Don't Have a Ginger baby or give your child a common name

Janepig

My cousin's little boy is bright ginger and it's gorgeous but mum is a bit nervy about him being teased when he gets to school. DD has two gingers in her class and they don't get teased at all so I don't think she need worry. But I think when it comes to his friends bestowing a nickname on him then I think his hair colour will feature somewhere.

As for names, each to their own, but I do wonder what goes through some parents minds when they name their kids. DS has got a Keanu in his year which did make me roll my eyes a bit and also made me think of Waynetta Slob wanting it as a name for her "brown baby" and pronouncing it "canoe" :rotfl:

lostinrates

I'd never even heard of this woman, (though for some reason she is familiar to me now I have googled her and wonder if I have met her on an occasion) And her name is somewhat generic. If I have met her she wasn't memorable, so maybe that's why she needs to make I imaginative clich!d digs?

Adore red hair, we have lots of the very dark red in my maternal family. Missed me sadly. There are some pretty awful names out there and I have to catch myself often from making assumptions. Which is ironic as I have a rather obscure name and have never met or heard of another one of 'me'.

IHateDida

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

My mother was a teacher - and didn't want to call any of her children after the little [STRIKE]sods [/STRIKE]angels she'd taught.

Snap! I would have had a nightmare time had I had a boy! Boys can be little horrors at school!:D

Girls are much easier to name - but I chose a name that I had never taught for my little girl! (I didn't also want her to be in a class with several other children with the same name - so any of the top 50 names were out of the question - I went for a name that has only around 200 UK registrations per year - so carefully chosen!).

neverdespairgirl

IHateDida wrote: »

(I didn't also want her to be in a class with several other children with the same name - so any of the top 50 names were out of the question - I went for a name that has only around 200 UK registrations per year - so carefully chosen!).

Time can do you down on that one - one of my sisters is "Olivia", which was not remotely common when she was born, but became extremely popular some years later, and is still quite popular now, I think.

pigpen

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Time can do you down on that one - one of my sisters is "Olivia", which was not remotely common when she was born, but became extremely popular some years later, and is still quite popular now, I think.

I've had that happen with most of my girls names.. My name was ridiculously common, I loathe it.

jellyhead

Janepig wrote: »

My cousin's little boy is bright ginger and it's gorgeous but mum is a bit nervy about him being teased when he gets to school. DD has two gingers in her class and they don't get teased at all so I don't think she need worry. But I think when it comes to his friends bestowing a nickname on him then I think his hair colour will feature somewhere.

As for names, each to their own, but I do wonder what goes through some parents minds when they name their kids. DS has got a Keanu in his year which did make me roll my eyes a bit and also made me think of Waynetta Slob wanting it as a name for her "brown baby" and pronouncing it "canoe" :rotfl:

There's an 8 year old boy in my youngest's class with ginger hair and he's the coolest kid in the class. Everyone looks up to him, he's the most popular and I don't think anyone's ever mentioned his hair colour in a negative way.

I don't know whether my son's just in a class with nicer than average children, but there's never been any teasing for the way people look, not being academic, being a tomboy, being overweight, being mixed race, having a wooden leg, etc.

There's one girl who's not very popular but that's because she tells lies and is always trying to get others into trouble.

I don't know if they'll get nastier as they get older (and start listening to their parents, if they have poisonous ones like KH!) but up to the age of 8 I think it's just personality that gets a child disliked, not their appearance, or even an unusual name.

jellyhead

Maybe she's a member of MSE and was feeling all defensive after reading that thread where people whose children have different fathers were being criticised

Silly cow, does she not realise that her daughters have council estate names?

thorsoak

When my cousin had her daughter some 40-odd years ago, she and her OH decided on the name Sarah - we all thought "oh that's nice - a bit quaint" - and none of us could think of any other Sarahs. Fast forward five years - and little Sarah started school ...with another four Sarahs in her class!

Some 25 years later, when I worked for a large city law firm which would take in 12 trainee solicitors each year, out of the 7 girls taken on, five were called Sarah, one was Sara and the other was Lara!! We all racked our brains to think of why that name should suddenly become popular -and I think that with most people names just go in waves! I have several friends of around my age called Valerie, a couple of Pamelas and some Joans.

Janepig

jellyhead wrote: »

There's an 8 year old boy in my youngest's class with ginger hair and he's the coolest kid in the class. Everyone looks up to him, he's the most popular and I don't think anyone's ever mentioned his hair colour in a negative way.

I don't know whether my son's just in a class with nicer than average children, but there's never been any teasing for the way people look, not being academic, being a tomboy, being overweight, being mixed race, having a wooden leg, etc.

There's one girl who's not very popular but that's because she tells lies and is always trying to get others into trouble.

I don't know if they'll get nastier as they get older (and start listening to their parents, if they have poisonous ones like KH!) but up to the age of 8 I think it's just personality that gets a child disliked, not their appearance, or even an unusual name.

It's the same with DD's class (she's year 5). There's a girl who's a tomboy, plays football and has sleepovers with the boys, always has, everyone in the class thinks she's fab. DD's best friend has a hearing aid, she had a high school musical patterned one at one point, all the other girls were so jealous of it, even DD wanted a hearing aid at the time. There's another boy in her class who is deaf and has two hearing aids and the teacher has to use a special machine to speak into so he can hear her, the other kids also have to use it from time to time, but everyone loves him too. There's also like you say, the overweight kids, ginger kids, titchy kids, etc.... but there's no bullying with regard to appearance or anything like that. Which is really good to see.

There are one or two girls that DD isn't so keen on now in her class but that is because they are nasty bossy types so she just avoids them.

DS just loves everyone. Even the boys who try to push him around a bit, he just loves playing with everyone. Bless him. There's a lovely little boy in his class who, afaik, hasn't been diagnosed with anything but would seem to be a bit behind the others in terms of development (I don't really know how best to describe it) but the other kids are really fab with him, really protective.

Jx

peachyprice

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

Her criticism of the names people give their kids has a tiny grain of truth in it. The bit about certain names being popular with those in the class above us being adopted by those lower below and then going straight out of fashion. The book "Freakonomics" has a whole chapter about it. I'm ashamed to say that I do share part of her sentiments when it comes to patently made-up names.

In which case she should have done more research into the kind of people who name their child India before bestowing it upon her daughter, it's as common as muck in TOWIE land.