(no subject)

[crzydimond.livejournal.com]

There's been a lot of talk lately about names that are "pretentious".
I wonder - is it the name itself, or do you associate it with something that makes it seem pretentious?

IE - I would find it to be very pretentious if someone names their child Jesus. So, there is a strong association I have with the name Jesus that makes it seem pretentious to me.

What names do you all find to be incredibly pretentious?


EDIT - Here is a little definition:

Pretentious: intended to attract notice and impress others, claiming or demanding a position of distinction or merit, especially when unjustified.

Comments

[drunkontea.livejournal.com]

For some reason, names like Peyton and Madison seem very pretentious to me.. Also do names based off literary characters, or famous authors or artists, like Atticus, Holden, Poe or Dante. Well, not ALL names based off literary characters/famous authors or artists.. I guess it depends on how "linked" the name is to its inspiration. Like the name Atticus is SO connected to To Kill A Mockingbird. Hope that makes sense.

[crzydimond.livejournal.com]

Ugh, I agree - Madison IS a pretentious name!
As for Peyton, I just never understood the hype with that one. If you change just one letter it turns into another 'aiden' [Peydon]...and everyone seems to hate those names!

[adamantplatypus.livejournal.com]

The only time I've heard "Jesus" used it's been pronounced "HAY-ZEUSE".

That doesn't bother me.

[crzydimond.livejournal.com]

See this is what I mean, I see it to be a very pretentious name, but I have seen other people here label names that I quite like as pretentious. It just comes down to personal taste I suppose.

[rorylareina.livejournal.com]

I think names are pretentious when they're obviously trying too hard to ascribe to a specific (typically upper-crust) aesthetic. This is especially true in sibsets.

[rorylareina.livejournal.com]

Examples: I know a kid names Gates. Anastasia. MacKenzie used to be, but its snootiness has been a little marred by overuse. Parker. Anything that sounds like a British surname or county name. Sebastian. Roman.

[plaidpineapple.livejournal.com]

A lot of the obvious literary names, like Atticus, Harper and Scout.

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

I guess I think of a name as pretentious if it seems overly frilly, or refined, or what have you, especially if hardly anyone was named that, and suddenly people start using it. So that's why Sebastian seems pretentious to me. It's such a fussy-sounding name, and suddenly it's everywhere. It's really subjective, though. But to me, names like Sebastian, or Scarlett seem a bit ridiculous, and like someone's trying too hard. That said, I like names like Theodora. So... definitely subjective.

[morgainlefee.livejournal.com]

I don't so much think that certain names are pretentious. What I find pretentious is giving your child a million names. Most people I know have 3 names when you count first, middle, and last but once you start giving your child 5, 6, 7, or more names, that's pretty pretentious in my book.

I went to high school with a guy who has 6 names total, his dad has 5, and his brother 4. It just gets to me......

[plaidpineapple.livejournal.com]

My in-laws' dog is named Bronte. The breeder named her Bronte as a pup, but they didn't like it, so they tried Charlotte and Emily (before I came along). Neither stuck, so Bronte it stayed.

But, she's a dog. It would be pretty pretentious on a kid.

[la-jolie-vie.livejournal.com]

The most pretentious name I ever heard was "Monet." Names like that ftl.

[daydream11.livejournal.com]

LOLZ.

That's my sister's name, actually. I don't like it, for two reasons: (1) It's a guys' name (and I have told my mother so) and (2) It totally doesn't fit for an energetic, African-American six-year-old girl.

But I agree. Haha. Unless it's, like, the middle name. Or the last, which can't really be helped.

[unitedwedont.livejournal.com]

I don't really post on this community very often but I feel compelled to comment here. I don't understand why it would be pretentious to name your child after an artist/musician/writer/novel/movie that actually had an impact on your life. I don't think it's parents trying to prove their educational level, it's parents paying homage to people/creations that have had an impact in their life. I knew a girl named Hadley and she is named after Ernest Hemingway's first wife because her father was a big hemingway fan. I don't see that as pretentious at all.

