For us, [knowing the gender] helped us to get to know our baby better. We named them, called them her/she....I liked that better than IT. Anyway, I find it really helps to start our family even earlier and have a great connection that much sooner.
Clearly, the benefits of knowing the gender are greater than just knowing what colour wallpaper to buy, or whether to get little hair ribbons. Just think, it would be much easier to pick the name for a baby if you could eliminate half of the options in one fell swoop, just by knowing the gender. Choosing a name would still be terribly difficult, however, since there are probably thousands of names to choose from -- plus whatever original masterpieces you can dream up on your own.
When my younger brother T was here for the Labour Day weekend, we discussed baby names -- likely because that was the weekend we first learned of the pregancy. T said he had a preference for older, established names -- sturdy names. His particular favourite was Henry. If he had a son, he would name him Henry, because it is so loaded with character that the boy would be an upright citizen almost by default.
If names like Henry are so great, why is it that they have fallen into disuse? We figured it is because they sound old, and people want younger-sounding names for their little babies. Perhaps "Henry" would be overly-mature for his years and would struggle to fit in with his peers. Instead of running and jumping in the grass, he would prefer to read the Wall Street Journal. In place of SpongeBob he would want to watch reruns of old baseball games... or something like that.
While certain names may be gathering dust, others are secretly being poached. R's sister J recently pointed out that a number of male names have been coopted for use by girls. She had some source she'd found that listed a bunch of these names, but the only ones I could still come up with are Alice, Taylor and Cameron. Perhaps that's why my brother prefers these old sturdy names -- there's less of a chance that they'll be poached.
So Henry is a prime name for a boy. Unfortunately, my brother says he's got dibs.
4 comments:
Maybe he has dibs on the name Henry because he likes it, but you have dibs because it's an important ancestor name. Like. . .Ralph Henry Walters, and Henry Booth Walters. Let him try to top that.
Helen
This website allows you to look up the popularity of a name. It is my favorite baby-naming aid. The year I was born, my name was ranked 74, and the nickname, the name I go by, 56. My girls' names the year they were born were 950 (out of 1000) and not even in the top 1000. This was my aim, and I am happy that they are not in the top 100, like my name.
Maybe this isn't the case in CA, but here in the states I have found that Henry is rapidly gaining in popularity, and in the past 5 years it's ranking has gone from 123 to 103... so don't be too hasty when saying: "why is it that they have fallen into disuse?"
ps....your name D is losing popularity rapidly...
Henry certainly is a sturdy name! It doesnt figure in the Top 50 names of boys, but the derivative of Harry remains a Top 10 bastion at number 6 in England and Wales! It conjures up such wholesome images of six wives, debauched tudor lifestyles and the looting, burning and wholesale massacre at many a monastery! To add to that, in the English speaking world no other name is found with such regularity for a monarch. However that may be because no other English speaking nation ever bothered with a monarchy and just started a lottery instead.
Other sturdy names I would suggest, with that added element of exotic seasoning just to reflect Canada's multicultural demography, include Benito, Idi or Fidel.
Or Trevor.
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