Cactus Wren wrote:I'm embarrassed to admit I know this much about those crap books, but Corbo's right: Renesmee is the result of a violent impact between "Esme" and "Renee".
The author of the Twilight books is a devout Mormon, and I'm afraid this is
entirely typical of Utah Mormon baby naming practices. Witness the actual names AldaVern, Brighamena, Miracles Precious One, DaLinda LaDale, and LaDonnaJosephriana, all for girls; and for boys, RoWayne, Mick BonScott, Jonborah, Djeryd Teancum, and Timberland Miner.
http://wesclark.com/ubn/
I'm sad to say that I've been fighting this trend my entire married life. And losing. I didn't grow up in Utah, but my family is from there and I went to College there. I thought I'd avoid Utah naming by marrying a sensible girl from Indiana, but nooOOOOooh, she's got German blood. Every name that has a hard "C" must be spelled with a "K" instead. One of our daughters has a name pronounced "Suzie" but is spelled like an operating system (Suse) because it's a
family name from her side[1]. We actually reached "you should never do this to your child" overload with our third daughter's name: named after both a flower (first name) and a semi-precious gem (middle name), her first name is in a dead language and unpronounceable by English speakers[2], her middle name matches phonetically with a programming language, and her initials match both an operating system and a program development method (XP). I'm feeling a bit better about naming my first daughter after a foreign word for "evening" (I liked the name "Aurora" from sleeping beauty, but couldn't bring myself to use it) ever since seeing that a writer for one of my favorite shows shares the same first name. I feel no shame whatsoever, though, about giving my son the middle name "Teancum"; the man my son is named after lived a noble and tragic life. My biggest regret was ignoring potential embarrassment over the string of first initals we put together; we got through S. E. X. S. before realizing that an "M" name for our next child might be a bad idea.[3]
As bad as my kids have it, though, at least none of my children's names were forced on us by a relative. My brother (who married a Utah native) has it worse: his in-laws were insisting that he figure out a way to orchestrate a violent collision between his wife's name and his mother-in-law's. The mother-in-law's name is
itself such a violent collision. Several suggestions were made that were
less pronounceable than Renesmee. I managed to think of one that could actually be read and pronounced, and promptly decided to keep it to myself, for fear that someone might think it was actually a good idea. I'm proud of my bro for resisting the social pressure and picking sensible, normal names for both of his children.
The worst name I've ever heard, though, belonged to an African-American girl in my Basic Training platoon. "Nathlon" was named after her father, "Nathan", so they added the "lon" ending to make it sound more feminine. I think they failed. In addition, I agree with the drill sergeant that her name sounds like a synthetic fabric (competitor for Nylon?). I know I don't have much room to talk here, but the poor girl has my sympathies.
*edit*
eran_rathan wrote:My best friend's younger sister is named Arwen.
His middle name is Mithrandir.
Yes, his parents are nerds.
You know, if I'd taken my wife's suggestion that we name our second child after "Arik" from the movie Willow then we wouldn't have had that problems with initials...
[1] note that not even most Germans will recognize that name, it's from an obscure backwoods dialect that few people speak anymore. And she's older than the operating system, so our official story is that they named the OS after our daughter (Novell is headquartered in the town where she was born, so that story almost works on sufficiently gullible listeners). She gets amused when people call her "Susan".
[2] this poor girl's Kindergarten teacher managed to go an entire school year unable to pronounce or spell my daughter's name despite having the correct spelling and pronunciation reinforced
daily by my five-year-old. I weep for both my daughter (for subjecting her to that) and to all her fellow students being taught by someone apparently incapable of learning.
[3] Yes, I have 8 children. No, I'm not telling you all of their names, despite how much fun it is to laugh at myself - each name is "unique" in some way or another (several of which violate multiple of Apeiron's very sensible rules), and I'm still wondering what I was thinking over the years. I'd like to let them keep a bit of their privacy, though; paranoia and all that.
Thou shalt do a search to see how popular a name is with other parents and then refrain from giving your child any of the names in the top ten. Unless you have a very cool last name.
