Parents choosing surnames for their baby’s first name
Before Lucy DeWitt and her husband, Steve, chose names for their children, they read the top baby names. Then they crossed them off their lists.
“We wanted uncommon names,” said DeWitt, 33, a real estate agent from Shawnee, Kan. “Not like my brother’s name, Andy. There were so many Andys in his school, he was always Andy R.”
The result was surnames for first names — Lanning for their son, 2, and Collins for their daughter, 1.
“They set them apart from other kids and say ‘spunk’ and ‘confidence,’ ” DeWitt said. “When they have careers, they’ll give them an edge because they’re memorable.”
Hang out at a playground these days and you’ll hear first names with surname roots. For boys, they include Carson, Carter, Chase, Hudson, Lincoln and Wyatt. For girls, Addison, Avery, Harper, Madison, Morgan, Peyton and Taylor. Unisex ones include Blake, Kennedy, Logan, Riley and Ryan.
“It started in Tudor England, when parents chose surnames of nobility,” said Cleveland Evans, author of “The Great Big Book of Baby Names” and a psychology professor at Bellevue University in Nebraska.
“Then, in early America, parents used presidents’ names like Jefferson and war heroes’ names like (Francis) Marion.”
Fast-forward to the late 1800s, when upper-class Southerners revived the practice with names like Beverly (for boys only then), Evans said. “Post-World War II parents named girls with preppy-sounding surnames. In my class, we had a girl named Russell.”
The surname-as-firstname practice is fueled by the genealogy craze, said Jennifer Moss, of Oakhurst, Calif., CEO of BabyNames.com and author of “The One-in-a-Million Baby Name Book.” “We see more of our family trees on sites like 23andme.com,” she said. “Use one of these names, and your family’s happy.”
That’s the plan, said Kelly McKinley-Ford, 29, a Clearwater, Fla., teacher who named her 7-monthold MacDerrmott. “My husband’s family had used it and changed ‘Mc’ to ‘Mac,’ so it had a built-in nickname,” she said. “It’s also a tribute to my grandfather, Frank McKinley, who went by Mac.”
For Tracy Gramesty, 39, of Trumbull, Conn., it wasn’t so much who had the name as the name’s nationality. “I’m 100 percent Irish, so we chose Reilly and Delaney,” said the teacher and mother of two.
Also enjoying a renaissance are first names that began as occupational surnames, such as Cooper (barrel-maker) and Marshall. Ditto for “son of” names like Harrison, Jackson and Jamison.
Parents who want to honor pop culture icons use last names because they’re easier to identify. You may not see the significance of Jimi, Brad and John, but you would recognize Hendrix, Paisley and Lennon. David Bowie’s death will generate lots of baby Bowies, not Davids, said Linda Rosenkrantz, Los Angeles-based cofounder of the website Nameberry and co-author of 10 name books.
Other name trends include the ongoing use of “grandma names,” said Moss, such as Emma, Vivian and Adeline. Geographical names continue a hot streak that dates back to the births of Paris Hilton and Dakota Johnson. If it’s from the United Kingdom, parents want it, Moss added. Thus, the evergreen Kelly and Casey and more recent imports like Declan and Grady.
Watch for these trends to cross the pond — hyphenated girls’ names and nickname names (Ben, not Benjamin, and Liv not Olivia) — now that they’re fashionable in England.
“Don’t just choose a name because it sounds cool,” Evans added. Put yourself in your child’s shoes. Will he spend his life having to explain its odd spelling? Will he be teased? Does the name clash with your last name?
Evans said he was taunted when he was young. “They’d say, ‘Hey, Oo-hioo,’ ” he said. “Problem is, we lived in Buffalo.”