The baby name debate: unique versus traditional

UNIQUE:

Jodi and her husband, Tony, decided to be creative when choosing names for their children.

Jodi and Tony wanted "strong names with a bit of spunk"

When I fell pregnant I knew I wanted my children’s names to stand out from the rest. I wanted strong names with a bit of spunk, to make them unique. My husband, Tony, and I came up with Mielleii Rhoda Anne and Lieushii Violet Clydie for our daughters and Frenzii Charles Sonny for our son.

Our only guidelines were that they had to be unusual, end in double ‘i’ and that the middle names had to have a family connection.

Mielleii and Lieushii took a bit of time to create. We came up with Mielleii for our firstborn after watching a TV show about a mermaid called Miley. We didn’t like that spelling, so we played around and came up with our own version. Lieushii was probably the hardest. We loved the boy’s name Lucius but knew we were having a girl, so we worked on developing a feminine version of the name and came up with ‘Lieu’ spelt like lieutenant then ‘shii’, pronounced “Lou-she”. Frenzii was easy. The name came about because Tony played with a Transformer toy named Frenzy when he was a kid and always loved the name. We changed the ‘y’ to ‘ii’ to suit our theme.

Reactions to the kids’ names have been mixed. Mielleii isn’t so different, especially now Miley Cyrus is so big – it’s just the spelling that makes it stand out. Frenzii is a different story. We live in a small town where everyone knows everyone, so when the news spread that we had named our son Frenzii it was like a rumour spreading…

“Did they really call their son that? Is it true? Are they crazy?” I’ve never had any concerns about the kids having to spell or pronounce their names.
My name is Jodi and I’ve always had to spell it out to people or they automatically put an ‘e’ on the end of it. We get a lot of children’s party invites with random spellings of the kids’ names on them and we get “How do you pronounce that?” a lot, but it’s not a big deal.

Everyone is different and people’s choices reflect that. Tony and I chose these names for our children because, to us, they are strong, unique and have meaning to our family. I’ve never worried about what people think and say, and it doesn’t bother our kids in the slightest. We think their names suit them perfectly.

Related article: Common baby naming pitfalls

TRADITIONAL:

Alison and her husband, Ralph, have stuck with more traditional names for each of their five children.

Alison and Ralph wanted "traditional rather than unconventional"

Ralph and I have five children: Patrick Leslie, Amelia Rose, Nathan Ralph, Cameron Wilfred and Elise Heather.

We took selecting names very seriously and, over time, refined a set of guidelines for deciding on each one. We wanted to be able to give the kids nicknames, we wanted traditional rather than unconventional, they had to be obvious boy or girl names, they had to be easy to spell as we didn’t want our children to be constantly spelling their names for others, and, finally, middle names were to be family names so they’d always have a link to their heritage.

Our guidelines were heavily influenced by the fact that my husband and I are both teachers. In our jobs we read and write names all the time. Sometimes, when I teach a class for the first time, I look at the names on the roll and have to ask the class for help because I have no idea how to pronounce
a name.

I don’t want to embarrass the child or myself by getting it wrong. I feel sorry for the child, as I know I’m not the first person to struggle with their name as the whole class can often guess whose name I’m stuck on. I’ve also embarrassed myself, and students, by assuming ‘Tyler’ or ‘Jamie’ were boys when they were girls.

Working as teachers means choosing names can be tricky. Do you disregard names because you associate them with a certain person or personality? The choices for our first three children were relatively smooth. However, we have a seven-year gap between number three and number four, so choosing the last two names was a nightmare, as we’d taught so many more children by then. There were times of tension while figuring them out, but we eventually learnt that a name is just a handle, just a way of identifying someone.

I watched a movie the other day in class and then tried to lead a discussion with the students straight after it. I hadn’t seen the movie before and struggled to remember the names of the main characters. We all struggled. The names weren’t as important as the characters and the things they’d done.

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