Blisstree » american_idol_contestant

Baby NameVoyager

Bill — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 02:35:31 +0000

I’ve posted about baby names a couple times now, including the American Idol contestant who included ‘Idol’ in her baby’s name and the Chinese couple who wanted to name their child “@”. However, if you’d like to see some names which are more on the common side, check out the NameVoyager on babynamewizard.com. Even if you don’t have a child on the way, it’s interesting to check out naming trends over time.

This cool little app lets you check out the popularity of names for each decade since the 1880’s on a graph of how many thousands of babies per million were given each name. Mouse over the graph from top to bottom to browse names alphabetically, and left to right to track it’s popularity over time. If you’ve got a particular name, you can enter it in the search box and check out the data for your moniker.

“William,” for example, was ranked number 10 in 2006, with four thousand of every million babies having that name.

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Baby NameVoyager

The joys of baby naming

Bill — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 16:12:34 +0000

Early on in the process of picking names for our son I threw a name into the mix that my wife did not like. (It was the name of the baker in the Godfather who was bringing flowers to Vito Corleone in the hospital when Michael met him on the stairs. Anyone know the name?) It was not nearly as bad as what the American Idol contestant named her child, but my wife wasn’t pleased, nonetheless.

While it wasn’t a name that I was tied to, it was definitely different and memorable. I like traditional names, but the idea of s0mething different was also appealing. Joie over at Crucial Minutiae has an interesting article about baby naming and says that it “has turned into a high stakes ‘individuality’ contest.” And as bad as my wife may have considered the name to be, some people are taking it too far. At least I didn’t choose “@”. That’s right, someone wanted to name their child “@”, and no it wasn’t Prince, Seal, Shakira or McLovin.
According to Reuters in Beijing,

A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@,” claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.

“The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means ‘love him’,” the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.

While “@” is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word “at” to sound it out — which with a drawn out “T” sounds something like “ai ta,” or “love him,” to Mandarin speakers. (Full story on Reuters.)

In light of this, maybe my suggestions won’t seem so bad to my wife. We still have another few months to go though and she’s hormonal, so we’ll see.

Post from: Blisstree

The joys of baby naming

Woman gives birth after American Idol tryout

Bill — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:09:49 +0000

A 9-months-pregnant American Idol contestant went into labor while waiting for her shot at stardom. The most amazing part of this story is what she named her child.

” Fighting off contractions, Antoria went before the judges and sang her best — and even made it through to the next round.

After her tryout, she was taken to a local hospital where she gave birth to a bouncing baby boy weighing 6 lbs., 7 oz., who she promptly named Jamil Labarron Idol McCowan.“

Full story on MSNBC.

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Woman gives birth after American Idol tryout