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Yesterday I pointed to a list of IKEA Naming Conventions, revealing the logic behind how they’ve named their products. In my life, the main families of items I see named are computers (generally, servers). At my office, we name the servers after sushi — so you have otoro, hamachi, maguro, and so on. At web hosting company Pair, servers are named for the phonetic spelling of alphabet letters (including common alphabets like Greek and obscure stuff like Ogham — shown in the photo to the right) — so you get pi, rho, upsilon; and beith, nuin, huath. Ubuntu Linux releases are named with alliterative monikers like “Breezy Badger,” “Dapper Drake,” and “Gutsy Gibbon.” At college, I interned in an office where the computers were named after Simpsons characters (my machine was “Itchy”).
But it’s not just about naming computers. When my childhood cat Raisin had kittens, we named them after various royal positions: Duke, Duchess, Prince, Princess, etc. Radio call signs are based on alphanumeric conventions. Planets have a shockingly rigorous naming convention. Even ancient Roman names follow a naming convention.
So let’s have it — what naming conventions have you come across? I’m particularly curious about children named according to a convention (my parents seemed to go for saint names, so my brother and I are Michael and Christopher…though I guess Michael is technically an archangel).
(Idea via Lyza Danger Gardner.)
Comments (93)
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My kids’ first names all have two syllables and end with the letter N. The reason for this is that their last name has three syllables and ends with an A. I felt this was the best way to avoid a sing-song sound with the oft accompanying childhood jeering and teasing. It seems to have worked–unless my kids, now in their forties, have been keeping things from me.
posted by Alice on 12-12-2007 at 10:08 am
My mom & her four siblings all have names beginning with “R” – Robert, Ronald, Renee (aka Mom), Rayne, and Riva.
posted by Amy on 12-12-2007 at 10:11 am
There are two naming conventions that come to mind. One, our servers at work are named after robots – Bender, Hal, Cherry 2000. I also have 5 cousins all beginning with the letter M, and one of them followed up by naming their three kids with “M” names as well.
posted by Gina on 12-12-2007 at 10:24 am
I worked a couple of summers at a camp where we rented 5-8 minivans to cart the kids around. In order to organize each van’s key to avoid confusion, we would name each car on a theme (it changed every summer). One summer they were Simpsons characters, another they were jazz musicians. It was always fun getting driving assignments for off-campus events, hearing so-and-so would be driving Moe or Coltrane.
posted by Nora on 12-12-2007 at 10:26 am
I have friends who are big Texas A&M fans. There last name starts with an M, so the initals for all three of their children are T. A. M.
Poor kids, Aggies are weird.
posted by Witty Nickname on 12-12-2007 at 10:27 am
A friend of mine works in a Neuroscience lab at Duke. The head prof of the lab is a gay New Yorker who thrived in the club scene. All of their computers are named after DJs: Digweed, Sacha, etc.
I also had a childhood friend who had six siblings. All seven kids had names starting with “S”. Towards the youngest child, the names got creative (Santhie was the youngest).
posted by Jenna on 12-12-2007 at 10:28 am
My friend’s parents apparently liked the letter G. They were George and Gina and named their somes Gregory, Geoffrey and Geremy (pronounced by the more widely-used Jeremy). I could almost swear that it is only legal to name your child Jennifer if their middle name is Lynn. I don’t know any Jennifers that are not Jennifer Lynns and I know eight of them. Of course, Lynn is always a “family name.”
posted by Stephanie on 12-12-2007 at 10:33 am
I knew the “J” family:
Jean and Jirl had 4 kids:
Jake
Job
Jordan
Josh
and their gerbils, Jack and Jill and their dog Jennie
At one place I worked, the printers were named after seseme street characters. I usually printed to Grover. The giant plotter was Big Bird.
Have you seen the specials on TLC about that family with 16 kids, the Duggars? Their kids all have J names–even things like “Jinger.” too much!
posted by Jenny on 12-12-2007 at 10:35 am
There’s always the alphabetical naming convention that’s used with tropical storms and hurricanes. When a really big one hits, they retire that name. I think there’s a worry about running out of “A” names at the moment though.
Hollywood uses a numbered naming convention in regards to subsequent movies with the same plot and increasing banality: e.g. “Movie”, “Movie 2″, “Movie 3″, etc.
I remember as a kid when our dog had puppies they were given alphabetical names according to birth order. Has anyone else done that?
