Every so often, I like to revisit the topic of baby names that got away. In the time since we last talked about it, some of us will have moved from the baby-naming stage of life to the stage after that; some of us will have changed our lists; some of us will have had a fresh experience of trying to name a baby and finding we couldn’t use a name we wanted to use.<\/p>\n
I find I don’t PINE the way I used to. I remember folding laundry and actually weeping because I’d missed the chance to name a baby Anastasia. That sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Now it’s more as if I am rooting for my favorites to succeed elsewhere: someone PLEASE name a baby Millicent! Winifred! George! Frederick! Alfred!<\/p>\n
I do have secret hopes that some of my favorites will be used for grandchildren—and I hasten to say that I will not be PUSHING or even SUGGESTING the names, I just mean it would be fun if it happened to work out that way. But I know from long observed experience that in general the grandparents DO NOT see their favorites used on the grandchildren, and in fact grandchild-names tend to offer the grandparents an opportunity to practice mindful acceptance: the generation gap is difficult for names to transcend. My parents winced a little (though with awareness and acceptance) at the name Henry, a name that to them was not only elderly but nerdy, everyone’s scrawny great-uncle Henry with the liver spots and ear hair. I remember my mother-in-law suggesting names such as Dawn and Cherish: absolutely appropriate for the time when she herself was having babies, but no longer the right thing for the next generation.<\/p>\n
Well. What are the names you are currently weeping into the laundry about \/ rooting for others to use?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every so often, I like to revisit the topic of baby names that got away. In the time since we last talked about it, some of us will have moved from the baby-naming stage of life to the stage after that; some of us will have changed our lists; some of us will have had […]<\/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-16491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-4hZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16491","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=16491"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16493,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16491\/revisions\/16493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}