A Teenberry Name Nerd’s Path to Enlightenment
By Josie Crocker aka whirligig
How would you like to have a daughter who arrives home from school declaring she has ‘fallen in love’ only to find out that she means with a name and not a spotty, immature member of the opposite sex? How would you like a daughter that returns from a shopping trip with ‘The Brilliant Book of Baby Names’ (aka The Baby Name Bible), and tells of how her friend thought she was joking when she said she was purchasing this book? Are you relieved that it wasn’t a pair of £200 heels? Would you rather be banning her from going out drinking on a Friday night or ban her from spending her night on Nameberry?
I am that daughter–that name obsessed crazy daughter that gets a weird look from the librarian as she asks where the pregnancy section is (full of naming goodness) and gets up earlier than usual with cries of ‘I need to print out this name list before school’ instead of spending hours painting my nails and straightening my hair. Here is a brief timeline of my naming history–from the innocent registers of role-play to the beautiful and plain ridiculous.
Jessyca– Yes, I really did write this in one of my notebooks. Along with Eimylee (Emily), Allicea (Alicia) and Bethanie. These weren’t just misspellings though, because I had written them correctly earlier in the book. Excuse my bad behaviour please.
Harry, Milly, Molly and Joshua– In my next set of notebooks, I seem to have written large lists of ordinary names. It looks like nothing really but when I studied the names closer, I found that they were actually people that I knew or had heard of ordered into lists. Maybe this was me subconsciously trying to sort out all the people in my life into a structured way.
Ursula– This name features throughout my naming records. It is the name of a fabric doll I received one Christmas and was never renamed as were my least favourite Polly Pockets (my favourites were always Rick and Lila) or Barbies were. If you are interested in sibsets, my sister’s doll was called Olivia.
Kerria– I found this in a gardening book on the morning before we went on holiday (I obviously needed a pre-holiday naming fix). The rest on this list were obviously book-based (Caspian from Narnia and Daphne from Malory Towers).
Aliona–A name from real-life again. (How did I manage before Nameberry?) This particular one is a professional dancer’s name from Strictly Come Dancing. Others on the list include Tizzie (from Nevermore) , Gabriella (High School Musical) and Amethyst (Rainbow Fairy books).
Acacia–This is the name that I drew out of a hat to name my cousin . Hebe was also in there, suggesting that I liked nature names at that moment in time. She was named Imogen which leads me to…
Imogen, Cessia and Kirrily-Names that were regularly featured in my story plans for a series of boarding school novels I was ‘going to write’.
Ava, Emmy, Lauren– This was just before I discovered Nameberry. I did not have access to any popularity lists at the time and consequently Ava and Lauren were axed off the list quickly but I still enjoy Emmy as a nickname for Emmeline.
Jasper– Oh, and I can now imagine the types of faces my fellow Berries would have had when they saw that I liked this for a girl. Some of the names I put in my signature when I first joined Nameberry were absolutely ridiculous! I even wanted twins called Elektra Blue & Indigo Star (and blue wasn’t even my favourite colour).
Merida and Samson– How delightful it would be to meet twins with these names! I also liked Primrose in this naming era. I still love all these names but maybe a little less than I did then.
Wren-This brings me up to the present day where my favourite name is Wren. It is unfussy but elegant with lots of good associations; unusual but not unheard of and easy to spell. What more could a 15-year-old girl want? Probably a lot more (money, phone, clothes), unless you happen to be the English, teenage, name maniac called Whirligig.
Josie Crocker, known on Nameberry as whirligig, is an English teen who likes creativity but not krey8tivity. Her favorite thread is the Think/Say thread because you can be brutally honest. And no–she’s not the girl in the illustration.