I worked at a company where all the UNIX stations were named after looney tunes characters: e.g. “Speedy, “Sylvester”, “Daffy”, etc.
posted by Jason! on 12-12-2007 at 10:40 am
my folks belonged to a lobster club, i.e. twice a year, we would get 4 just-out-of-the-water lobsters delivered to the house. and twice a year, we’d name them in groups of 4 before cooking them.
so over the years we’ve feasted on the marx brothers, the 2000 republican and democratic presidential/VP tickets, the three stooges plus shemp, dorothy and her friends from oz, the apostles and the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
because there’s nothing like dipping “groucho” into drawn butter…
posted by terri on 12-12-2007 at 10:41 am
Some family friends are horse breeders and named all their kids after parts of the saddle:
Latigo
Billet
Fender
Concho
posted by Kelly on 12-12-2007 at 10:45 am
I worked in QA at a video game design company. We named the computers in the office after the Roman emperors. All of the terminals were labled with the emperor’s name and a picture of his bust. The lead tester’s computer was named Augustus and the others were named based on the personality of the testers who used the respective station. I was Caligula (which, in my opinion, was probably not deserved) and the station next to mine was Nero. Needless to say, our part of the office was the loud one. Also, the Tiberius station had a picture of the Tiberius class frigate from Star Trek rather than the emperor’s bust.
posted by Stick on 12-12-2007 at 10:50 am
I have a personal belief that all cats should be named after Beatles songs. Our neighbor’s cat is Paperback Writer (or PW for short) and a friend’s cat that was unwittingly named Mimi morphed into “I me me mine”… almost a Beatles song title.
posted by Sarah on 12-12-2007 at 10:52 am
I have two…
My husband’s family all has “D” names: Dianne, David, Derrick and Daniel. They swear they did it by accident. I think they’re lying.
At work, our network servers are named after gods (Greek, I think??): Apollo, Cronus, Zeus, Leto, Hades…
posted by Erin on 12-12-2007 at 10:54 am
My computational linguistics lab computers have basic units of language as their names–syllable, phrase, mora, etc. They were renamed from Pokemon characters. The streets in the neighborhood I grew up in were all named for lakes in California.
posted by Erin on 12-12-2007 at 10:57 am
My wife’s mom wanted to name all of her kids ‘B’ names, but her two daughters protested when my wife was born saying that they didn’t want that. so my wife is Kimberly but she was told that our first daughter has to be named Bethany.
Also is it just me or are all people named Kimberly given the middle name Ann(e)?
posted by Eli on 12-12-2007 at 10:58 am
I play that awesome XBox 360 game Viva Pinata, and in it you name all your animals. When I first got started, that really sounded fun, so I came up with naming conventions for all my animals. I named them alphabetically, so I could tell which ones were older than others, and I started off with simple human names. Then the second round, I used band names. Then food names, movie names, disease names, and so on. My favourite was the band names; when my animals would fight, I’d see the message “Foreigner and Etta James are fighting!”. Boy would I pay to see that.
posted by Molly W. on 12-12-2007 at 10:58 am
Our servers at work are named after candy bars and spices/seasonings (thyme, mint, etc).
posted by Joanie on 12-12-2007 at 11:02 am
Seems that for a long time some Auto Manufacturers used a naming convention of having the first letters of the make and the series be the same –
Ford Focus, Fusion, Fairlane, Festiva, Falcon, Futura; Dodge Dart, Diplomat; Mercury Mariner, Marauder, Monterey; Chevrolet Caprice, Cavalier, Citation, Corvette, Corvair, Cobalt, etc. That’s probably why others stick to letters and numbers (Volvo Vulva? BMW Boldface? Acura Accurate?)
posted by Greg Steinmayer on 12-12-2007 at 11:02 am
We name family pets after historical people or mythological beings.
If we can we try and match a characteristic. One of our current dogs has a black tail with a white tip. He is Edison, because in the dark room, you only see the white tip when he wags his tail.
posted by Elizabeth on 12-12-2007 at 11:04 am
I went to Sonoma State University in northern California, where all the dorms are named after wine grapes. I lived in Chardonnay and later Merlot.
posted by Nicole M on 12-12-2007 at 11:04 am
My computers and hard drives are named for wizards and witches as identified in the Harry Potter world (i.e. Ptomlemy, Dumbledore, Professor Binns) and my USB gadgets are named for magical creatures. My mate’s are named for Farscape characters.