[searlait.livejournal.com]

Names that end with "belle" or "bella" make me roll my eyes.

I know a little boy named Weston and I know his parents are as sweet as pie, but that name is just so...screamingly "hey, we're rich white people!" pretentious.

British last names as first names squick me in real life. For a character, maybe. A pet, sure. But please don't name your children Acton, Bristow, Richmond or Rowle.

[tryyingtoevolve.livejournal.com]

I agree somewhat with unitedwedont: I like names that have meaning to me, so I plan to name my daughter Eleanor, after Eleanor Roosevelt, and her middle name will be Barbara, after Barbara Kingsolver, who is one of my favorite authors. One of my sons will have the middle name Carver, after Raymond Carver. I personally don't find these to be "pretentious," because with the exception of Carver, I don't think people will hear it and automatically think, "Hey, that's what you were going for." And even then, I doubt it.

However, I do think that there are some names after musicians/writers/etc. that do seem really pretentious. Naming your child John after John Lennon? Okay. Naming your child Lennon after John Lennon, or Hendrix after Jimi Hendrix? THAT seems pretentious. I think names after musicians/writers/etc. are okay as long as they aren't OBVIOUS. If you hear the name and automatically think of the person you're naming after, it's probably too much; it seems pretentious, and there's no point, since you could use a variant and still have it mean the same thing to you.

The most pretentious names I can think of are last names. I'm not talking about the ever popular Anderson or Harrison or Walker; those aren't that bad. I don't like them, and hopefully they'll die out soon, but they're not quite as bad as some. No, I'm talking about Jefferson, Kingston, Willoughby, etc. Ones that sound like really elite, uppercrust British last names. They're just waaaaaaay too much. It's like you're trying way too hard to sound "classy" when you could use a name like William or Thomas and (a) sound a lot classier and (b) not sound like white trash.

[pythianlegume7.livejournal.com]

I disagree with a lot of the people here. I don't think naming your kid after someone, even if it is obvious, is pretentious (though it may have other things wrong with it). I think that naming your kid something that is supposed to sound uppercrust- especially if you are rich- is pretentious. A good example of pretentious names are the ones in the book The Nanny Diaries. Grayer Addison X. Yeesh. I can't remember any of Grayer's friends names but they were all really pretentious sounding too.

[kitchen-poet.livejournal.com]

I think I disagree with most of these posts, and it bothers me that the names being attacked are generally art & literature themed names, which I find a lot less problematic than just general, out of the blue top 10 names chosen by the parents because they sound nice. Even if the reference is obvious to most people, I would rather a child have a name that the parents found meaningful in some way rather than just blatant trendiness.

That said, the names that probably irk me the most are location names that are current hip vacation spots, especially when the parents haven't been to said location. Brooklyn and London are the worst, imo.

[daydream11.livejournal.com]

I think place names are best when they are obscure (or decently pretty, like India, China, Asia, and Savannah, all names that belong to girls I have met before and I like). My name is Samaria, which is a historical city in the Mid-East, but very few people I come across know of the city I'm named after.

[hotchpot.livejournal.com]

Atticus, Harper, Holden.

Names that are not of your ethnicity (Americans naming their child Francois)

[daydream11.livejournal.com]

Names that are not of your ethnicity (Americans naming their child Francois)

I'm simply curious: why do you consider these to be pretentious? I wouldn't think so, but it's interesting to hear another's POV, since I love names that are obviously not of my own ethnicity and/or nationality.

[freezemyazaleas.livejournal.com]

To me, a pretentious name is one that makes someone sound extremely wealthy, usually a British-sounding surname used as a first name. I admit I'm guilty of loving a lot of names that I consider pretentious, like Blair, Sheridan, Blaine, and Weston.

[biancasablancas.livejournal.com]

Charlotte, urgh.
Amelie (I used to really like the name but it's being used as a "ooh look French, we're classy" name in recent years)
Arabella
Frilly hyphenated names like Victoria-Elizabeth or Madeleine-Rose etc.

