Upcoming Babies 20: So Many Babies, So Many Spirits to Crush

[NachosFlandersStyle]

3 hours ago, SassyPants said:

I hate unique spellings mainly because of the thought that a person’s name would forever be misspelled. What a lifetime pita. 

I used to fact-check for a minor publication, and that sometimes included calling people up to make sure we'd spelled their name correctly. I can remember a number of people with particularly interesting spellings, and the defeated sigh that each one let out when asked to confirm.

Edited August 2, 2021 by NachosFlandersStyle

[postscript]

On 7/30/2021 at 5:15 PM, VBOY9977 said:

Rachael Forsyth Tustill had Agnes Joy on July 20th. I think they had previously said it would be Agnus but changed it to Agnes. I definitely like Agnes better.

I also noticed that Madison Keyes is on the list. Her name isn’t there but she is listed as Nathan Bates’ future sister in law. She wrote on Instagram that their daughter will be named Bexley Mae. Definitely one of the worst names I’ve seen. 

Thank goodness they changed Agnus to Agnes. I can’t help wondering if Agnus was meant to refer to Agnus Dei (which sounds very Catholic) or if it was just a misspelling. Not personally a fan of the name, which sounds very old lady-ish, but it’s due for a comeback.

Bexley - ugh, that’s horrible, but it’s on-trend with all the place names and names with extraneous x’s and y’s. I hope they don’t attempt to engineer a Biblical meaning for it. “We like the name” is a perfectly good reason for using  it. 

[indianabones]

2 hours ago, postscript said:

Thank goodness they changed Agnus to Agnes. I can’t help wondering if Agnus was meant to refer to Agnus Dei (which sounds very Catholic) or if it was just a misspelling.

I'm 90% sure it was a religious reference- I think I read some comment about it on Joy's YouTube channel. The Duggars and their circle have been getting into Latin more the past year, particularly Jeremy (remember when he tried to substitute "Imago Dei" for "Black Lives Matter"?)

[TuringMachine]

I would misread Agnus as Angus every time.

[fundiefan]

3 hours ago, indianabones said:

I'm 90% sure it was a religious reference- I think I read some comment about it on Joy's YouTube channel. The Duggars and their circle have been getting into Latin more the past year, particularly Jeremy (remember when he tried to substitute "Imago Dei" for "Black Lives Matter"?)

WTF? Are you serious?

I really thought the Duggars had reached the pinnacle of disgusting. I guess I forgot to take into account the marriages of their  spawn & the garbage being added to their repertoire. 

 

[Katzchen24]

17 hours ago, SorenaJ said:

Bexley is a London Borough. Have they even ever been to Bexley? When people give their child a place name, I'm just gonna assume that's where it was conceived. 

I wonder what people's obsession is with naming their girls B-names after a place in UK. Bexley, Bristol, Brixton, Brighton. 

What's next? Ballymena? Blackpool? 

I think Lister from Red Dwarf wanted to name his child Bexley. Maybe they're Red Dwarf fans?

[tabitha2]

These young women are also overly fond of the middle name Mae have you noticed?  

[SorenaJ]

49 minutes ago, tabitha2 said:

These young women are also overly fond of the middle name Mae have you noticed?  

Mae is very very popular. It must sound and look nice to a lot of people. Personally I prefer middle names with a bit more history behind them (not saying Mae can’t have that, but the sheer popularity suggest people just liked the sound/how it looks). 
 

It is interesting that the pool of middle names seem much smaller than that of first names. First names seem to have more variety. 
 

I read a post about how names with the stress on the second syllable are often chosen as middle names, because most names have stress on the first syllable, so it flows better. Like Marie, Nicole, Michelle, Louise. E.g JAna maRIE, flows nicely. So that’s another way of choosing middle names.  
 

Speaking of weird spellings, I know a Magnuz Jamez. Not his real name, but s replaced with z at the end of both names. Yes the mother was a teen when she had him and thought it would look super cool. 

[Nothing if not critical]

3 hours ago, SorenaJ said:

It is interesting that the pool of middle names seem much smaller than that of first names. First names seem to have more variety.

You may be right there - I know that here in Germany the names Sophie/Sophia and Marie/Maria keep showing up in the lists of popular names, simply because so many people pick them as middle names. There seems to be an insane amount of Elisa Maries and Mia Sophies and so on. Maybe people feel the need to add something "classic" to their more unusual first name choices.

