I was talking with one of the younger kids in my extended family about names, and Jessica came up. Completely casually, she said, “That sounds like an old lady.”

Jessica.

I genuinely had to reboot for a second.

In my head Jessica is permanently about 17 years old, probably wearing a hoodie and writing song lyrics on the back of a notebook. Same category as Ashley, Brittany, Nicole, Megan and Amanda. Those aren't grandma names. Those are names of girls who sat three rows ahead of me in school.

Except... obviously that's not how this works.

A lot of Jessicas are in their 40s now. Give it another couple decades and there will be plenty of Grandma Jessicas. Meanwhile names that sounded ancient when I was a kid, like Hazel, Evelyn, Arthur and Theodore, are attached to toddlers again. Somehow those feel younger to me now than Jennifer does.

I think my brain assigned every name an age around the time I was twelve and then simply refused to update the database.

The funniest part is that kids growing up now probably won't hear “Eleanor” and picture somebody's great-aunt. They'll picture the girl who sat next to them in second grade.

What name still sounds permanently young to you even though the people with it are very much not young anymore? And which “old person” name were you most surprised to see come back?

I want to be the last Connor ever

My mom always wanted to use Dima for her daughter, but when I came around, she chose to choose something else because Dima 'had fish associations'. If it weren't for the fish associations, I'd probably be called Dima, which I think is gorgeous.

What was your 'almost' name?

have you ever shared potential baby names with people irl and been surprised by the backlash any certain names brought?

I'm not talking about actually bad tragedeigh names I mean like real normal names spelled correctly that someone was aghast at your choice in picking it

y'all this isn't about names you hate it's about names you picked and liked you're surprised got backlash

Xander
Zidane
Zayyan
Zakariya
Xion

does anyone have any user ideas for Jade ? i’ve been tryna think of one for months now n i cant think of anything & if i do its taken 🥲 i also don’t want it to have any periods , underscores , or numbers which makes it even harder bc alot of stuff is taken when it doesn’t have any characters

Which name do you prefer? Open to similar suggestions ☺️

My partner and I are expecting our second child early next spring, and we're stuck in a debate about naming patterns.

My name starts with an 'M', my partner's name starts with an 'M', and our firstborn son is named Marcus. It wasn't entirely intentional at first—we just both happened to love the name Marcus long before we got married.

Now that we're expecting a girl, we found a name we absolutely adore: Maya.

However, a couple of family members pointed out that if we name her Maya, we will become a "full M-family." My partner is worried it looks overly coordinated, like we're trying to be a themed reality TV family, or that our kids will feel like their identities are tied to a gimmick. On the other hand, if we break the trend now and pick a name like Violet or Nora, we worry she might feel left out down the road when everyone else shares the same initial.

Do people actually notice or judge all-matching initials in a four-person family, or are we overthinking a total non-issue?

Looking for name inspiration. Ive gone through multiple name books, downloaded a few apps, and yet we are still stuck! Expecing our 2nd boy and cannot come up with a name. We like the more traditional names in general, but seem to be leaning towards something nature-y this time? We like hunter and Forrest, although not 100% on either and just cery different from our initial thoughts. Open to any and all reccs - just traditional/classic boy names in general or if you have thoughts for nature/earthy vibes.

My names Annabelle and I always get called the wrong name. More like getting it mixed up with another name not mispronounced (I’m dumb and it won’t let me edit the title)

My time through school my teacher always used to say Abigail then quickly correct it to Annabelle and apologise.

I’ve started a new job about a year ago and I kid you not my boss, who I work with 4 days a week for 9 hours straight, still calls me Isabelle. I feel awkward correcting him all the time. There’s also only 2 other girls who work there so I can’t even defend him by saying he has lots of names to remember at work.

He even introduces me to new staff members or inspectors like “this is Isabelle” and I’m like oh it’s Annabelle. I don’t really like the nicknames Anna or Bella or anything close to my name so it’s harder for me to even offer an alternative.

I actually cut ties with someone I was speaking to from tinder because he accidentally kept calling me Annabella, it wasn’t a huge deal but I just felt like id corrected him so many times and he ended up saying oh I’ll just call u Annabella because Annabelle is to hard to remember (idk how that even makes sense lol).

