Naming nitty gritty

Choosing the fabric for the Zelie & Co. Charity Auction (it’s namey!)

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When Theresa and I teamed up for the Zelie & Co. Charity Auction, one of the first things she asked me to do is take a look through her fabric options and let me know if I thought any of them struck me as particularly “Gianna.” What a fun task! I’ve always loved when, for example, shoes have names — I’ve always wondered who gets to decide the names, and how do they do so? And what a fun job that would be! I worked in advertising before I had my boys, and there were a couple of times we were asked to give some time to naming a product — I LOVED those projects. (Are you surprised? 😀 )

So anyway, this was the image of St. Gianna I had in mind when I was looking through fabric swatches:

st_gianna

So I was thinking lighter colors — pinky maybe, or light blue — and Theresa was thinking “classy and feminine,” and one of the fabrics that hit me just right way was the one that she said she was initially drawn to as well! She said it “seems beautiful, classy, understated, and something about the blue chevrons reminds me of the Italian Alps,” which I 100% agree with. She’s paired it with a blush-y pink, and the whole effect is, in my mind, so much the picture of St. Gianna above. The mountains in the background, the blue and pink flowers on her dress … total home run. Be sure to check out the sneak peek she’s given of the fabrics!

Five Facts Name Tag

sanctanomina Naming nitty gritty

For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you might have seen the Five Facts Name Tag I posted the other day. It was fun! I thought I’d post it here for those of you who haven’t seen it, and I’d love to see your answers.

1. What would you name your alter ego?
Vesper Verity Vita. It refers to prayer, truth, and life; Vesper’s also a Bond girl & Verity’s the sweet & determined Poldark character; and it’s alliterative like a Stan Lee superhero. Boom. 😀

2. What name would people be surprised you like?
Caden & Caley

3. What would you name your house?
Ballyboys! 😀 Bally’s Irish for “place of” and there are eight people in my house and I’m the only girl.

(I should also note that Ballyboys was a last minute idea — I’d previously named our house [yes I did] Acorn Manor [I think. I can’t remember for sure!], because we have a lot of oak trees and a looooooooottttt of acorns, and because Manor sounded hilariously grand for our modest not-big home. I named our first house, which had been my grandmother’s and was smaller than a postage stamp, An Cead Cottage — which I believe means The First Cottage [an cead means “the first” in Irish, unless it doesn’t — anyone who knows Irish, feel free to correct me!])

4. What would you rename yourself if you had to use a name that had none of the letters from your name?
Zuzu!

5. What would you rename Instagram?
FotoFix

There were a few other Instagrammers who participated, and I was particularly impressed with some of the ideas for renaming Instagram, like Meagan at Tulip By Any Name who said “Happy Snappy” and Alexia Mae at Names Daily who said “Pixel Place.” So clever!

A couple of you also participated on IG but I won’t link to them unless you want me to (I live in fear of publicly posting something I shouldn’t!), or feel free to leave your link in the comments! Or just your answers if you prefer!

Ann or Anne?

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I posted some photos of a beautiful stained glass window depicting St. Ann(e) on Instagram earlier this evening (here and here), and found it notable that “St. Ann” was written beneath her image, and then “In memory of Mrs. Anne Quinn” — both spellings on one window.

So I asked how many prefer Ann or Anne and have gotten several responses (Anne by a landslide, which was my grandmother’s spelling, and the one Anne Shirley vastly preferred, and the spelling I always unconsciously default to, though I’m delighted that one follower let us know her middle name is Ann, which is the spelling of my best friend from growing up’s middle name, and she’s an amazing person, so — good company!). I also posted a poll to Twitter and so far everyone’s voted for Anne (three people).

I looked them up, and Anne is the “French form of ANNA. In the 13th-century it was imported to England, where it was also commonly spelled Ann.” Indeed, Ann is described as the “English form of ANNE (1). In the English-speaking world, both this spelling and Anne have been used since the Middle Ages, though Ann became much more popular during the 19th century.” I checked out the Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources to see if there was additional info, and discovered the name Tanneken! It’s a diminutive of Ann(e) — I’m loving it! It’s totally the kind of nickname/diminutive that I go nuts for.

Any of you who haven’t yet commented on IG or voted on Twitter — which spelling do you prefer and why?

Do you reserve names for later use?

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The consultation I posted on November 23 was for a family that had picked out Felicity for a girl — a beloved name, full of meaning for them — only to discover they were having a boy.