I’ve known many families that stick to an alliterative naming scheme, but I’ve got to think that it would only make things more confusing. I’m the oldest of 5, and I’m always called every other name in the house before my dad gets around to Andrea.
posted by Andrea on 12-12-2007 at 11:05 am
I’ve worked in a couple of bookstores with bar code reading devices. One store named them after classics authors (Homer, Poe, etc) another named them after Scooby-Doo characters. Guess which store had management that would join us at the bars after hours?
My college computer lab in an engineering department had computers named after Pro Football teams.
posted by mle on 12-12-2007 at 11:10 am
At work, everyone involved with our Training team has a Harry Potter character nickname. We try to match personalities and/or characteristics. We’ve a large team; luckily enough, J.K. Rowling has populated her books with a rather large cast.
Also, some co-workers have been secretly given “Deatheater” nicknames — names of unsavory Harry Potter characters to match the holder’s personal quirks.
(My work nickname? I’m Hagrid).
posted by Karl on 12-12-2007 at 11:17 am
Culturally, Italians tend to name their first born sons after the grandfather, females after the grandmother. Doesn’t really pose a problem unless of course, you have a common surname and come from a big family. As a result, I know 4 couples who are cousins and share the names Mary and Tony with the same surname. We know them as Little Mary, Tony with the Lisp, Dozer Tony, and Fat Tony. (We don’t use these names to their faces but it helps figure out who we’re talking about).
posted by irene on 12-12-2007 at 11:25 am
While I served in the Navy on board sub we would name some of the equipment after crew members wives, lovers or children. Each machine would be named in a way that would reflect the personality of the person so honored. (the wives never thought it was an honor). My ex-wife was honored by having a CO-H2 burner named after her. (a machine that removes CO and H2 from the recycled air and converts it to CO2 which is removed by another unit) Her name was Bunny…so the order would come down as “Turn Bunny on.” Others were: Jenny the generator, Donna the diesel and Susan the scrubber.
posted by Owen on 12-12-2007 at 11:25 am
Nothing to exciting, but I have named all my kittens after singers, according to personality.
Kiedis- So loud, and loves to jump off of stuff
Beck- mellow and always experiments with new toys to annoy me
Kanye- he’s just whiny
posted by Mary on 12-12-2007 at 11:27 am
I went to grad school for Geography, and in our GIS computer lab, with about 20 computers, each computer was named for a historically significant geographer: Mercator, Ptolmey, Wegener, von Humboldt, Semple, von Thunen, Robinson, Goode. I think there were some explorers in there too, Shackleford, Ibn Battuta, and Amundsen come to mind.
Yeah, major dorks.
posted by Jenny on 12-12-2007 at 11:33 am
Growing up, my family had several pet rat snakes. We always named them after Republicans.
When Richard and Spiro laid eggs, we named the babies Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean.
posted by Kevin on 12-12-2007 at 11:34 am
At my old job the servers were named after Star Wars characters. So you’d see messages about Jabba being down or restored etc.
posted by Tiff on 12-12-2007 at 11:36 am
my female cat’s name was a group effort.
sir winston groan, earl of rivendell.
sir: paul mccartney and elton john
winston: john winston lennon
earl: tom petty’s middle name
rivendell: the hobbit
she goes by winnie.
i’m going to name my next cat raul, so it can say its own name.
posted by shelly on 12-12-2007 at 11:44 am
addendum:
groan: the family name from the novel ‘gormenghast’.
posted by shelly on 12-12-2007 at 11:46 am
my sister has a small farm, and occasionally raises a few pigs or turkeys. One year, the turkeys were Bush and Cheney, and the pigs were Matzoh and Latke–nice jewish names to play on the fact that we’re jewish, and love pork and bacon which isn’t kosher.
posted by jb on 12-12-2007 at 11:54 am
I recently worked with a company that had all their servers named after planets in starwars.
When I worked as an admin for my college, all our servers were named after aircraft carriers.
posted by Jennings on 12-12-2007 at 12:12 pm
The printers at my job are Norse gods: Freya, Thor, Odin, etc.
My friend has 2 sisters. All three of them have (well, had before marriage) the initials S.M.B. Susan Melissa, Sandra Marie, and Sarah May.