[EyesOpen]

We used my grandma’s name for my daughter’s middle names (all family names for middle names… ) it actually doesnt flow as nicely as other choices but it was more important to include her in the naming of our daughter. I considered using her name as a first name but she asked me not to because it’s quite unique and she said in 85 years it’s been tiring to constantly have it be misspelled and Mispronounced and she could never find a pencil with her name like the other kids ?

[Smee]

When naming our third child, we gave her a 4-syllable first name and so initially I went looking for a one-syllable name to use in the middle to avoid making the whole thing too long. Tuend out the list of one-syllable girls’ names and the list of super common “filler” middle names has a lot of overlap: Rose, Grace, May/Mae, Anne, Jane/June, Belle/Elle, Eve, Faye, Leigh, Ruth, Faith.

Around the time my son was born, I knew three babies in one month named Isabella Grace.

[JermajestyDuggar]

I like a lot of popular middle names as first names. But they are mostly used as middle names. I like Marie, Mae, Jane, and June as first names. 

[tabitha2]

Waiting for some family  to think it’s so cute!1! And clever to use Jan  April  Mae and June for a girls. With some flower middle name to boot. 

[postscript]

7 hours ago, SorenaJ said:

Mae is very very popular. It must sound and look nice to a lot of people. Personally I prefer middle names with a bit more history behind them (not saying Mae can’t have that, but the sheer popularity suggest people just liked the sound/how it looks). 
 

It is interesting that the pool of middle names seem much smaller than that of first names. First names seem to have more variety. 
 

I read a post about how names with the stress on the second syllable are often chosen as middle names, because most names have stress on the first syllable, so it flows better. Like Marie, Nicole, Michelle, Louise. E.g JAna maRIE, flows nicely. So that’s another way of choosing middle names.  
 

Speaking of weird spellings, I know a Magnuz Jamez. Not his real name, but s replaced with z at the end of both names. Yes the mother was a teen when she had him and thought it would look super cool. 

Mae is one of those older names that’s returning to popularity. I had a great-aunt with that name, born in the late 1880s. However, it fell out of fashion circa 1910-1920 and is now returning to favor, along with a lot of other names I’d consider grandma names. I find naming fashions fascinating.

I personally don’t care for single-syllable middle names, as they often feel like they’ve been inserted just for the flow.  When I was a kid, half the girls had Lynn as a middle name. For those who didn’t, the middle was often Ann or Beth. Now it’s more likely to be Grace or Mae/May. All lovely names, just overused as middles. However, whenever I hear a baby name I don’t care for, I remind myself I’m not the one living with the name. 

[FaithAndReason]

When I was growing up in the late 70s, I actually thought there were only three middle names allowed for girls: Marie, Lynn, Anne . All of the girls I knew in elementary, I mean all of them, had one of these three middle names so my little girl self thought it was the rules. ? Clearly I didn't know about trends, or anything, really.

[smittykins]

4 hours ago, tabitha2 said:

Waiting for some family  to think it’s so cute!1! And clever to use Jan  April  Mae and June for a girls. With some flower middle name to boot. 

I worked with someone who was due in April and born in May or vice versa(can’t remember now, it was years ago), so her parents named her April Mae.

[fundiefan]

26 minutes ago, smittykins said:

I worked with someone who was due in April and born in May or vice versa(can’t remember now, it was years ago), so her parents named her April Mae.

I worked with a woman named April May. She wasn't born with that name - the May part - that was her husband's last name & she took at marriage.

I also grew up in the 70's & 80's with people who only had Ann, Lynn & Marie for middle names. Neither my sister nor I had any of those middle names, but cousins did, friends did, friend's siblings did...everyone. 

My BFF was Lisa Ann. And the only thing that was off about that was that she wasn't Lisa Marie because every single Lisa on the planet in the 70's & 80's  was Lisa Marie. Her older sister's middle name was Marie so her parent's didn't want to use it again. And they lamented the fact they didn't know Lisa would come along & save the "right" middle name for her. 

We also had neighbors with the last name David & they had a ton of kids. I don't remember exactly how many , but I remember many of their names.  I assume they thought they were cute when they named their oldest son David D. David. (they gave him a middle initial, not name but, just wait....) because the kids after....Ann Marie, Marie Lynn (who was in my class) Lynn Ann, Michael David David, John David David (who was my sister's 8th grade boyfriend), Joseph David David. 

