What's in a name?

So I came across this article in today's NYT about how Nevaeh has become a really popular name for girls in recent years. It's "Heaven" spelt backward and has apparently overthrown names like Sarah and Vanessa from top spots. I don't know, it seems pretty, but how do you really say it? Somehow giving my kid a name that people might have trouble pronouncing doesn't seem like the kindest thing in the word to do. That and maybe really long names. When Sam was in kindergarten, she would get really upset that her name had eight letters and so many "a"s; her best friend then was a girl named Gail, and Sam always came home complaining that she was taking too long to write/ spell her name, plus getting the "a"s in the wrong places...

I'm personally partial to shorter names- Kate, Seth, Emma, Liam, although I'm sure Liam will just get massacred in Singapore. I figure older folks are just going to pronounce it "leeaam" [monosyllabic, drawn-out], which means "sticky" in Hokkien. If we name our son Liam, he will no doubt wither, shrivel up and endure a mortifying, excruciating existence in a Singaporean school, especially if he has a Chinese teacher as his form teacher...

I've actually had an interesting experience with my name here in the States. Apparently, Americans categorically don't name their daughters Serene; it's always Serena. Which could be a good or a bad thing: on the plus side, I always get compliments on how pretty my name is; on the minus, no one at Starbucks has called my name correctly yet. And when I say my name to strangers, they always think I'm a complete moron who doesn't know how to pronounce her name properly. These days, to save myself the grief, everytime I say my name to someone new, I always go, "Serene, as in the word." (and try not to roll my eyes in frustration...)

This is a completely novel phenomenon for me; back home in Singapore, Serenes are everywhere. When I was secondary school, there were 5 Serenes in my cohort alone, and another Serene Koh at that! Apparently it was a unique name when my parents named me, but I guess every other parent of daughters born in 1976 felt that same way. The funniest thing anyone has ever said about my name was my secondary school teacher who once asked me whether in light of my effervescence, it was a mere prayer when my parents gave me my name. It took me a while to understand what she meant (and to also figure out what the heck "effervescence" meant- I was a 14-year-old with an under-developed vocabulary...). When it dawned upon me, I was not amused...

I actually love Jude's name. Simple, short, and interesting enough without being obtuse. If you look at this interactive graph of baby names (it's a time-suck I'm warning you...), you'll find that his name was really popular in the '70s, no thanks to John Lennon I'm sure. For Jude, his thing when people ask him for his name is always, "Jude, as in the song." The most interesting thing anyone has said about his name was when my professor said, "When I think of Jude, I think of Thomas Hardy, not the Beatles." I think Jude would rather be associated with a song than with a character who gets pig entrails flung at him as a love token. Predictably, he was not amused either...