"Babies' Names Reveal Parents' Political Leanings"

[gregokdisney]

We're well-educated conservative. Our daughter's name is an old fashioned classic but our son's name is kind of out there. I like to keep people guessing.

 

[A_Princess'_Daddy]

When two of my friends had a child, the only thing they wanted to do when naming their daughter was to avoid the "Wal-Mart rule of naming" where both first and middle name all become one name. "Betty Lou" and "Sue Ellen" come to mind.

Don't know how their eventual naming lines up with their political views. Child's name is fairly common/traditional.

My wife and I refer to that as the Supreme Court Justice test, i.e. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Justice <Name>". If it sounded like a name of somebody who probably wouldn't be on the high court, it wasn't on our list of considerations.

 

[Miranda Danda]

Educated, very conservative couple here with a uniquely named daughter. I love "hippie-ish" names that are happy and cute. If we have more, I think I'd go with an even more uncommon name.

 

[CuteAndFluffy]

My wife and I refer to that as the Supreme Court Justice test, i.e. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Justice <Name>". If it sounded like a name of somebody who probably wouldn't be on the high court, it wasn't on our list of considerations.

We did this very test, with the added test of foes it sound like he could be a college football player (not that I am pinning my expectations on either). Finding a name that does both is a trick, but we wanted a really flexible name that would suit him at all stages of life.

I suppose our name does follow the logic of the article--DH and I are open minded centrists, leaning right on some issues and left on others. We picked an extremely traditional first name that isn't common in our area of the country and has a long family history. The middle name is also very unusual for this part of the country, but is far less well known and rapidly gaining popularity--its the first name of a mutual favorite author from the 30s. It ended up being a combination that is recognizable, but quirky, and adaptable with lots of nicknames possible.

 

[Conservative Hippie]

My wife and I refer to that as the Supreme Court Justice test, i.e. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Justice <Name>". If it sounded like a name of somebody who probably wouldn't be on the high court, it wasn't on our list of considerations.

Me too, which is how I got vetoed on the name Atreu (from Neverending Story).

 

[Neesy228]

Educated liberals over here...both children have very traditional, classic names with one of them being on the top 10 list for the past few years.

This is us too.

 

[Robbi]

My husband is conservative and I lean left. All 3 of our children have traditional names. They may be considered a bit obscure today but the names or variations were popular for hundreds of years.

 

[MichelleinMaine]

I have one child with a very traditional (saintly even!) name and the other with a newer, more trendy (though I didn't know it was trendy at the time) name.
I didn't change political leanings in between them.

 

[Kimberlyann11]

High school education. Lean heavily toward liberal, but not overboard. I picked a very traditional, non-trendy name. I wanted a normal name but not something that you would yell at the grocery store and every kid would come running. Anna. But people always want to call her Hannah which is uber-trendy.

DH and I also liked Lisa, Summer and Collette for girls. David, John and Devin for boys. Ironically, my sister picked Devin a few years later for her daughter.

 

[Gumbo4x4]

High school education. Lean heavily toward liberal, but not overboard. I picked a very traditional, non-trendy name. I wanted a normal name but not something that you would yell at the grocery store and every kid would come running. Anna. But people always want to call her Hannah which is uber-trendy.

DH and I also liked Lisa, Summer and Collette for girls. David, John and Devin for boys. Ironically, my sister picked Devin a few years later for her daughter.

We both have some college and lean more libertarian than left or right. DW had wanted a unique name for ours while I didn't want anything weird. We settled on Veronica and Vanessa. Both "normal" while not common around here.

I definitely did not want any names that were common to both boys and girls, so no Chris, Morgan, Devin, Pat, etc. Collette could have worked if I hadn't dated one prior to DW (She spelled it with a K though, and non traditional spellings would be another no-no for me).

 

[ReneeA]

Both DH and I are educated & successful in our fields. He a moderate, leaning just a little right...and he's a very loyal Catholic. I'm a far left liberal. Our kids have very traditional, classic names - Joseph Scott & Juliana Marilyn.

 

[MickeySP]

Well educated semi-conservative liberal so I guess it fits a used a traditional name but spelled it old world style.

 

[Freesia123]

High school education. Lean heavily toward liberal, but not overboard. I picked a very traditional, non-trendy name. I wanted a normal name but not something that you would yell at the grocery store and every kid would come running. Anna. But people always want to call her Hannah which is uber-trendy.

DH and I also liked Lisa, Summer and Collette for girls. David, John and Devin for boys. Ironically, my sister picked Devin a few years later for her daughter.

Anna is the next Disney princess! It's going tone Avery popular name next year I bet!

I'm very liberal. My oldest dd has an uncommon but real name. It's cutesy but my husband wanted it. It's not so cutesy that it would undermine her professional credibility however.

My second has a very popular name, but very unusual for Quebec. It's hard to find a name in Enhlish that sounds good in French too.

 

[skatalite]

What about pet names? I wonder if that applies.

The wife and I are college-educated professionals, and we'd define ourselves as libertarians. We adopted a couple of dogs in 2011, and named them Ava and Annie. That's because we like The Smashing Pumpkins and have decided to name all future furkids after Pumpkins songs/lyrics. Ava is from "Ava Adore" and Annie is from "Annie-Dog."

 

[LoserMomma]

We went with Irish....does that make us drunks?

 

[aristocatz]

We fall in the well educated category. Left wing middle class, but certainly not wealthy. Our daughter has a fairly common or classic name-it ranked #23 in 2012.

My friend fits into a similar category as DH & myself. She is pregnant right now & planning to name her baby an extremely obscure, kind of odd name. All of the choices she came up with were very obscure & "different." She also has a type of personality where she is always looking to be center of attention, she can be very overdramatic, and I sort of chalked up the name choice as just another way to try and make herself stand out.....

 

[georgina]

Most definitely! I was named after an Irish saint whose vision of heaven was a great lake of ale! (Oops, I meant to quote LoserMomma on that)

It's funny, reading through this thread, a lot of the names people are listing as traditional sound pretty out there to me. We obviously have our own ideas of what is traditional. So I wonder what the criteria of the study was? How did they decide what was classic, etc? I know I could just read it, but I'm too lazy.