Grace commented, “My suggestion is Felix! Since she was really excited about Felicity’s meaning and saintly pedigree, Felix really seems the perfect alternative to me! Popular in the UK, Spain, and Germany, it definitely has a hip, continental thing about it while not being unusual or hard to pronounce, and the x-ending makes it flow very well into middle names beginning with either a vowel or a consonant! I think it’s super awesome for them,” which several of us agreed was a great suggestion.

Sarah commented, “We did this with our first. We loved Natalia for a girl, but he was a boy. Naming him Nathaniel kind of nixes a future Natalia. That said, we loved Nathaniel enough to where there are no regrets. I think it just depends on how much they love Felix. If it hits all the right notes, great. If Felicity still makes their heart sing and Felix is just okay, then I say save Felicity,” which I loved, especially this bit: “If Felicity still makes their heart sing and Felix is just okay, then I say save Felicity.”

I’d commented, “My only worry with Felix is that it knocks out Felicity for the future … which brings up a whole other issue, which maybe I’ll do a post on sometime — what are all your thoughts on reserving names for possible future babies? Have you/would you and why or why not? Felix now at the expense of Felicity later (potentially) is a perfect example …”

I have a small example of that in the naming of my own kids: The first name we decided on for a girl has been the same through all my pregnancies — it’s an honor name for my mom and my grandmother and it won’t change. The middle name has changed several times though, most often in order to honor my mother-in-law in different ways; we’ve also discussed variants of her name as a first name possibility for a second daughter. Then we decided to give our youngest boy a first name that was a variant of my mother-in-law’s name, which knocks out of consideration the variants of her name we’d considered for a first name for a girl. I felt the tiniest of twinges at our decision but really. Six boys, no girls — holding a name in reserve for a second girl seems kind of silly when a first girl hasn’t happened and may never. Also, like Sarah said, I love the male variant we chose for my youngest, so I don’t really miss the possibility of using the feminine variants.

I’d love to know what the rest of you think! Do you/have you/would you save names for future use that knock possibilities out of consideration for this baby right here right now?

 

 

 

Professional athletes’ names

sanctanomina Naming nitty gritty

I know you guys are sick to death of hearing about my love for Joachim, but I have a new question regarding it: As you all know, my husband refuses to budge on the name, and one of the reasons is the NBA player Joakim Noah. My brother, when he discovered that I liked the name, wrinkled his nose and also pointed to Joakim Noah as the reason he doesn’t like it. This is despite the fact that there are a million and one Joachims who play professional hockey and (European) football — those aren’t sports we follow, so they’re off the radar and do nothing to help my cause.

But then, my husband has jokingly (but maybe not?) suggested Donovan about a thousand times because Donovan McNabb used to be his team’s quarterback, and when I told my hubs I was going to suggest Tristan to my other brother and his wife for their little boy on the way, he told me he “doesn’t hate it” and that “Tristan Thompson is pretty well known right now as a basketball player.” So. Apparently that makes a previously not-okay name now okay. When I told my sister-in-law that, she said my brother agreed.

I know the men in my family are not the only ones who are like this — which professional athletes have impacted your baby naming either positively or negatively? I want to hear about them all, but I’m having a particularly hard time coming up with female athletes that have potential to interfere with a couple’s baby naming (other than Anastasia “Nastia” Liukin, who was the topic of quite a few name convos in my family of origin during her Olympics. I’m not pointing any fingers, but you know who you are).

 

 

“To give witness with joy and simplicity…”

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Chelsea is a reader from New Zealand (!) and also the editor of Restless Press, which has the amazing “vision to be a modern design, magazine inspired, Australasian based website, containing real life and popular culture from a Catholic Christian perspective, across the spectrum of charisms.” She also gave this great little snippet about it on her blog Grow the Roses, including this quote from Pope Francis, which she said summed up the Restless Press mission quite well:

“To give witness with joy and simplicity to who we are and what we believe in.”

Amazing mission, right? She asked me a few weeks ago if I would mind doing a little interview about Sancta Nomina, why and how I got started doing it, and I’m really humbled and overjoyed that she would think I fit in with her mission, how beautiful and wholesome.

