – don’t tell her this, please – I think it’s made me a better person.

My husband and I always thought that if we had a girl we’d call her Sophie Madeline. But when I was expecting our daughter, we decided we’d rather balance the growing popularity of Sophie with a more distinctive French name in the middle: Mireille.

When we officially announced the arrival of Sophie Mireille, my poshest friends raved. “What a lovely, very French-sounding name!” my globetrotting European pal Beatriz enthused. “Mireille is a fantastic, seriously underused name,” said Ann, an editor at a major entertainment magazine. My former boss Michelle, a retail executive who is always fabulously attired and never hands out an insincere compliment, gushed endlessly about how much she loved it. Oh, the delight!

Leave it to my mother to put an end to my glee. As we sat chatting around the dinner table one night, she mentioned that a family friend’s daughter, Zoe, was being called Zozo. I scrunched my face and asked, “Zozo? What kind of a nickname is that? It’s not even shorter than the original name.” To which my mother replied, “I don’t think you should be saying anything about anyone’s name.”

Stunned, I asked for an explanation, only to be informed that Mireille was not a real name. I believe my mother’s exact words were, “It’s horrible. We hate it.” My father nodded in solemn agreement. Apparently at some point over the course of the previous decade, I’d mentioned the name Sophie Madeline, and my parents had gotten attached to their vision of a fantasy granddaughter. As in, one with a name they had heard of before. (more…)