What's In A Name?

............a rose by any other name would smell so sweet.
Sunday evening we got out the Call family genealogy and looked at family names for the baby (yes, I know we have months to go).
The only really interesting names in the family come from Germany. All the rest are so "normal" sounding.......With English, Scottish, Welsh and Scandinavian heritage we don't have a lot to go with......can you say Sarah, Mary, William, John, and then there are Lars, Hans, Olaf, Peter, etc......ended with son? I'm not saying that those countries don't have there share of interesting unique names, but apparently our family didn't use any of them.....or maybe they did, but the ancestor wasn't our direct grandparent ....maybe I need to look at family group sheets to see if the brothers and sister ended up with unusual names.

We like unique names....now I say this having a Jordan and Megan....but when I named them those names they weren't common, Or I didn't think they were as common as they are now....their school classes proved other wise. In our ward alone there are three Megan's all the same age, all great friends.......the girls would call each other by their first and last names and got in the habit of calling everyone by their whole first and last names for the first 4 years of elementary school. Jordan on the other hand has what we call in our home a "bi-nameial" name. That means it is used by either gender, and can be a first or last name. Jordan was bugged by the fact that there were girls being named his name as a kid and wanted to change it......so i took the bate and asked what he would like to be named? His response was funny for several reasons; first: it was a very common name at the time, second:it was his best friends name, third: I had a cousin with that name. It was also a name that I had said a definite "no" to when we were thinking of names for him....his choice of a new name-Joshua.

Laurie wants to use her middle name of Jayne for a daughters middle name. I like it!
Jordan doesn't want girls....he thinks that they are too high maintenance and emotional. He is right but he would be a great dad to girls.
Jordan does have unusual ideas for boy names....he has mentioned all the Greek, Roman and Norse Gods as names, Superhero names and then there are the strange ethnic names he heard in East St. Louis, MO........think on that and you will come up with some of his favs.

A columnist in our local paper has done two columns recently on names......He mentioned the unique spelling of common names, and then the just plain crazy names...can you say La-a? (it is pronounced Lahdashah). He thinks that we are all crazy, and that their should be a standardize spelling and name list.

But a name is important...even if it is only important to you....My name is spelled Marcie....It has been misspelled my whole life. It use to matter a whole lot to me, now not so much. When I was younger I was bugged by the misspelling because I thought that it was a purposeful slight, that the person was doing so because they didn't like me or didn't want to get to know me well enough to spell it correctly.......Others have said the name they had as a kid was a childish name and as an adult have either changed it or gone to initials......I think it is weird to call a very old grandma Twinkle,or an old guy Tommy.....

The more mature I get I find myself liking standard common names and strong sounding names....how will it sound if it is announced as President of the USA or on an news cast. How will the name look when printed on a program or diploma?

Whats in a name...a whole lot!
MCC