Hi! We’re expecting a daughter in October; she’s our first child, and maybe all this power is going to my head, but I really like the name Aviatrix.<\/p>\n
Yeah, I know, but hear me out. To me, it sounds adventurous and brave, good qualities for a little girl and a grown woman. It has an old-timey feel, but isn’t actually an old name (avoiding being one of the many old-lady named kids in her class.) Also, I just generally like names with Vs and Xs in them (Beatrix and Vivianne are also in the running.) as well as occupation\/word names (like Archer and Hazel). We would probably call her Avey or Trixie as a nickname, and her last name sounds like Muh-half-fee.<\/p>\n
So, my questions are these:<\/p>\n
A: Am I a crazy person? When I told my mom about it, she just said “Thank goodness this kid has [my wife]” with the very clear implication that I am a nutball for liking this one. My wife is…not totally on board, but has said she is persuadable.<\/p>\n
B: Any suggestions for a less unusual middle name so that if she hates it utterly she can go by something else? I like Lyra, Zora and Wren, the wife likes Rose and Hazel. She will also have my wife’s maiden name as a second middle name (sounds like Mack-na-me) which is fairly non-negotiable (long story, my wife and I hyphenated, but we’re not giving a 6-syllable last name to a kid, especially one that sounds like Irish-McIrish. So this is the compromise.)<\/p>\n
Thanks much for any input you have!<\/p>\n
Cheers,
\nMeighan (as you can see, I’m used to weirdly spelled names, but you pronounce it May-gan)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
One of the baby name topics I think about while folding the laundry or stirring the soup is how certain words in a category are used as names and others aren’t: in general we use Scarlet but not Magenta, Violet but not Lilac, Ruby but not Topaz. In the occupational names category, Mason is Top 10 right now; other common examples are Carter, Harper, Cooper, Sawyer, Spencer, Tanner, Taylor. And certainly it’s not shocking to see Sailor, Hunter, Shepherd, Miller, Piper, Archer, and Deacon. So why isn’t Aviatrix already being used as a name?<\/p>\n
Part of it is that a big chunk of the currently-popular occupation names aren’t used as words anymore—or not commonly. I only know Cooper is an occupation name because I’ve seen it in the lists. I don’t know anyone who’s a sawyer, but the name Lawyer would be more familiar\/confusing.<\/p>\n
Part of it is that certain professions became used as surnames, and thus started seeming Name-Like. Perhaps the reason we don’t name children Programmer or Mechanic is that those professions didn’t get turned into surnames, so they don’t seem name-like even though Miller and Mason do.<\/p>\n
Aviatrix falls into that group for me: it doesn’t feel like a name. It OUGHT to feel like a name, based on its name-like elements: the popular Ayve sound at the beginning, the same -trix as Beatrix. And I don’t know anyone who’s an aviatrix, so it ought to pass that test as well. But it doesn’t to me. It feels like naming a child Seamstress, or Schoolmistress, or Dominatrix, or Shepherdess: a nice sound, but it doesn’t pass the test of “Would I want to introduce myself with this name?” Another of our favorite tests around here is the Starbucks Test: ordering a coffee (or anything where they ask for a name when you order) using the name under consideration. It’s a good way to get reactions to the name: your own as well as a stranger’s.<\/p>\n
I see what you mean about the old-timey feel: the name itself doesn’t feel like an old-fashioned name, but it immediately brings to mind a sepia-tinted image of Amelia Earhart. Though because Amelia Earhart is so well known, and is perhaps the only context in which I’ve heard the word aviatrix, it does have a bit of a doomed\/tragic feeling to me.<\/p>\n
There’s another vintage element here, which is that aviatrix is an example of a word that was modified for no other reason than that it involved a woman. We wouldn’t call a woman who flies planes an aviatrix anymore: we’d call her a pilot or an aviator. It’s because of something important, which is the realization that two people doing the same thing can have the same title, even if one of them is a girl: we don’t need to call someone a Manageress or a Lady Lawyer or a Doctorette. Maybe this evolved concept of unnecessary feminization is part of what frees up the word aviatrix to be used for its lovely vintage sound, but for me that vintage sound comes with some vintage baggage.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, this is the sort of thought process that doesn’t necessarily apply to everyday life. When I hear the name Sawyer, I don’t think of the danger of old-timey work conditions and the importance of OSHA. And the name Mason has certainly had its share of negative associations\/history, without those hurting its popularity. I think what might be making the difference here is familiarity: when a name is familiar as a name, we don’t unpack the baggage of its origins every time we hear it: it hits our ears as A Name. But Aviatrix is not familiar as a name, so it hits the ear as A Word, with all the accompanying meanings and associations.<\/p>\n
If you’re looking for a less-unusual middle name for her to fall back on, your wife’s suggestion of Rose seems perfect; Hazel would be my second choice from the list, though I might keep looking to find something even more familiar\/classic. The other choices are very uncommon and distinctive: Lyra and Zora aren’t in the Top 1000, and Wren in is the 800s. Even Hazel and Rose are fairly uncommon (Hazel is #157 and Rose is #224), but the popularity of Rose as a middle name makes it feel more familiar. I would be more inclined to use Aviatrix as the middle name where its brave and adventurous qualities can be appreciated without having to be a daily issue. Hazel Aviatrix would be a pretty smashing name.<\/p>\n
But I don’t think it would be crazy to use it as the first name. The fact that you’re willing for her to use a nickname goes a long way toward making the name workable, and this is an era of unusual names. I do think it would be good, if you’re planning more children, to think ahead of time about what names would work as sibling names.<\/p>\n
Let’s see what everyone else thinks!<\/p>\n
[yop_poll id=”55″]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Name update!<\/strong><\/p>\n Hello Swistle! I wanted to update you on our fabulous girl, for whom we had considered the name Aviatrix. There was enough negative feedback that I relented and considered other options; this kid does have to live in the world after all, not just my imagination. Luckily, after kicking it around a little more, we settled on Beatrix Dare, which I love without reservation and I think still hits all the notes we wanted. Beatrix means “happy\/blessed traveler” and Dare is for a) Dare County, NC, where our family has a home and where we have some wonderful memories, b) namesake of Virginia Dare, first European born in the “New World” and c) just a great verb that keeps the adventurous spirit we wanted for our curious little girl. Meighan writes: Hi! We’re expecting a daughter in October; she’s our first child, and maybe all this power is going to my head, but I really like the name Aviatrix. Yeah, I know, but hear me out. To me, it sounds adventurous and brave, good qualities for a little girl and a grown woman. It […]<\/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":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-name-to-consider","category-name-update"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-2tR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9539","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=9539"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10628,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9539\/revisions\/10628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWe call her Bix for short, which is what finally sold me on Beatrix. It’s not a nickname you hear a lot, but it’s cute and fun and a little unisex, and we love it.
\nThanks for all your help; a picture is attached so everyone can see Bix! Cheers, Meigh<\/p>\n![\"2014-10-31](\"http:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/2014-10-31-17.03.26.jpg\")
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"