{"id":11119,"date":"2015-03-23T08:38:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=11119"},"modified":"2015-03-23T08:38:21","modified_gmt":"2015-03-23T12:38:21","slug":"baby-name-to-discuss-evander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2015\/03\/23\/baby-name-to-discuss-evander\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Name to Discuss: Evander"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle,<\/p>\n

My husband and I are expecting our third and final baby, a boy, at the end of May. We have two daughters, Sasha and Rose, and our last name is a three syllable Russian name that starts with T and ends with -sky and rhymes with absolutely nothing.<\/p>\n

We have a horrible time agreeing on names; in fact, the only reason we found out the gender of this baby was to eliminate the potential pool of names by 50%. I prefer names that are familiar enough that most people can spell them correctly, but are not so popular that there will be several of them in my child’s kindergarten class. I also prefer names that cross racial\/cultural\/international boundaries. While we didn’t quite accomplish this with Rose (and her naming story is better left for a different time as her original name involved a lot of regret, tears, and several hundred dollars worth of attorney’s fees for a legal name change), we absolutely love her name and it suits her perfectly.<\/p>\n

My husband’s taste is all over the place, so at this point, we have only one name that we both agree on and love….Evander. We even both agree on James for a middle name as Evander James just “sounds good” together. I love the meaning of the name, and I love that there are endless nickname possibilities, from Van to EJ to the more traditional Evan or Andy (if he prefers). So while we both love this name, I do want to take into consideration the response that my son will receive, and as such there are a few things making me second guess this choice:<\/p>\n

1. Why isn’t this name used more often? It seems like the perfect combination of the very popular Evan and Alexander, and it is derived from the Greek name Evandros meaning “good man” or “strong man.”<\/p>\n

2. Will everyone immediately think of Evander Holyfield? We are a family of pale redheads, so I worry that people will hear his name, think of Evander Holyfield, and then look back to my son and think, “huh?” My husband argues that the younger generations will not be as familiar with the boxer and therefore will not immediately associate the name with him. We don’t think that it’s a bad association, and as I mentioned above, I like names that cross cultural boundaries, but I just wonder if Evander is TOO much of a namesake, like Oprah or Madonna?<\/p>\n

Thank you in advance for your help! Unfortunately this name is so uncommon (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing) that I haven’t had much luck uncovering the reasons why parents shy away from this name.<\/p>\n

Fondly,<\/p>\n

Lindsay<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

It’s mysterious, isn’t it? I’m not sure why, either.<\/p>\n

I wonder if part of it is pronunciation. When I see Evan-, I want to start with EV-an, but then I catch myself: no, wait, it’s e-VAN in this case. That hesitation is so small, and yet I think that’s the sort of thing that can make a parent decide not to add a name to a list.<\/p>\n

Part of it is going to be that most people have only one association with the name. I think if there were even just one more celebrity named Evander, the association would be diluted enough that parents wouldn’t feel so much as if they were naming the child “after” Evander Holyfield. Time helps to dilute the association as well: I immediately came up with Evander Holyfield, and I knew he was an athlete, but I didn’t remember “boxer” and I didn’t have a face to go with the name.<\/p>\n

I’m curious to see how the popularity of the name has changed over time:<\/p>\n

1963: –
\n1968: –
\n1973: –
\n1978: –
\n1983: –
\n1988: 16
\n1993: 40
\n1998: 37
\n2003: 32
\n2008: 40
\n2013: 75<\/p>\n

I looked up Evander Holyfield on Wikipedia<\/a>, and it looks as if he was pretty famous by 1984. Comparing that to the appearance of Evander in the Social Security data, I see why it feels like a namesake name. In 1983, the name is not even in the data base; in 1984, there are 9 new baby boys named Evander.<\/p>\n

I have almost completely neutral feelings about the association. If I met a little boy named Evander, I might wonder if his parents chose it because of the boxer, but I wouldn’t assume it, and I wouldn’t think either more or less of them whichever way it turned out to be. My feelings on it don’t change depending on the child’s skin color: I continue to feel neutral. But this is clearly only one data point: I didn’t even remember he was a boxer, so that shows you my level of familiarity; someone who was more knowledgeable might have a stronger association and it might be more specifically positive or negative.<\/p>\n

To add another data point, my feeling is that the name is fully useable. I think it’s one of those names that just needs a little BOOST: if we could just get a few more parents to use it, all the OTHER parents would start to think of it is a less-risky candidate. I think if the two of you love it and agree on it, you should go for it.<\/p>\n

Now what we need is a whole bunch more data points. These are the questions, I think:<\/p>\n

1. Why do you think the name isn’t being used more?
\n2. Is your association with Evander Holyfield positive, negative, neutral, or non-existent?
\n3. Do you feel the name is useable?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi Swistle, My husband and I are expecting our third and final baby, a boy, at the end of May. We have two daughters, Sasha and Rose, and our last name is a three syllable Russian name that starts with T and ends with -sky and rhymes with absolutely nothing. We have a horrible time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-to-consider"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2Tl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11120,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11119\/revisions\/11120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}