Here it goes

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

These are the names I've set aside for potential children.. thinking more than 5 minutes ahead about the future makes me physically sick, however, so I have no idea when I'd be having these children.

Girls:
Yale
Katia (pronounced Kotch-ya)
Regina
Pearl (I'm semi-worried that as a vegan I shouldn't name my children this..)
Colgate

Boys:
Leo
Holden (Is it too pretentious?)

Thoughts?

Comments

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

Ew, Yael.

[tryyingtoevolve.livejournal.com]

Yael and Yale are two different names. Yale would be pronounced like the college, and Yael is a Hebrew name pronounced...well, I'm not going to pretend I know, because every time I explain it, someone tells me I'm wrong;) But they're two different names. Well. One is a name. The other is a last name/name of a college.

[freezemyazaleas.livejournal.com]

Yael is pronounced YAH-elle.

[freezemyazaleas.livejournal.com]

I mean ya-ELLE.

[tryyingtoevolve.livejournal.com]

My favorites are Leo and Pearl. I'd avoid Colgate and Yale, because they're both the names of really high profile colleges, and it might be kind of amusing if a kid named Yale or Colgate ended up going to Columbia or Stanford. And kind of confusing, too. Plus, no offense, but they're just really awful names. I'd also stay away from Katia-pronounced-Kotch-ya because Kotch-ya could easily be bastardized into "Crotch-ya" by 10 year olds on the playground. I like Katya, though, and I like that better than Pearl. Regina is okay, but again, the pronunciation might be a problem with the female-body-parts thing;)

Holden is okay. Not too pretentious, but too obvious in it's reference.

[sarahrose.livejournal.com]

Yale is a good boys' name I think.

Katia is okay. Regina is good. Pearl is nice. A little old.

Colgate belongs on a shopping list.

Leo and Holden are nice. :)

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

I'm totally into the boys' names as girls' names thing.

[sarahrose.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's bad for either. I just met a three-year-old girl named Carter, and I liked that.

[tryyingtoevolve.livejournal.com]

Except that Yale and Colgate aren't even good names for BOYS.

[anapology.livejournal.com]

Yale- What about sister Harvard & brother Brown?
Katia (pronounced Kotch-ya)- Well, it's KAH-tya but I see the sound you're going
Regina- ugly
Pearl -lacking substance
Colgate- like the toothpaste brand?

Boys:
Leo- love
Holden - let me guess, Catcher in the Rye is your favourite book?

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

Is the Catcher in the Rye reference really that blatant? How popular is Holden outside of that book?

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

Oh damn.. I'd seriously probably not consider it as a name then.

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

Actually I love Catcher in the Rye, but I wouldn't want to name a child after such a blatant reference. I wasn't aware that the name didn't exist outside of the book. I agree with the poster who said it would be juvenile.

[rotf-lmao.livejournal.com]

My uncle Holden was born three years before the book was published, actually.

[rotf-lmao.livejournal.com]

That's true. But the way you phrased your comment, it came across as though the name never existed at all before the publication of the book -- which is rather silly.

[anapology.livejournal.com]

It's like people who use Scoult & Atticus...

screams READ SOME MORE BOOKS! to me..
Also Holden reminds me of Hardon..

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

And by lacking substance do you mean the type of person who'd be named Pearl would be somewhat of a bimbo type..?

[anapology.livejournal.com]

lol no, you can't determnie someones personality by their name... (most of the time..)

I just think it's annoying to say.. no shortening potential.. it sounds like a noise rather than a name to me.

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

As I posted below:

"A pearl is an ulcer that is formed when an irritant, such as a parasite, enters an oyster, who responds by coating it with nacre (a crystalline substance that gives pearls their luster). Stress is what prompts an oyster to secrete nacre (just like stress creates human ulcers).

Because pearls naturally form in only one in 10,000 oysters and because the creation of a pearl can take up to three years, pearl-makers have devised a process called “culturing,” or cultivating, that allows them to exploit oysters faster and cheaper.

Culturing involves surgically opening each oyster shell and inserting an irritant in the oyster. Freshwater pearls are cultured by inserting another oyster’s mantle tissue. Saltwater pearls have beads and another oyster’s mollusk tissue inserted. Fewer than half of the oysters may survive this process.

Cultivators further stress the oysters by suspending them in water in a cage, washing their shells, moving them around in different waters, and raising and lowering their cages to subject them to changing water temperatures.

After the pearls are extracted from the oysters, one-third of oysters are “recycled” and put through the culturing process again. The others are killed and discarded.

For those concerned about the environment, there is another reason to avoid pearls. Aquaculture has contributed to destruction of natural pearl oyster beds from pollution and overharvesting."

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in your reasoning for 'Colgate'.

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

Plus, I prefer Crest. Have you considered Listerine?

