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I had a great-uncle with a fabulous name: Jett Orrin. We called him Bob, for some reason.

 

Basil, I like Asa, too. And Asher. I went to school with a kid named Asher, and I always thought it'd be a great name for my first son.

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And Asher. I went to school with a kid named Asher, and I always thought it'd be a great name for my first son.

This is the name of our second son, now 4.

 

And why was your great-uncle's cool name reduced to Bob? Not that there's anything wrong with Bob, mind you.

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Ah. See, the info I came up with told me this:

 

Name: Maura

Origin: Latin

Meaning: Dark

 

I'd heard of the "sorrow" connotation before, but none of my searches came up with a biblical origin/description. Funny how those name-origin sites frequently come up with conflicting information.

The pronunciation of Maura is the same as Maire, which is the Gaelic for Mary, so your wife is right, it's the same root of the name. Maureen (Mairin in the Gaelic spelling) is the diminutive of Maura.

 

The Virgin Mary is "Muire" in Irish, that spelling is reserved to refer specifically to her.

 

Traditional Irish greetings, the equivalent of "Hello, how are you?" and "I'm fine, thanks":

 

Dia duit. [God be with you.]

 

Dia is Muire duit. [God and Mary be with you.]

 

 

Edit: Oh yeah, and for Maura, you can also use the cool nickname "Mo".

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the end of Freakonomics has a great discussion on the social import of this topic

 

It's been awhile since I read that, but if I recall correctly it had something to do with parents of a lower economic status naming their kids "wealthier" sounding names? With a sort of cycle where the popular names of the higher socioeconomic classes phasing out at that level and then showing up more in the lower classes (in a hand-me-down way)? I believe there was also some discussion of brand names showing up, car names & liquor names (Mercedes or Aliz

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We have some strange names in our family.

 

My mother is Marion Strain, named after my grandmother

My father is William Brainard Cutler (not sure who he was named after)

 

My eldest brother was Ralph William, named after my grandfather on my dad's side (yet if he was going to be a girl, he would have been Grace)

 

My sister is Clarissa Yantis, named after my aunt on my mother's side (and if she was a boy, she would have been Henry)

 

My other brother is Stuart Yantis named after my grandfather on my mother's side (and if he was a girl, he would have been Ruth)

 

My name is Edith Brainard, named after my great aunt on my father's side (and if I had been a boy, I would have been Dennis)

 

All old-skool names. I'm not a fan of these new-fangled names.

 

Jake is actually Jacob Cutler, and I had no idea it was the most popular name for boys the year he was born -- or we never would have named him that. He is now officially pissed we didn't name him "after" someone :lol

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This is the name of our second son, now 4.

 

And why was your great-uncle's cool name reduced to Bob? Not that there's anything wrong with Bob, mind you.

 

I guess he thought Jett was too weird. (He was married to a woman named Don if that helps.)

 

My dad told me if I were born a boy my name would have been Dominic Dante.

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less than usual names from our family:

Bertha

Grover

Culver

Kenneth

Ethel

Hazel

Muriel

Earl

Loretta

Lillian

Charles

Barbara

Isabel

Ellen

 

sister and i had regular names: katherine elizabeth (middle name after paternal grandmother) and jennifer elise (middle name after maternal great-grandmother). In a class of 20 (small grammar school) we had three Jennifers. When i got to HS there were 4 until graduation. in our social circle there are at least 6 Jennifers in the immediate area but thankfully none of them are naming their kids regular names--we currently have Archer (Ari), Ronen, Max, Maya, Orrin, Malcolm, Jessica and AnneMarie Margeret.

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less than usual names from our family:

Bertha

Grover

Culver

Kenneth

Ethel

Hazel

Muriel

Earl

Loretta

Lillian

Charles

Barbara

Isabel

Ellen

 

sister and i had regular names: katherine elizabeth (middle name after paternal grandmother) and jennifer elise (middle name after maternal great-grandmother). In a class of 20 (small grammar school) we had three Jennifers. When i got to HS there were 4 until graduation. in our social circle there are at least 6 Jennifers in the immediate area but thankfully none of them are naming their kids regular names--we currently have Archer (Ari), Ronen, Max, Maya, Orrin, Malcolm, Jessica and AnneMarie Margeret.

 

Is Ellen an unusual name?

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My youngest (for the next couple of months anyways) is named Jacob. How original could we be?

 

The next one will be Grace. It was popular with people who are from the generation before me and with little kids now, but I don't know of anyone in their late twenties/early thirties with that name.

 

A friend of mine just named his child Grace. It was number 14 in girls' names in 2005 according to the Social Security website. The top ten of '05 is surprising; it seems there has been a resurgence in the popularity of old names:

 

1 Jacob / Emily

2 Michael / Emma

3 Joshua / Madison

4 Matthew / Abigail

5 Ethan / Olivia

6 Andrew / Isabella

7 Daniel / Hannah

8 Anthony /Samantha

9 Christopher /Ava

10 Joseph / Ashley

 

I have and have had, for the past few years, a ton of students named Brittany (inall its various spellings). I looked up the name, and sure enough, it was within the top ten of baby names for girls within the years most of my students were born.

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I have an uncle named Theron -- he goes by John.

 

:lol Welcome qualifies as seriously weird, but the rest aren't all that odd.

 

I knew two guys named Theron when I was a kid. I believe they were both Greek.

I also knew a kid named Theron when I was in seventh grade. He wasn't Greek, though. He was a redneck.

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less than usual names from our family:

Bertha

Grover

Culver

Kenneth

Ethel

Hazel

Muriel

Earl

Loretta

Lillian

Charles

Barbara

Isabel

Ellen

 

sister and i had regular names: katherine elizabeth (middle name after paternal grandmother) and jennifer elise (middle name after maternal great-grandmother). In a class of 20 (small grammar school) we had three Jennifers. When i got to HS there were 4 until graduation. in our social circle there are at least 6 Jennifers in the immediate area but thankfully none of them are naming their kids regular names--we currently have Archer (Ari), Ronen, Max, Maya, Orrin, Malcolm, Jessica and AnneMarie Margeret.

 

 

I think we may be related. In my family I have (or had, as many of them are dead):

Ethel (pronounced with a long "E") May

Buelah

Mabel

John Jefferson (called Jeff)

Neoma (not Naomi)

the afformentioned Jett Orrin and Donnie (Uncle Bob and Aunt Don)

Mack (on a girl. Short for Maxine)

Etta

Dolores (my mom)

Fay (or Faye, as she spelled it)

Ruby

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Oddish family names:

 

Great-grandmother - Rowena

Grandmother - Melvin

Aunts - Rilla, Hazel

Uncle - Ballard

 

Of course this was sometime around the turn of the century (last one, not this one) so those names probably were pretty hip at the time.

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