Not on purpose, I don’t think, the 3 dogs my family has had all started with S: Shotzi, Shado, and Shaman.
posted by Dani on 12-12-2007 at 12:22 pm
I don’t know why I remember this, but my high school’s IT guy named all the servers after Shakespeare characters: Hamlet, Ophelia, Lear…
posted by Lucas on 12-12-2007 at 12:25 pm
I know a “B” family and a “P” family; my uncle’s family has a tradition of naming boys so they have the initials B.L.T. (poor kids, I know). At one point, our two cats Zach and Chloe were going to be Mark and Cleo. And all of my electronics are named some variant of the Franc- root. Francisco the laptop, Francis the digital camera, iFran the mp3 player, etc. It’s mainly my way of designating which stuff is mine on the home network. Two of them also just happen to be favorite characters from books.
posted by scoobnut on 12-12-2007 at 12:32 pm
The neighborhood I live in is called Patriot Square and the streets are all named after people from the American Revolution…George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams.
What I wouldn’t have given to live on Sam Adams Drive….
posted by Mallory on 12-12-2007 at 12:42 pm
Well, LBJ and his wife Lady Bird gave both of their daughters the initials “LBJ”…Linda Bird and Lucy Baines…plus, at one point there was a fifth “LBJ”:
Little Beagle Johnson!
posted by Sam on 12-12-2007 at 12:50 pm
suburbia street names. Oh man the naming conventions.
There’s the Gone with the Wind names: Rhett Butler Way, Scarlett O’Hara Cove, Seven Oaks Place.
Towns in New England names: Roxbury Lane, Natick Street, Weymouth St, Cambridge Pl, Needham St.
Rock names: Skyrock, Capstone, Moonrock, Splitstone.
British Royalty: United kingdom, Wales, Duchess of York, Palace.
These all exist in Austin, Texas.
I work as a planner, I get to see all the street names that come in. It’s pretty hilarious sometimes.
posted by jb on 12-12-2007 at 1:05 pm
I only recently realized when a friend pointed it out to me that, since childhood, I have named all of my dogs after food: Butterscotch, Peaches, and Oreo.
Also, my cousins share the same initials, J.M.B. It’s a comination of my aunt’s initials E.M.B. and my uncle’s J.S.B.
posted by Amber on 12-12-2007 at 1:06 pm
I work at an ad agency where all the printers are heroes. Green Lantern, Wonderwoman, etc.
All of are conference rooms are parks, so there’s Asbury, Jurrasic, Jellystone, Paisley, Hyde, Parallel, Do Not, Water, Amusement(our game room), Grammercy, and several others.
And my grandmother gave all 6 of her children D names.
posted by JennyNC on 12-12-2007 at 1:11 pm
Our server farm at the office names all the servers after rock legends. Bono, Clapton, Page, Ringo, Dylan and so on.
posted by Viking on 12-12-2007 at 1:14 pm
i went to high school with a girl named montana who had sisters named dallas, dakota, madison and savannah. awful. i guess that was her parents’ way of punishing them for all being born girls.
posted by lala on 12-12-2007 at 1:23 pm
I’ve had computer servers named after Gods (Shiva, Uma, Vishnu, etc.), and ones named afer planets (Venus, Earth, Mars…), but the problem with these naming conventions is that it doesn’t reveal anything about the location of the server. If you work in a place with a bunch of servers distributed across a wide geographical area it becomes important to have more significant naming conventions currently we use somethings like the following:
where host id identifies a room/rack for the computer. Its not as sexy as some of the other conventions listed here, but if your server goes down at 2:00am and you need to send out a tech, its way easier to figure out where he/she needs to go.
posted by Scott on 12-12-2007 at 1:36 pm
Wow, it edited out my convention… must be because it looked like tags… it goes like this:
network_name.building_number.host_id
posted by Scott on 12-12-2007 at 1:38 pm
I know a J family. I think parents feel that they have to do it if their names begin with the same letter! I think it’s kind-of cute – Jim, Joyce, Jodi, Judy, Jay, & Joni Kay. They had various pets with ‘j’ names – Jingle, Jangles, etc.
We received a kitten from a family friend & her name was Lucy. It seemed fitting to name our next cat Ethel (until we realized how much Lucy, uncharacteristically, HATED her, & we gave her to another family). Then we got a dog from the humane society whose name was Daisy… but since she didnt yet know her name, I suggested naming her Desiree, calling her, naturally, Desi, for short. Lucy & Desi.. there’s always some ’splainin to do with those two!