[murderprotocol.livejournal.com]

I don't see how naming a child after a character in a book is pretentious. If you like it, use it, and if it's a genuine name, then there's no stopping you. Just because someone's used it, doesn't mean it's because they've read the book; they could have seen or heard it somewhere, totally unrelated to literature.

I mean, I've never read Salinger, but I love the name Holden; I haven't read anything by the Bronte sisters either, but I like the name Bronte - and I heard this as a first name before I knew about the sisters. And to be honest, if I heard someone named Holden or Bronte, I certainly wouldn't immediately think 'Oh, they've named their kid after such and such'. If anything, I'd think of Holden cars.

I guess certain names have a 'wealthy' perception about them, but I don't see giving your child one of those names as pretentious. I think I'd see the person as being pretentious first before I ever though, 'Your name's Sebastian, so you must be a egotistical jerk'.

I don't really have too much of a problem with say, me being Aussie and giving my child a European name. It's a mixed world, so it's bound to happen. And I'm part-German, so I don't think I'm not entitled to maybe use a German name for my child.

To me, if anything is pretentious, it's the people who make up names or who completely massacre a spelling of a traditional name. That to me says they're trying too hard to be different.

[eleanorgrace.livejournal.com]

I think that a large chunk of popular names start out popular for the "upper class" and are then appropriated (for lack of a better term) by the population at large, meaning that a name that was "classy" in the '70s--I dunno, like Heather--ends up kind of "trashy" a decade and a half later, as the "lower class" demographic starts using it, presumably to emulate the trends of the upper echelons of society. Then it sounds, as someone else said, aspirational and becomes over-used and annoying. Maybe Tiffany would be an even better example.

I guess they talk about this in the book "Freakonomics" (http://www.amazon.com/review/R2518GCIJ0X36X), which I haven't read.
They also talk about it, sort of, in this NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04vincentelli.html).

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

There are not many names I find pretentious. I don't really care about names like Romeo, or Harper, for example.

Names I do find pretentious, however, are names that just scream 'I'm supposed to be awesome' in some way. Like Shakespeare.
So I guess pretentious, to me, is being way too obvious about being lettered. It is almost as if you are pretending to be lettered. Hence, pretentious.

[laminy.livejournal.com]

I can't actually think of any names that I do find pretentious. I think that I completely disagree with everybody listing off names from To Kill a Mockingbird; that really surprised me. I think that it would surprise me if it were names from any book. That's like saying that nobody was ever named it before, and nobody can ever be named it after.

I can't really think of any in particular, but some names sound rich. I think that a lot people here might know what I'm saying, 'cause some have said the same thing. Just something that seems like it's trying to be so much higher or something.

[littlehounddog.livejournal.com]

Mercedes. Heaven. Romeo. Chastity.

[shortbutfast.livejournal.com]

i think it's pretentious to call other people's chosen names pretentious.

'jesus' obviously is a perfectly acceptable name in spanish context, for instance.

[ghetto-lonetto.livejournal.com]

I would have to say that I find the 'boys names on girls' a far more pretentious trend than the 'last names as first names' trend. Yeah, naming your kid Winston or Spencer might be snobby, but it's a kind of ordinary snobbishness. Naming your daughter Joseph, on the other hand, says to me that you feel both you and your tiny child are so far above the normal strictures of society as to be completely unaware of them. I'm well aware that's not the reason most people do it, but all the same, that's the way it looks (to me, anyway. ymmv).

[lornyloo.livejournal.com]

Hmmm I don't think that naming children after book characters is pretentious. My name is Lorna which was created for Lorna Doone, though I'm actually named after my grandma. But if no one had ever copied the name from Lorna Doone it wouldn't be used as much today. If you like a name from a book use it, I think it's interesting when people name their kids after something they're a fan of - it's a bit of their parents personality coming out in their name choice.

However having said all that there are limits. If you'd named your child Hendrix I wouldn't think you were pretentious - probably just a little bit too obsessed and cruel to your child.