They were clearly having fun at their children's expense but the rest of the world thought they were insane. Even us kids knew how crazy it all was. At least those of us who knew all the kids. 

Edited August 3, 2021 by fundiefan

[KWLand]

We talked about using Mae.  Great-Grandmas middle name.  We have several friends who used names that I never heard of before or since  The strangest one, IMO, is Able.  Not Abel, but Able.  
 

 

[JermajestyDuggar]

I think back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, parents probably didn’t realize how popular some first and middle names were. Nowadays we have the internet. But back then everyone probably realized how pretty Jennifer Lynn or Jessica Marie sounded. So they all used those names. Nowadays people don’t want to use as popular names but they also want to name their children after family members. So the first name is much less popular and varied. But the middle names are probably named after family members. So even today you have Harper Lynn or Lucy Mae after their mothers or grandmothers. 

Edited August 3, 2021 by JermajestyDuggar

[Alisamer]

49 minutes ago, FaithAndReason said:

When I was growing up in the late 70s, I actually thought there were only three middle names allowed for girls: Marie, Lynn, Anne . All of the girls I knew in elementary, I mean all of them, had one of these three middle names so my little girl self thought it was the rules. ? Clearly I didn't know about trends, or anything, really.

LOL those are, though not in order, the middle names my sisters and I got in the mid-late 70's. 

And my first name? Amy. THE most commong girls name at the time. My last name is incredibly common, too. To the point that people sometimes imply my name is fake because it's so generic. You can probably figure out all three of my names by this post, actually, but it's generic enough I am not worried about it. There are just too many of us out there with the same exact name! We tease our parents that they named me Default First Name, Default Middle Name, Default Last Name. 

I don't think they quite realized how popular the names were, at the time. My sisters did a little better - they have default middle names but their first names are slightly less common. They start with J, but aren't Jennifer or Jessica!

I always thought the people who got interesting middle names were lucky. I went to school with a girl whose middle name was Dulcinea. No one could ever spell it, but it was pretty.

12 minutes ago, fundiefan said:

My BFF was Lisa Ann. And the only thing that was off about that was that she wasn't Lisa Marie because every single Lisa on the planet in the 70's & 80's  was Lisa Marie. Her older sister's middle name was Marie so her parent's didn't want to use it again. And they lamented the fact they didn't know Lisa would come along & save the "right" middle name for her. 

I know a Lísa Anne, she's younger than me, though, and she's from Iceland. Her mom is from the US and wanted her to have first and middle names that work both places, since her last name Dad'snamedottir is enough to throw off some Americans. She spells it just plain Lisa in the US though.

My grandma wanted my youngest sister to have the same middle name as my middle sister, because she preferred the way the first name flowed with it and thought it was perfect. My mom vetoed it, and youngest got the last remaining of the three default girl middle names.

[Bluebirdbluebell]

In the US, only the first names are ranked in terms of popularity. By talking to people, you can see how popular certain middles, but they're not ranked like first names. 

Mae is more popular now. Erin and Ben Napier of HGTV's Hometown named their baby Mae this year. They have another daughter named Helen.

Edited August 4, 2021 by Bluebirdbluebell

[AliC]

In Louisiana, it seems like every other girl has the middle name Marie (meeeee), Renee, Nicole, and if you're lucky, Elizabeth.

Good news, though, Grace is starting to gain popularity as a middle name here. Yay variety?

[IsmeWeatherwax]

My Dad, my Aunt and one of my sisters dont have a middle name at all. I always think thats so weird. I gave all of my kids 2 middle names just in case of name emergencies lol

[PlentyOfJesusFishInTheSea]

The Lynn(e)/Marie/Ann(e) middle name trend lasted well into the 80s here in southwestern Ontario.

I used to feel left out because my nerdy parents gave me and sibling two names each that could work independently but sound like a lot when they're together.

From my friends' kids, I don't see a lot of 'filler' middle names. Often the wackier/more unique or maybe family name seems to go in the middle these days. This is what I'm planning with my soon-to-be-born kid: boring traditional first name, wackier choice for the middle.

[hollyandivy]

I have no middle name - my grandmother has 8 middle names, so signing any legal documents was a nightmare, it resulted in no middle names for her own children or grandchildren. The great grandchildren all  have middle names.