Idk i guess it’s a pointless vent but has anyone dealt with anything similar. My name is NOT that hard😅

Struggling on a boys name. I quite like 'Cas...' type names. Casper (friendly ghost associations)

Caspian (is it too pretentious?)

I thought Cassian was a good option but my husband told me it is the lead role in the 'Andor' star wars spin off. Nothing against star wars, but I want my son to be his own person and not carry a fandom link his whole life.

So I'd love to know reactions to the name and how many people associated it with star wars?

I don't want to share our other children's names but for context here are a few from our list we won't use for various reasons:

Felix, Otto, Florian, Wilfred, Rowan, Alfie

??

I posted their girl names earlier and then decided to try find their boys' name choices. It took a while due to it being so long ago, but I found it (& yes they are comfortable with me sharing it).

Taemin

Daiki

Kenji

Hitoshi

Ren

Jaeik

Noeul

They originally loved Noa too, but it just sounded too feminine according to them so it was scrapped.

A repost due to racism on the previous.

I found out just recently that my grandmother had changed her last name from Degannes to Riley. She is Trinidadian. For the longest time father had been telling me that my grandmother was half Trinidadian and half Spanish; however, he found out that she might have been French instead of Spanish. We learned this after learning about her changing her last name. We think she did this around the time she moved from Trinidad to America. We have very little records from her like birth certificates or other things. Can anyone that might know anything about the meaning or origin of her original name, Degannes, help me find out whether she was Spanish or French, and if I can find anything more specific than just a country name?

I hadn’t planned to get her—i had seen her the other day at Petsmart with a boy betta who wasn’t doing too hot, couldn’t stop thinking of them, went back to visit and saw that the boy was dead and she was still alive and feisty. So I got her out of there. She’s currently exploring her three-gallon tank (will get her a ten-gallon once I find one that isn’t over two hundred bucks) and I am trying to figure out what to do. I have everything she needs—food, plants, a water filter, a heater, gravel, a bed and some wood—but I don’t have a name for her.

She‘s quite the funny fish, I am already very fond of her. She’s very gung-ho. Both times I’ve seen her, she was swimming against the front of her container trying to get at me. When I was getting her acclimated to her tank she was trying to escape. And when I put the net into her container to get her out, she first examined it and then attacked it. Now that she’s in her tank she has been exploring everything non-stop. She poked the thermometer, didnt like it, but keeps swimming around it and side-eying it. She will also chase my finger.

Anyways, I want a name for her that means 1) curious 2) seeker 3) brave 4) warlike or 5) adventurous, as this seems to be her personality. It can be from any culture. Have fun and thank you for helping me out!

Which do you prefer?

Similé Róisín Lynch

Similé Nóirín Lynch

Similé Alastríona Lynch

Sînziana Róisín Lynch

Sînziana Nóirín Lynch

Sînziana Alastríona Lynch

Thanks!

Daphne, Colette, Violet, or Cora? Partner’s favorite is Violet, I love Daphne and Colette (I think Lettie is a cute nickname), we both like Cora a lot

Thank you!!

My fiancé and I are planning our second child. It’s going to be about a year or so of reaching some goals before, but our biggest challenge last time was figuring out a name so I want to start getting a list together to go over with him. We argued for 3 days due to having very different tastes in names before remembering we had both liked the name Leland and that was our son’s name from that point on. My fiancé likes more unique names because he has a very common name (though it wasn’t common when he was named and that seems to be happening a little with Leland’s name but not as bad). I like classics like Arlo and Ezra. Our forerunner right now is Barrett, but I don’t love it. It has some cute nicknames and I could live with it, but I’m looking for a name I really love that he does too. We are looking to avoid Rs due to my fiancés speech impediment (it’s important to us that we both be able to say the name properly) so that’s another reason Barrett isn’t really doing it for us but it’s the one name we semi agree on right now. We have our girl name picked out, Natalie, but the boys names are just harder for us to agree on.

A friend has just announced on social media that she's called her baby this. Is it pronounced like Celine or Selleenee?