@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Or if you're lucky like me, you could be born with a very common name, lol! Every school I ever went to, there was another Jeremy Miller. (Being facetiously silly, of course... I hated that!)
@JeremyMiller My first name is very much on the rare side, and my last name, well... only 7 other people on this planet have that name. Hiding in the crowd is not an option. I guess there's drawbacks to being in the crowd too.
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun True! I have no idea how to even begin pronouncing your last name. Uniqueness, though, is awesome. My girl's name is a one-and-only-one name. 6 months of bickering and going over everything we could find to come up with it... and haven't regretted it.
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun And about your post I commented on... I wish I had something better to offer, but you're an awesome, thoughtful parent and a lot has already been said in the answers, so kind of stuck. :(
@JeremyMiller For my kids' names, we spent a long time choosing them because we wanted something that everybody knew how to spell, correctly, didn't have international characters (so it would reliably work in a digital world), and yet wasn't too common. I think Daniel and Martin are nice, easy, friendly names. They're well-known but not as common as e.g. "John".
@JeremyMiller Don't worry about it; we all have some blurry and some sharp areas in our parenting skills. Be glad you don't have any experience with this. I've connected with another user who is giving me absolutely tremendous input.
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Agreed. Good choices. I've been amazed how so many parents get creative by just messing with spelling (e.g. Geramy)... as I got older, more and more people asked me how to spell my first name and oddly, more are starting to ask that for my last name. Go figure.
@JeremyMiller We chose our kids names carefully as well. My eldest daughter's first name only returns 3 hits on google: hers, the friend we named her after, and one other. When combined with our surname, I think all are unique globally
@JeremyMiller She has posted many truly useful things, yes. It's great that we have some very very good users here. It's probably part of why this site's quality is so much higher than other parenting sites.
I could fill a phone book with misspellings of my last name, but that's no surprise. Not even Danes get it right all the time.
@RoryAlsop Sweet. I had a lot of rules: I couldn't make fun of the name, needed initials that were not bad, able to tweak her name in HS b/c a lot of girls do that, had to sound nice, easy to pronounce so I could say it quickly w/o stumbling, etc.
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Yes. We are fortunate to have a concentration of awesome parents who share their experiences and learn from others who have grown.
I will never understand why parents would choose "weird" names. It's bound to give the kids more trouble than benefit. But then, perhaps they have very very different naming goals.
@JeremyMiller I have posted a lot on the site, but I have also learned A LOT from here. The SE format is very good at promoting good quality, even (or especially?) in a diffuse topic as parenting.
Uncommon is not weird. Everybody knows (or should!) how that is spelled. I like that name.
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Oh, no complaints about it. Just not anywhere near where I was headed in naming.
Well, I had better get some rest. Still hacking away at an iOS app to be finished this week. Got the Android finished and the website, so saved the worst for last, lol. Take care all.
Christophpher is a weird name. Yes, the parents really chose that, and they fought the authorities for nine years to make it allowable. They even paid daily fines for seven years. Why why why...?
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Where I grew up was strongly connected with Norway/Iceland, so we wanted names that were Celtic or Norse. So while weird on a global scale, they are real names (not ones I invented)
I'm also a fan of names which aren't necessarily that easy to spell at first. While my official name is Rory, it was very nearly Ruaraidh - normal in Scotland. I am often tempted to change it.
@RoryAlsop This is also how I see it. "Weird" is of course subjective, but I don't see e.g. Gunhildur as a weird name, because it's a "real" name in its origin. Christophpher or Beyoncé is weird (it makes me think "trailer park origin", although I know that's a bad stereotype).
@RoryAlsop Rwua... what? :-D That is so cool! Again, not weird at all. I love those wicked words with double-L and double-W and whatnot. Completely unpronounceable, even unreadable, for us outsiders. Huh, just as my last name, eh?
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun it's pronounced Roo-arr-ee, which is how Scots pronounce Rory anyway :-)
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun I think your surname is relatively easy to pronounce. The only bit I am unsure about is whether the double uu is pronounced oo or u
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun yep - pretty straightforward. Admittedly, I did spend a while working in Munich, so germanic word structures aren't completely alien to me :-)
phonetic alphabets probably exist precisely to avoid such cumbersome explanations. But I don't know how to read them, and I don't have the characters on my keyboard either.
@RoryAlsop Most people in Germany/Austria try to actively pronounce the "d" so they say Goon-d-tofte, uh, Bruuhn? when in fact that "d" is silent in Danish.
copy-pasting snippets from other places is extremely useful :)
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun About your authority question - I hope you will update with pointers if you find good help talking to another user. I don't think my oldest will be quite like that (3.5 year old), some of his behavior is typical 3 year old, so I will only worry if it continues. OTOH, I think what you figure our could be useful, probably for many users.
In addition, I admire the diplomacy and restraint you exercised commenting on the latter 2 answers.
And Torben - your name is easy to pronounce, but I did know right away you were Danish :D (as am I). We wanted our kids to be names something a) Danish/Nordic b) non-Christian c) not the name of deity (aka not Thor) d) short (long last name) e) More than 1 syllable e) similarly pronounced in both Danish and English and f) not too weird (no Ragnar, though I love the name).
So. Come up with 2 boys names? Yeah, the second one was hard. Especially as we knew right from the beginning if we got a girl we would name her Astrid - but no girls for us.
@Ida The answer posted by anongoodnurse nicely summarizes what's relevant. The additional information I am receiving is not necessarily of general use. On this site we frequently refer users to their local real-world medical professionals when they have actual issues to address. Medical advice is considered off-topic here.
I'll respond to your further comments soon but I have leave now. Vi ses senere.
@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Yeah I understand that medical issues should be referred to a doctor - I was just wondering if the outcome of your discussion yielded anything that could be added, as it seemed from the comments you had tried some of thing things in the answer. I thought the question was really interesting. Thanks!
There's a lot of information for me to process, so it'll be a while before I can really answer that. But please do remind me in a few days - perhaps there are some pearls to be shared.
@Ida I have been a moderator long enough to know that feeding the trolls isn't going to help. There was a time (not very long ago) where I didn't have that zen attitude, and suffered from it. I have stopped arguing with people I disagree with; that's the fastest way to get them to shut up :-) One of the answers was so mindboggling that there was literally nothing I could have meaningfully responded. There might be more to their story, but frankly I just don't want to know.
@Ida I share all of those except c) ... why not :-) I actually know 2 people named Tor and they're cool folks. No hammers, though.
@Ida "Harald" was among my suggestions for #1 but got shot down. Now that #2 is 2 years old, that same shooter casually mentions that "Harald" would be a very nice name. (((I told you so...)))
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