The interview posted on Sunday — here it is for your reading pleasure! 🙂

Naming Catholic Babies: Kate from Sancta Nomina

So cool, right?! And get this — she called me “a baby name guru”!! Seriously guys, my life is made. Never in a million years have I ever thought others would think my obsession with love for names would get me anywhere. 😀 Nor did I think I’d get to connect with people from all over the world who love the names of our faith as I do! My heart swells, “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” God is so good. ❤

 

Tapped as a “name expert”! :D

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Remember how I said in my year in review post that I’d been asked to provide a quote as a “name expert”? Can you believe it? 😀 You better believe I’m going to bring that up with my husband next time we’re discussing names and he’s pooh-poohing my favorites! (*ahem* Joachim)

(It’s really a terribly unfair thing for me to say though, as my guy is tremendously supportive of everything I do and I might have even heard him telling people a time or two that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to names. He’s a catch, that one. ❤ )

Anyway, the quote was going to be part of a visual representation of the kinds of info provided in articles like this one, which basically tell you how messed up your child’s life is going to be if you choose the wrong name, and while I suppose data doesn’t lie, it’s also not the full and only story.

So I was simultaneously flattered and terrified because I felt a responsibility to say something good and wise and universally appropriate (the site it would appear on, MomJunction.com, is not American) and also soothing and realistic — this stuff’s important to me! — and I think I did okay … this is the article: How Your Name Can Affect Your Success. And this is the part where I’m quoted (at the bottom):

How Your Name Can Affect Your Success-my_bit

What do you all think? Do you agree? What would you have said? Thanks to MomJunction for thinking I had something worthwhile to say!

Sancta Nomina goes audial

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So this posted today:

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Hosted by these lovely ladies:

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Can you believe it? I barely can myself! So exciting! I’m sure you’ll have as much fun listening to Haley, Christy, and I chat about name as I had doing the actual chatting, and you’ll get to hear the name ideas I have for them if they’re blessed with more babies — be sure to let me know if you agree or disagree with my ideas, and what others you would offer based on the names they’ve already used for their kiddos!

Let’s Talk About Catholic Baby Names with Kate Towne

(When you click the link you’ll see there’s even a crazy pic of the paper I’d written my ideas for them on — that’s how I do consultations! Old school paper and pen, lots of arrows and doodling and notes in the margins. I will just say there’s an extra lot of doodling on this paper because I had it in front of me while I was talking to them, and if I have paper in front of me I.will.doodle.)

Reclaim the name

sanctanomina Naming nitty gritty

I’ve long wanted to start a running list of names that need to be reclaimed from unfortunate or undesirable associations. These are the ones I’ve already blogged about:

And I want to add Lydia, because there are some people (my husband included, but I’ve seen it mentioned with some frequency on name boards) who won’t consider it because of the unlikable Lydia Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. (In fact, I added that to the Lydia entry in the Baby Name Wizard’s Namipedia, and the response was pretty funny:

My husband won’t consider Lydia, because of the unlikable Lydia Bennett in “Pride and Prejudice.”

Your husband read Pride and Prejudice? Kudos on snagging a literate one.

Gosh — have to agree — very impressive! I’d be willing to concede just for the fact he’d read it and made the connection! Well done, you! 🙂

😀

We do, however, love Lidia Bastianich, so maybe the spelling change would be enough? I’ll have to ask him and get back to you. (I wrote good things about Lydia here.)

Do any of you have names to add? I’m thinking more like traditional, established names (not Nevaeh-type names) that regularly receive a negative reaction, whether on name boards or in real life, rather than names you have a particular personal aversion to, but I’d actually love to hear those too! Actually — wait on that, I’ll do a different post about that. For now — what names would you add to a “Reclaim the name” list?

New Marian names

sanctanomina Naming nitty gritty

On my post about the name Saint the other day, Sara commented,

“Names deriving from Latin sanctus (which gave rise to modern English ‘saint’) are not uncommon in the Middle Ages. Perhaps the most surprising one — people not realizing where it came from — is Spanish Sancha and Sancho! These directly arise from sanctus (m.) and sancta (f.)“

For me, Sancho is all Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s sidekick, and because of Sara’s comment I looked him up real quick, to be sure I was remembering correctly who he was, and discovered (which I had not remembered) that his daughter was named “María Sancha (also named Marisancha, Marica, María, Sancha and Sanchica).”

I kind of love all of those! What a beautiful and meaningful combo “holy Mary” would be for a little Catholic girl! I’d have to dig a little deeper to discover whether or not the use of any of those would be weird, like, you named your daughter after Sancho Panza’s daughter? I’m thinking it would not be weird — who knows the ins and outs of Don Quixote anyway? (Funny fact: I did refer to him as “my boyfriend” that semester I took the Don Quixote class, because I couldn’t spend time with anyone else but Don Quixote … that class did its very best to kick my rear.) (But I was triumphant.)

I love Sancho too, but again — too weird? I’m sorry I don’t have time to delve into it (I’m trying to play catch up on everything this week, not least of which is my son’s first Confession this Saturday, and everything Christmas!), so if anyone knows, please share!