Naming baby
Author: MAGGIE WOLFF PETERSON

Chances are, if your classmates in elementary school were named Lisa, Karen and Linda, or Michael, David and Jeffrey, you were born in the 1960s. If Jessica, Heather and Michelle, or Jason, Brian and Matthew were your classmates, you were born in the 1970s.
And if you went to school with Betty, Barbara and Shirley, or Donald, George and Thomas, your children probably have children of their own by now. Those were the top names for babies born in the 1930s, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration.
Names say a lot about you. When a child was born and even where, can be figured by his first name. Whereas Hunter was the third most popular name for boys last year in West Virginia, in New Mexico that honor went to Isaiah. Grace was the second most popular girl’s name in Minnesota, while in Puerto Rico, it was Alondra.
The current number-one name in Virginia and West Virginia is Jacob for boys, with Michael edging Jacob into the number-two spot in Maryland. For girls, Madison is the most popular name in all three states, as well as nationwide.
The other currently popular girls’ names nationwide are Hannah, Emma and Alexis. Filling out the top five for boys are Joshua, Matthew and Ethan.
Selecting baby names has long been the wishful practice of parents-to-be. Perhaps the baby should be named for a favorite great-aunt, a long-ago friend or a beloved place.
Perhaps the new baby should be named for a movie star, sports figure or musician. Today’s kindergarten teachers might look forward in six years to a classroom full of Leo’s (DiCaprio), Halle’s (Berry), Gordon’s (Jeff), Mia’s (Hamm), Shania’s (Twain) or Clay’s (Aiken).
These days, parents increasingly are selecting non-human monikers for their children, including Nike and Escalade, according to the SSA. In trendy Manhattan, parents are naming their kids for colors, including Aqua and Fuchsia, the Seattle Times reports.
Parents are picking names, like Jordan or Dakota, which fit either boys or girls. Or they are inventing names, like Shaquiecshia, that previously have belonged to nothing on this earth.
Subsequent babies challenge parents to come up with names that match the first babies’ names in sound, structure and history. For example, parents with a Mary and a Joseph would do better to name the next child Christopher than Shaquille. Twins and other multiple births challenge parents similarly, producing an Amy and Ainsley, Chad and Chase, or Jessica and Jeremy.
Baby-naming books have been a staple read for anxious parents for generations. Today’s parents may have used “The Best Baby Name Book in the Whole Wide World,” which was published in 1984, while “The Guinness Book of Names” came along two years later. But the leader in the ’80s was “Beyond Jennifer and Jason,” which acknowledged that era’s fashionable names by promising parents pages of other equally chic choices. Its prominence was solidified in 1998, when the book was updated and retitled with the names Madison and Montana, reflecting current naming trends.
Today, the Internet offers even more options. Type the words “baby names” into the Google search engine and be ready to receive more than 4.2 million links. You can search for names with ethnic significance or spiritual meaning, from Hindu to Hebrew. You can look up the most popular name in various countries (In Norway, it’s Julie for girls, Markus for boys; In Russia, it’s Alexandra and Dmitry.).
The site, yourbabysname.com, lists names from A to Z, offers matching names for multiple births up to quintuplets, and provides a thesaurus by which parents can search for strings of names with similar meanings. There’s even a site called unusual-baby-names.com.
Statistics from 1990 showed that more than 87 percent of boys and more than 80 percent of girls received one of the 100 most popular names at birth. Children with standard names likely will have others with the same name in their class. The upside of this is they won’t feel odd about what they’re called.
Children with unconventional names will have the luxury of having their names all to themselves, and may simultaneously hate being so individualized. Children with typical names, spelled unconventionally, will be burdened with pronouncing their names for people all of their lives.
Experts on baby naming suggest that parents anticipate the lifetime consequences of their selections. The name Adam Sanders Smith may sound distinguished, but the monogram he will have on his luggage, handkerchiefs and personalized stationery as an adult will be awkward.
It also is useful to say a name out loud, because the cadence of syllables can make a name either melodious or difficult. A name with an unequal number of syllables produces the most pleasing effect, experts say. So, it’s best to match a two-syllable last name to a three-syllable first name, such as Stephanie Wilson, or vice versa, such as Matthew Silverman.
Religious customs also play a part in baby naming. In Roman Catholic tradition, parents often include a saint’s name with their child’s name, and in Judaism, it is traditional to name a child after a deceased relative.
Ultimately, as parents, we end up with baby names that signify one very important thing - that bundle of squalling, swaddled love that someone handed us after delivery, in the hopes that we’d do a good job raising it.
Don’t worry that Cameron means “crooked nose” in Scottish Gaelic if it’s the name you’ve had your heart set on. Grace may have been the name of the great-aunt that smelled of mothballs, but it also names your angel in the pink bunny jammies that smells like a sweet baby girl.

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