Baby Naming

Baby naming is tedious process. One soon realises that naming a new human is a weighty responsibility. You cannot apply the same principles of youthful pretending involving inanimate dolls or adorable pets to baby human naming. While we want a name as unique and precious as our child, we have many factors to consider.

Choosing a name based on its mere virtue of how nice it sounds would be too superficial. Often, names have a powerful way of evoking allusions to particular personalities and characters. Haven’t you noticed how a name can remind you of a certain personality or character type? Our experiences and perceptions all shape our preferences and attitudes towards names.

Other than ensuring that the chosen name registers positively with our memories, some like us would also want the name to have significance and meaning. Here, historical,spiritual social and media personalities come into play. The devoutly spiritual name their offspring after significant spiritual figures. Literary lovers take inspiration from the names of their favourite wordsmiths. Larger-than-life media personalities can also dictate naming trends with people naming their children after them or creating new names with their wacky choices of Apple, Pilot Inspektor, Free, Moonblood.

We have to ensure that our baby’s special name is easily pronounced. For the rest of the child’s life, he would have to constantly face communication challenges of teaching or correcting others on their pronunciation or spelling of his name and may even have to attempting to clear up mistaken identities. I know this first-hand even though my name ‘Sarah’ is plain and simple enough. Other than having been called the variations of ‘SAH-RAH’, ‘SHA-RAH’, ‘SHER-RAH’ and ‘SA-LAH’, I have also been known as ‘Cheryl’ and ‘Sharon’. Sometimes I even come to doubt my own speech abilities, and there have been several frustrated exchanges with service staff.

A name easily pronounced is not it. It must also be as nickname-proofed as possible. We cannot protect our child from name teasing and taunting, but neither should we give him a name that would make him an easy target for it. Haven’t you met some of those people caught in this unfortunate circumstance before? Of course, some of them are self-imposed. Here are some real-life examples:

• ‘Chee Hong’ – awkwardly vulgar in Hokkien which roughly translates to ‘being a skirt-chaser’, and this is putting it mildly.
• A donut shop assistant named ‘Creamy’.
• A girl named ‘Horny’. No kidding! This was the name of my ex-housemate’s uni mate. Imagine her introducing herself: “Hi! I’m Horny.”

As Chinese Asians, we also have to ensure that the given name goes well with the surname. Roy’s name is ‘Lee’. Imagine if we name our child any of the following: Harry Lee, Phil Lee, Carl Lee. Say them loud and fast enough and they can sound rather ridiculous. Here are some other amusing examples (no offense nor distress intended to any person/s living or dead with the same names):

• Grant Ma – Meet ‘grandma’
• Mick Ee – Hey ‘Mickey’, you’re so fine!
  
• Mia Loh – Milo: The drink of champions!
• Ben Toh – Japanese ‘bento’ lunch special, you like?

The greatest bug bear of all for me is how so many of the boys’ names have been overtaken by the girls. Did you know that many of the now common female names were once the domain of males ? These include: Ashley, Addison, Eden, Tracy, Shannon, Whitney. And yes, even my baby boy’s name, Elisha, has been taken over by the girls. Admittedly, I was rather exasperated when I had several people ask me if I was having a girl. But thank God for friends who help put things into perspective. Like one of them said, “Elisha is a male name. And you’ve got to really ask what these girls are doing with a male name.” That made me feel tons better along with hearing that Roy’s alpha-male friends having positive comments about the name. If the masculines don’t think it sissy, I should really not worry about the name bearing any possible effeminate connotations.

My baby-naming journey is almost mid-way through with the Christian name being decided upon. Now, we just have to think about his Chinese name. Another ball game altogether, I’m sure!