Monday, July 24, 2006

Montana

After I wrote about seeing a kid named "Montana" in a restaurant last week, I knew the e-mail was coming. Here's a sample.

First off, from Chris Gwynn:
My wife and I are having a daughter soon. Due to this, I recently had a drunken discussion of girl's names with some college friends of mine. We determined (as you've already noticed) that place names are nearly universally stupid when used as names for people. The conversation ended when a friend of mine pointed out that Idaho may be the worst name possible for a girl. He's right.

Next, from the Australian offices of Dubious Quality, Bruce Hardie:
My wife has a pair of cousins named Montana and Dakota. I call them North and South.

Chris Seguin weighed in with this:
When my wife and I were expecting our first child, I laid down some ground rules as to CATEGORIES of names that were NOT ALLOWED. Those categories, with include examples of inappropriate names, are shown here:
States, cities, or other Geographical locations: Montana, Idaho, Indiana, Phoenix, Intercourse (that's in PA)
Occupations: Tanner, Taylor, Hunter, Prince, Farmer Brown
Seasons: Summer, Autumn, College Football
Weather Patterns: Sunny, Rain, Hurricane
Unisex names: Pat, Chris, Stevie, Prince
Office Products: Avery, Fax
Flowers: Daisy, Rose, Petunia, Apple, Gold Medal
Things in your Mailbox: Bill

We settled for Kathryn and Hailey.

By the way, AVERY could fit into two categories - Office product, and Unisex names. I have two friends, neither of which know each other. His SON is named Avery. Her DAUGHTER is named Avery.


Everyone develops a strategy for naming their children. For us, it was whether I could think of an obscene word that rhymed with the name (I've written about that before).

Site Meter