OT: Name ideasFollow

Dude, you live in Seattle. I know one Jonas in Philly, but generally you get your *** kicked here if you're not named something like Mike, Tim, Hank...

Edited, Feb 18th 2011 9:06pm by boquaz

Where you live is also a huge factor in how common a name is. Noah, Jonah, Jeremiah, etc. are all very popular in the south, for instance.

Really, as long as your name isn't ridiculous, you're fine. The people who really have it rough, imo, are the ones with parents who missed the memo that the dust bowl was over. Ruth, Helga, Miriam, Esther, etc.

You have trouble dealing with a name like Noah?

Anyway, Bjorn comes of the Nordic 'bjørn/björn', which means bear. Naming someone Bear is pretty popular in most of Europe. Bjørn is a pretty common Danish name, as is Björn in Sweden (Björn Borg, for instance). Mishka, from what I've gathered (I live next to a girl named Mishka), is a nickname for 'bear' in Russian.

And then there's Ursula. Greek for 'little female bear'. Ursula is used over in the States as well, isn't it? Disney's The Little Mermaid comes to mind.

THOSE POOOOR UNFORTUNATE SOOOOUUULS!



Pretty tough to avoid. Most names derive from some form of religion. Take "Peter" which is my name. It features in the Bible and Peter was one of the disciples of Jesus, so it's hard to miss the religious connection there. However, Peter also means 'rock' in Latin (French translation would be Pierre, which is also 'rock' or 'stone' in French) and it's also the name of a superhero in the Marvel universe.

Unless you name your kid something very special, you're most likely using a name from some religion.

Edited, Feb 19th 2011 2:04pm by Mazra

You should get out more, Pold.

Edit: I messed up the previous post. Ursula isn't Greek for 'bear', it's Latin. Arktos is Greek for bear, hence why the North and South Poles are called Arctic and Antarctic (Anti-arctic). Because there are bears on the Northern, not the Southern.

Edited, Feb 19th 2011 2:58pm by Mazra

What about Ursula Andres from that James Bond movie?

Not really common over here either, but it's used. I think (because I forgot) my point was that Bjorn isn't a unique name in the dark of Europe. And since the US was founded by us heathen Europeans, it isn't uncommon for European names to pop up now and then.

Just like we've embraced John, Jack and Bob... not really Bob, though that would've been funny.

Yes, I have a problem with Noah as a name. It's hard to be tough when your name is Noah; I would just go by my last name (or a nickname/middle name), rather than suffer years and years with a name like Noah.

Not to mention he single-handedly saved the world from the flood.

Noah's badass.

It's not just biblical to be fair, most major religions, monotheistic and pagan alike, have a 'flood' story.

Yeah, but why didn't the animals eat eachother? That's my question about the whole Noah story.

What author was like, "yeah this dude is gonna bring two of every animal in the world on his boat and they'll all survive a flood," and thought it was a good story? No realism at all.

What I want to know is how he got two of these on the ship, let alone avoided stepping on them.

Nothing happened to it. Joe and Mike are still very common names. Hell, there were about 5 Matt's and 5 Jessica's in my grade growing up.

If you think unique names are lame fine, I think common ones are lame. :-p It's boring to have a common name. I mean what's the point of trying to be an individual or different when your name is Joe? Plus not all guys are into sports, so who cares if the name comes off as "tough" or not? Granted I'm also quite a bit of a hippie, so my opinion probably isn't all that popular (which frankly is fine with me).

There are a lot of names that are popular that have religious connotations, I have no problem with that as long as they aren't Christian or Jewish connotations (for my own kids, I don't care about others). It's one of the reasons why I like Celtic names so much. Despite Ireland being a very Christian country now, it has a long history of paganism and those pagan names are still pretty common over there. I'm very fond of the name Brennan for a boy, or Corin. They're different, but still easy to spell and still pretty masculine and all that. I also really like Isolde for a girl, but I don't know if I'd actually name a daughter that or not.