What’s In A Name?

I have come to realise that I may have become one of those mothers that I said that I would never be…  The ones that when you hear about the child, you think what on Earth were the parents thinking…  Ok, so let me get to the point…  I think I have given my child a permanent disability…  Why?  By giving her a name that she has to spell out for people to try and say it right, and even then they forget and say it wrong anyway.

Thankfully for Kyla she got it “easy”, except of course, that people think it is Kylie or Kaily or Kayla.  It’s just Kyle with an “a” at the end.  Easy peasy.  Even the origin is good – one of our friends is Kyla-Rei and we just loved the name from the time that we heard it.

Poor Riya got a bad deal.  Not only is it a weird double barrel name (Riya-Ray) but we also got the name by watching Smallville.  You know Smallville, with Clarke Kent growing up among weird meteor infected people…  Riya just happened to be a random alien that made a short appearance…  But we liked it…  Plus we also thought she would be a boy, so we weren’t really counting on using this name quite yet.  Nevertheless Riya Ray was born.  Whenever people ask her name, I don’t even wait and just go ahead and spell it for them, why?  Well, maybe I have a speech impediment that I was not aware of, but everyone always thinks that we have named our child Ryan…  I know I wanted a boy, but not that much to desperately name my girl child a boy child name…  Then there’s also the fact that there is an Indian model with the exact same name, no jokes – her name is Riya Ray.  We should totes have Googled it before we went with it.  Oh well…

Now that we have to name a third baby I am starting to reconsider all the names I once loved and thought were awesome.  Here are a few that I adore, with a few of the potential problems:

Pippa – Apparently this name in itself is self explanatory about why it sucks.  I don’t get it.  But I guess I am not gifted at making up awesome names to rip people off with.  I love it.  Not because of Pippa Middleton, but because of a book that I read when I was a child.

Dexter – Yes, this would be after the serial killer TV show…  Weird?  Maybe.  But Dex is such a cool nickname and I really, truly adore this name.

Jonah – This is even a weirder one…  Seth wanted to name a potential boy this, not because of the Bible version or anything like that, but rather after watching some TV show that the guy (named Jonah) goes out and kills people as vengeance for the death of his family…  Or something like that…  (I’m starting to think we watch too much junk on TV.)

I have a few more up my sleeve that I don’t want to reveal, because, well, I like to have a little surprise!  But would love more thoughts on original and unusual names that aren’t too weird…

I love the “we” throughout this. What Cindy didnt mention is that I never agreed the first time I heard Kyla or Riya-ray, I more just got use to it through repetition and her stong will.