{"id":13460,"date":"2018-06-19T07:43:59","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T11:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/?p=13460"},"modified":"2018-06-19T12:39:20","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T16:39:20","slug":"baby-naming-issue-partner-claims-lily-grace-hope-ruby-are-not-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/2018\/06\/19\/baby-naming-issue-partner-claims-lily-grace-hope-ruby-are-not-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby Naming Issue: Partner Claims Lily\/Grace\/Hope\/Ruby Are “Not Names”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi!
\nI’ve been following your blog for a while – I find naming trends very interesting to watch, though I have no plans to have and name kids any time soon. Recently me and my boyfriend were discussing naming, and it raised… some questions. Essentially, the conversation started as ‘using nouns and adjectives as names can turn out sounding silly’, which I think is often true – I showed him the letter about Felony Fever Vice and Lethal Cashmere.
\nI thought we agreed on this. But turns out my boyfriend also heavily disapproves of such outlandish names as Lily, Grace, Hope, Ruby, because they are “not names”. I will admit I died inside slightly when he told me he’d never name a child Rose because it’s a stripper name.
\nSo I guess this is two things. One, I think it really would be an interesting discussion to see when people think a noun can become a name (even the names we consider to have no English meaning name now, had meanings in their original setting..)
\nAnd two, would be great to have a naming expert confirm whether or not names like Mercy are actually names!<\/p>\n

Thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

You and I and everyone else including your boyfriend all know the answer to this question, which is that Lily, Grace, Hope, Ruby, Rose, and Mercy are all in fact names. This is obvious and provable and not up for discussion unless we all get very, very high first.<\/p>\n

The actual question here is why your boyfriend is taking this silly stance. It would indeed be interesting to have a discussion about why some words are also names and some are not, and who decides, and what the difference is. But first there needs to be general acceptance of reality by all discussion partners. A discussion based on false premises was a little bit fun in college, but that was the era of thinking that toying with reality made us sound smart.<\/p>\n

Here is something I find myself less and less willing to deal with as I get older: people who are being argumentative\/difficult for the sake of being argumentative\/difficult. That’s what your boyfriend is doing to you right now. He’s basically saying, “I’m going to make an absurd claim we both know to be untrue. Now YOU put in the work to prove to me what we BOTH ALREADY KNOW TO BE TRUE, while I sit back and enjoy it!” Is this work you want to willingly take on? Is this work ANY of us want to willingly take on? Do any of us find it a valuable use of our time to persuade him of something he already knows to be true? Wouldn’t it be more fun to do pretty much anything else?<\/p>\n

Like, if he prefers not to use names that are also words, that is an absolutely legitimate preference. He can say, “Hm, no, I find I generally don’t like names that are also words.” This might be sad for someone he’s naming children with, but it’s not WRONG. But to instead say those names are NOT IN FACT NAMES? Or that Rose, an ancient and lovely name used for many women in a vast assortment of professions, is “a stripper name”? He is playing some sort of game, and it’s not a game I would want to play if I were you.<\/p>\n

If he is a good, smart, quality guy who is just wrongly thinking he’s being super sassy and funny right now with this, you should be able to stop it by flipping it: say to him, “What if I were to say that [several names you know he likes] are ‘not names’ just because I don’t like them? You would say that was ridiculous, and you’d be right. Can we stick to saying we like certain names or don’t like certain names?”<\/p>\n

I also think it’s possible that this is just not a hypothetical conversation he’s able\/willing to have right now. If kids are not anywhere on the horizon, he may be treating the whole thing much more lightly than he would if the two of you had a baby on the way. If he’s not using reality-denying statements in other discussions you have with him, then this might be nothing more than him playing around with something that doesn’t seem serious\/relevant to him yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi! I’ve been following your blog for a while – I find naming trends very interesting to watch, though I have no plans to have and name kids any time soon. Recently me and my boyfriend were discussing naming, and it raised… some questions. Essentially, the conversation started as ‘using nouns and adjectives as names […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3v6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13460","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=13460"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13467,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13460\/revisions\/13467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}