Also, has anyone else noticed quite a lot of tree-themed street plans? Chestnut, Walnut, etc. etc.
posted by sd on 12-12-2007 at 1:42 pm
Re: Mallory’s neighborhood
Naming conventions around neighborhoods and suburban subdivisions could be a whole other topic. I grew up in a subdivision where all the streets were Native American tribes. My aunt and uncle live in a neighborhood that used to be an amusement park so streets are named for rides that used to be in the general area of that street.
posted by CJB on 12-12-2007 at 1:43 pm
i live in an area mostly made up of 1950s-era housing plans, and there are quite a few random street-naming conventions. for example, one area has streets named ranchview, adobe, cactus, range, siesta, overland trail, sagebrush and hacienda. a weird theme for a pittsburgh suburb…wishful thinking, perhaps? there’s another area with the street names sabbath, faith, grace and bliss. is someone trying to tell me something?
posted by lala on 12-12-2007 at 1:51 pm
The town I grew up in had a few naming schemes for streets: Presidents, States and Flowers.
My sister has put a Y in all of her boys names, first because it was in the normal spelling, then because it seems she wanted a unique spelling and then just because: Tyler, Bryan, Naythan.
My uncle’s name is Didier, and he married a Carol. Naturaly when they had kids they were named: Ashley, Bradley, Emily and Franklin. A-F in one family.
posted by Tricia on 12-12-2007 at 2:00 pm
In college, I was terribly homesick for something alive to take care of- I grew up with pets. Obviously, most non-human life forms were frowned on in my dorm, but fish were not. So, I got a small tank and then started getting cheap ‘feeder fish’ at WalMart…which kept dying. I named them according to the letters of the Greek alphabet, starting with Alpha. I don’t remember how far down the line I got before I quit keeping fish, but Gamma (I think it was) jumped out of the tank somehow and died while no one was home…
posted by ann on 12-12-2007 at 2:07 pm
I’ve had one dog named Jack Daniels (J.D. for short) and plan to continue to name pets after my favorite drinks. I’m hoping to one day get a light brown dog to name Tequila (Teke for short). Imagine the possibilities – Sam Adams, Jim Beam, Taaka.
I’ve also considered naming dogs after well-known governors of Louisiana — Imagine having Huey Long, Kingfish (Huey’s nickname, “Uncle” Earl Long, Buddy (Roemer), Edwin Edwards, and my personal favorite because I love the name, P.B.S Pinchback. (Pinchback served for 35 days in in December 1872 – January 1873 and was the first African-American governor of Louisiana.)
posted by Linds on 12-12-2007 at 2:12 pm
one more- as kids, we named our cats after softdrinks: Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Sprite, 7 Up come to mind off hand.
Also, my dad raised registered Holsteins and was very particular about naming any animal that would be kept for breeding purposes: Each cow family in the herd was assigned its own letter and, while we all took turns choosing the names, there was no choice in what it began with. That included all registered females. Most of the males, however, were sold, so they were fair game for anything. We kids made a list of all the men we knew well and liked and started at the top and ticked them off one by one.
posted by ann on 12-12-2007 at 2:17 pm
Haven’t seen this one yet… I knew a guy whose first & middle name rhymed with his last name – e.g. “Larry Jay Harriday” (name changed slightly). He had 4 siblings whose names also rhymed.
A couple I know has 7 children (so far) with initials JDL – the mom says it’s so hand-me-downs always have the correct initials. hee!
While I generally can’t stand same-letter or theme naming or weird spellings, I like unusual names and somehow my kids ended up with a hippy-sounding nature theme. By the time we got to #3, it just seemed wrong to stick him with “Bob.” So we have Diamond, River and Canyon.
posted by Chan on 12-12-2007 at 2:18 pm
I grew up in a neigborhood named after rocks. The main street is Crystal, with offshoots being other minerals (Mica, Quartz, etc) I’m pretty sure they started making them up after a while. (Orbrizo?)
posted by elp on 12-12-2007 at 2:29 pm
My brother named his cats Perl and Java…
Also, I knew a family in high school with kids named after candy bars. They had Heath, Clark and of course the youngest was (baby?)Ruth.
posted by Lindsay on 12-12-2007 at 2:32 pm
At Portland General Electric, located in the World Trade Center here in Portland, Oregon; all printers are named after cities with World Trade Centers. I usually print to Berlin, Bogota or Lexington.
posted by Chris on 12-12-2007 at 2:36 pm
At home everything connected into our computer network gets a football term related to the position that devise plays in the house.
e.g.