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

I actually saw it on an episode of Gilmore Girls. When Sookie and Jackson were having their first baby, he didn't want her to tell him what the sex was going to be. She knew it was going to be a boy, and he picked out the girl name of Colgate after a great grandma if it was a girl, so she didn't even seriously argue how horrible she thought Colgate was. And even though she thought it was horrible, I really liked it.

[rotf-lmao.livejournal.com]

Yale: ehm, no. That's...man, that's unfortunate. Don't do that to your future daughter, for the love of God.
Katia: I kind of like this one, but I have a feeling it'll be mispronounced like whoa.
Regina: This is pretty. It passes the business card test, too, which is good.
Pearl: A bit old, maybe, but still nice. Reminds me of The Scarlet Letter...I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
Colgate: It's not a good idea to name a child after toothpaste.

I actually like both the boy names you've listed.

[thorabrighid.livejournal.com]

colgate is so bad. she/he? would be foreveer known as toothpaste kid. i'm not sure why you're so worried about the catcher in the rye reference when toothpaste is so much worse.

[lustdumpster.livejournal.com]

i pretty much agree with everyone else as to why the names are bad, but i don't really understand the connection between pearl and being vegan? educate me please, i'm serious.

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

Mollusks are murdered to obtain pearls.

[lustdumpster.livejournal.com]

oh ok, makes sense then.

but i had no clue what you were talking about so i don't think it would be a huge deal to give your kid that name. and it sounds like you're pretty far off from having children and thus i'm lead to assume that you're fairly young, so you might not even still be a vegan by the time you do have this child.

[aleadfeather.livejournal.com]

Actually I just looked it up for a more specific answer:

"A pearl is an ulcer that is formed when an irritant, such as a parasite, enters an oyster, who responds by coating it with nacre (a crystalline substance that gives pearls their luster). Stress is what prompts an oyster to secrete nacre (just like stress creates human ulcers).

Because pearls naturally form in only one in 10,000 oysters and because the creation of a pearl can take up to three years, pearl-makers have devised a process called “culturing,” or cultivating, that allows them to exploit oysters faster and cheaper.

Culturing involves surgically opening each oyster shell and inserting an irritant in the oyster. Freshwater pearls are cultured by inserting another oyster’s mantle tissue. Saltwater pearls have beads and another oyster’s mollusk tissue inserted. Fewer than half of the oysters may survive this process.

Cultivators further stress the oysters by suspending them in water in a cage, washing their shells, moving them around in different waters, and raising and lowering their cages to subject them to changing water temperatures.

After the pearls are extracted from the oysters, one-third of oysters are “recycled” and put through the culturing process again. The others are killed and discarded.

For those concerned about the environment, there is another reason to avoid pearls. Aquaculture has contributed to destruction of natural pearl oyster beds from pollution and overharvesting."

[maeda.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I can understand why it might be upsetting to you.

I don't know, though... they occur naturally. All that brutality is purely human. Why not try to associate the name with the positive rather than the negative?

[cherrysorbet.livejournal.com]

Colgate is just a toothpaste. I could NEVER see it on anything else, let alone a human being. And Holden is a car, so that's a no for me also.

The only one I like is Katia but pronounced Kat-ee-ah.

[kitchen-poet.livejournal.com]

I like Pearl. The vegan thing....I would worry about it. Especially if you are only "semi vegan."

The boys names, however, are fantastic!

[kitchen-poet.livejournal.com]

Whoops, misread where the "semi" was in that sentence. Still though...it wouldn't register to 99% of people that vegan and a child named Pearl were connected.

[areyoustrange.livejournal.com]

You want to name your kid Colgate. Bless.

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

I really like Regina, Leo & Holden.
I'm definitely not a fan of Yale or Colgate, though.

[yellowsummers.livejournal.com]

Along with being a toothpaste, Colgate means "hang yourself" in Spanish.

I like Katia better spelled Katya or Katja, since it gets across the two-syllable thing.

I love Leo.

Not too crazy about any of the others.

[hotchpot.livejournal.com]

Yale and Colgate...sure you don't want to add Harvard or Swathmore in there? :)

I don't really get the understanding of the vegan/Pearl thing.

Holden is the opposite of pretentious: it's what everyone who wants to SEEM cool and hip and awesome names their kid, without fully realizing that Holden Caufield is a jackass.

I like Leo and Regina, as long as you're pronouncing it Ruh-GEEE-na instead of Ruh-GYE-na (rhymes with vagina).

[ifancylust.livejournal.com]

i actually like yale, but of course there's the ever-present college reference. i don't think anyone would think of connecting pearl and veganism. colgate is a definite no.
i don't think holden is pretentious at all, but of course there's always the connection between the name and the catcher in the rye. i don't think that's a big deal though.

[crzydimond.livejournal.com]

Colgate?

Toothpaste?

[loyt.livejournal.com]

I quite liked all the names... except Colgate.
It's a brand of toothpaste over here and yeah.. all I can think about is brushing my teeth and bacterial on my gums and stuff when I read that name.