Network title- gridiron
main computer- quarterback
2nd computer- fullback
laptop- playbook
broken/emergency laptop- benchwarmer
etc.
And I like to name pets after famous scientists, Einstein and Crick were two of my favorites!
posted by cheri on 12-12-2007 at 2:38 pm
When I was in college, I managed a fabric warehouse for a summer. The three forklifts in the place were all made by a company called Clark, and had the brand name prominently displayed on their hides. One hour alone with me and an El Marko later, they were christened CLARK Kent, CLARK Bar, and my fave, CLARK (Petula).
posted by Joe Maz on 12-12-2007 at 2:39 pm
OH, I just thought of more!
As a kid, I grew up in a neighborhood that named all the streets horse-related names. Colt, Stallion… the rest are escaping me now.
There are streets named after birds: Swallow, blue bird, some others…
There’s also trees: Oak, ash, birch…
posted by Erin on 12-12-2007 at 2:40 pm
i have friend whos parents named each of their kids with some form of the parents names in the kids names. If that didnt make sense:
the parents are ian and linda.
the kids are lianda, loriana, ian, and dilan
clever, no?
posted by jena on 12-12-2007 at 2:41 pm
In my family, we all have the same initials. The first two of my siblings were coincidence. My father just liked two names and they happened to start with the same letter, then when my brother came along he was named after my father whose initials were the consistent with the others. Then I came along and they couldn’t break the trend. That is how we all ended up with the same initials.
posted by jen on 12-12-2007 at 2:43 pm
I know a family in which all the children have the father’s initials. There is a school district, my had attended, in which all the schools have Iroquois names.
posted by gus on 12-12-2007 at 2:44 pm
I’m rather jealous of all the cool naming conventions used for computers and printers. Our printers at work just have the same extremely boring name they came with like “Xerox Work Centre Pro C3545″ which is way too long to refer to quickly so I just end up saying “you know, the big one”. But I’ve always wanted to use the Harry Potter characters for something. Maybe I’ll just decide that my computer is Pigwidgeon and the printer is Buckbeak. Yup, that’s what I will do. Thanks for the inspiration!
posted by Leah on 12-12-2007 at 2:47 pm
At my last company, all of the web servers were named after comedians: Hicks, Sykes, Hedberg, etc.
posted by Average Jane on 12-12-2007 at 2:48 pm
Ooh! I just realized I have one more thing to say. My job is to process purchase orders for the school of medicine and I am really entertained by some of the remittance addresses I see: Collections Center Drive, Remittance Ave., Paysphere Circle, etc. I also just found out that there is apparently a “Chevy Chase, MD” haha.
It’s also pretty interesting to read the stuff they order like “Mouse Anti-Human” and “Sheep Bovine Serum” but that’s a different topic…
posted by Leah on 12-12-2007 at 3:02 pm
I’m enjoying reading the comments! And just thought of a few more.
A friend of mine has a street named after her- her dad subdivided their large family farm and then sold off the lots- but not before he named all the streets himself…after different family members. Their own home was located on Martha Lane, named for his only dau.
re the comp names: any electronic gadget I’m ‘involved with’ is named for characters in Lord of the Rings (Pippin is my current iPAQ) or Harry Potter (this laptop is Fawkes; the last one was Hedwig); there are also: Mundungus (the laptop where we’re experimenting with UBUNTO and other free-ware stuff- to hopefully someday live a Microsoft free life), Buckbeak and Pigwidgeon
posted by ann on 12-12-2007 at 3:18 pm
I work for the public school system and I often have to wonder at the logic people use in naming their children. Countless families use the same beginning letters (Jennifer, Joel, and Jason R.), while others use places as their inspiration (Dakota, Dallas, and Indiana B.). Then there are those that really get creative, and ANYTHING suddenly becomes a possible child’s name. Take for example the family that names their children after semi-precious stones (Diamond, Ruby, Pearl, and Opal T.), or the sisters named after flowers (Rose and Violet W., and I’m sure there are more on the way.) Being a childless only child, I have to wonder – what, if any, are the social effects of these name games? Do the children feel closer to their siblings/parents as a result, or are they constantly haunted by strangers remarking “Hey! I bet you didn’t realize this, but your names all start with “J”!”
posted by Beth on 12-12-2007 at 3:19 pm
I worked at a place once that had a printer named Brutus. I don’t think the other printers had names, but I still found it entertaining.
My brother and I somehow both ended up with first names starting with a vowel, containing a double-vowel pair, and ending with n. both our middle names start with C. (I’m Eileen Clarice, he’s Aaron Christopher). My parents swear it wasn’t on purpose.
I had a friend (Shanna) whose whole family had names that started with Sh-, some were very interesting.
posted by Eileen on 12-12-2007 at 3:22 pm
In Boston’s Back Bay section the first several streets west of the Public Garden have names starting with sequential letters of the alphabet – Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester and Hereford.
posted by Mike on 12-12-2007 at 3:27 pm
there sure are a lot of jenny’s out there.
Anyway, my neighborhood was named after Moravian history. We lived in Friedburg Place and the streets were Spangenburg, Herinhut, Zinzendorf, and Wachovia.
posted by jenny on 12-12-2007 at 3:33 pm
When I got a new laptop I had to give it and my old desktop computer network names so I could tell them apart. I wanted to think of 2 things that were counterparts to each other, but with one smaller than the other.
Eventually I came up with the names ‘Threepio’ and ‘Artoo’ for the desktop and laptop, respectively. I went as far as to make the laptop’s alert sound a clip of R2-D2 bleeping away.
I remember the servers at my old college were named after types of trees, so we had Oak, Cherry, Beech, etc. In the Mac computer lab we had 8 computers, they were named for the 7 dwarves, and the last one was named Snow White.
posted by Katherine on 12-12-2007 at 3:39 pm
In Washington DC, once they’ve past the alphabet streets, A-Z (though I think it stops at W), it starts in on alphabetical 2 sylable words–Addams, Belmont, Clifton. When they run out of the alphabet, they start on 3 syllable words–Allison, Buchanan, Crittenden. All the way up to the Maryland border.
posted by bcj on 12-12-2007 at 3:43 pm
the streets in the neighborhood I grew up in were all named after characters from A Tale of Two Cities: Carton, Manette, DeFarge…
posted by susie on 12-12-2007 at 3:56 pm
Here In Lima we have streets named after countries: Brazil; Venezuela, Panama… Uhmm.. Just noticed they are all Latin American countries…
Anyway, my family is the “G” family… But my parents went a step further… All our names have 7 letters: Gustavo, Gonzalo, Gabriel and Galiana.
posted by GTT on 12-12-2007 at 4:12 pm
Man at my work the printers are all just #1, #7 etc… I had no idea people were that creative with their electronics.
Also my favorite movie is the old musical “7 Brides for 7 Brothers” where the 7 brothers all have bible names in alphabetical order of their birth. “Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephram, Frank, and Gideon”. One of the characters in the movie asks if Frank is really a bible name and you come to find out that his name is really “Frankincense”. Ha ha :)
posted by Sandy on 12-12-2007 at 4:28 pm
In the town where I grew up, all of the streets were named after biblical characters or places and ordered alphabetically from east to west…but for some reason it started off with “e” names and ended around “j” or “k”. There’s been a lot of new construction in the last ten years or so, so those developments have their own naming conventions (usually something exciting like trees).
posted by sarah on 12-12-2007 at 4:40 pm
I’m Robyn, with a y; and my brothers are Bryan, with a y, and Kevyn, with a y. My parents liked Robyn with a y bc it was a little different. Then Bryan came along and that’s spelled that way a good amount of the time. By the time Kevyn came along they realized they’d started a trend and had to keep it up. Thankfully he was a boy and not a girl, who would’ve been Keryn (like Karen, but way worse).
posted by Robyn on 12-12-2007 at 5:42 pm
The streets of the suburban development in which I grew up, aptly named “Ternberry”, are all named after birds (aside from the main road, “Audobon”): “Swan, Ptarmigan, Flamingo, Oriole, Sandpiper, Crane, Egret, Cardinal, Mallard…”
posted by Jen on 12-12-2007 at 5:48 pm
I grew up in a suburb in St. Louis called University City, so naturally, many of the streets were named after famous universities. I had friends who lived on Radcliffe, Cornell, and Yale, and I went to school at Delmar-Harvard Elementary.
posted by Erin S. on 12-12-2007 at 5:51 pm
My sister and I got cursed with weird spellings – Melodye and hers is Hilarye. No one ever gets the spelling right and our names are always mispronounced.
At least mine has the distinction of being in the Old English version of the Prologue of Canterbury Tales…
posted by Melodye on 12-12-2007 at 5:52 pm
For years, I named my cats after the Russian dimunitive form of the names of guys I had crushes on. It was fun explaining to one guy (who hated cats) that I named a neutered female cat Sasha, after him (Alex).
posted by lleachie on 12-12-2007 at 6:01 pm
Addendum to previous post:
I forgot to mention that my sister and I got cursed with those spellings because my brother also has a ‘y’ in his name – Franklyn. I’m sure if my mom could have put an ‘e’ at the end of my brother’s name, she would have.
That’s the story of the naming in my family. Sorry for leaving it off. I’m such a dumba** (hehehehe)
posted by Melodye on 12-12-2007 at 6:02 pm
At my work we name the printers after old TV shows. I print to Blair and Gonzo, we also have Ginger, Horshack, Hunnicut, Punky etc. (we have a TON of printers) We recently opened an office in Nashville, TN. The servers were appropriately named Bo and Luke.
posted by Melissa on 12-12-2007 at 7:51 pm
I knew a man named Jeremiah, who wanted to have a child for every letter of his name. He had Jeremiah Jr., Erin, Ray, Eva, and an M on the way. . .
I wonder if he ever made it.
posted by jzimm on 12-12-2007 at 8:06 pm
I went to a summer camp where each group of campers was assigned the name of Native American Tribe. I was a Cayuga.
There is a neighborhood in the town where I grew up where all the steet names start with “el”: Eldorado, Elberta, Elba, Elton, etc. It’s a twisty turny neighboorhood, so if you don’t know it really well you can get lost in there for ever.
Here’s one I didn’t see in the comments: highway rest stops. Some, like the NYS Thruway, are named after the towns (or possibly counties) that they’re in. Others, like the New Jersey Turnpike, are named after (obscure) celebrities/historical figures.
posted by Sara on 12-12-2007 at 8:18 pm
When I volunteered in New Orleans as part of the relief work effort after Hurricane Katrina, our work vans were named after characters in The Wizard of Oz: “Flying Monkeys” “Dorothy” “Toto” and “Auntie Em,” which we later voted to switch to “Tin Man” because we decided its previous name was too girly to be a hardcore work van employed in mold remediation.
posted by Manda on 12-12-2007 at 8:29 pm
A few years ago, I met a kid named Royal. His sister was Sky and his brother was Creek. His parents were fans of the color blue, apparently.
I always used to have fun trying to come up with normal names from colors, though firetruck was always what I decided I would name my kid if I wanted it to have a hard life.
posted by Brittany on 12-12-2007 at 8:36 pm
i know a family of Ls. larry and lana are the parents. then it’s laurie, ladonna, linda and larayne.
another family i know had two boys, austin and dallas. the third child was a girl. abilene.
i taught a family with 7 kids, all j names. the parents were Js, too.
just trying waaaay too hard.
posted by shelly on 12-12-2007 at 9:46 pm
The servers at Concentric.com are named after British warships, a fact that I have not seen recorded anywhere.
And what grand and evocative names they are too:
Strenuous, Fortitude, Zealous, Sentinel, Invincible, Adamant, Illustrious, Repulse, Impregnable …
posted by Andrew J. Winks on 12-13-2007 at 5:54 am
I’m an Texas A&M Aggie and am pregnant with our first. Our last name begins with an S. Our child’s first name will begin with an A and the middle name will begin with a G regardless of the gender of the baby. That’s right, the initials will be AGS. :-)
posted by ANM on 12-13-2007 at 4:28 pm
A couple of hundred years back in Norway, and the rest of Scandinavia, the common way to name a son was to give him his father’s first name followed by a version of “son” (-son, -sen, -sson) as the surname. Daughters got their surname from their mothers name followed by the word for “daughter” (-datter, -dotter).
A couple of hundred years ago, this resulted in fathers and sons in my lineage alternating between a couple of names, Thor and Willum. This resulted in a guy called Willum Thorsen, his son being Thor Willumsen, his son Willum Thorsen and so on. After a while the naming traditions in Norway changed and the families stuck by a family name.
My fiance and I will honor this tradition by naming our firstborn son Willum.
posted by LordMarius on 12-14-2007 at 6:17 pm
At work, all the conference and meeting rooms are named after cities…Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow etc. Very confusing to be told the meeting is in ‘Glasgow’ when it’s really in Basingstoke. I imagine more than one visitor has ended up in the wrong city.
posted by Jo-less on 12-19-2007 at 8:10 am