#254. Secretly wanting to name your son "Aragorn" or your daughter "Arwen."
May 26th by JonBefore we knew that we were having a daughter, I wanted to name a potential son “Coltrane.” Not that I am a huge jazz fan, but I really thought that if I named my son after legend John Coltrane, it would be impossible for him not to be cool. Even if he tried to be dorky like his dad, he’d be propelled into coolness by the momentum of his name. My wife, said no.
A lot of my friends faced a similar temptation when the Lord of the Rings movies were out. They wouldn’t admit it in the theater but you could see it in their eyes. “What if we named our son Aragorn or our daughter Arwen? How awesome would that be? Very awesome, that’s how. What is it going to take to convince my wife?”
And there’s the rub. Usually, both parties are not invested in naming a kid after a movie or a book. It takes some convincing. So here, as a public service, are a few ways to convince your wife or husband to go with the name you like:
1. Offer them the next name.
Do the whole Popeye, “can I get a hamburger today and pay you for it on Tuesday” thing and say that they can name the next kid. It’s like when they trade professional athletes and mention that some “athletes to be named” were involved in the deal. Tell your spouse that when it comes time to name the next kid, you’ll give them complete freedom in picking.
2. Trade them the middle name.
If I were smart, I would have told my wife that if she let me name our son “Coltrane” she could have given him the middle name, “John Cusack.” She loves John Cusack and would have thought it was great to have a living reminder of the movie “Say Anything.” Tell your wife that your son’s middle name can be “Christian Bale” or tell your husband that your son’s middle name can be “William Wallace.” Eventually they might cave in and give you first name rights.
3. Mention that fictional names are scandal proof.
It sucks when you name your kid “Orange Julius” and then out of nowhere someone named Orange Julius gets famous. They then proceed to get arrested for biting a cop outside a strip club and then throw a ham sandwich at the judge during the trial. Suddenly your kid is going to be called “ham sandwich” out on the playground. That’s part of the beauty of a fictional name. Unless we unearth some unpublished manuscript in which Aragorn unexpectedly becomes a heroin addict, you don’t run the risk of getting a scandal associated with your kid’s name.
4. Search your family tree.
I’m not saying it’s going to be easy to find the name “Lord of the Morning Mist” in your family tree, but it’s not impossible. Dig deep and hard, going back generations until you find some way to position your proposed name as a family name. “Well honey, you see Herma named her son Herman in the late 18th century. And as you’ll notice, “man” is the second half of that name, which is why I want to pay tribute to their heritage and memory and name our son ‘Batman.’”
At some point, I need to do a post on crazy Bible names, but for now, hopefully you’ve got some new ideas on how to convince your spouse that Treebeard is a perfectly suitable name for a new born.
Comments
I tried to convince my husband that Atticus (as in Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird) would be an awesome name for a boy. We don't have any kids yet, but he nixed that pretty quickly. So a few months later when he came home with a male kitten, guess what we named him?
I don't know any Aragorns or Arwens, but my nephew's name is Kieran Caspian. Kieran because it was a cool name, and Caspian as in the Narnian one.
I like how you wanted to name your potential son "Coltrane" and then use the heroine addict as an example of scandal associated with a name. Classy.
My husband is always suggesting names of jazz musicians and it is hard for me to want to name my kid after someone who brought about their own early demise with drug use…I'd be more likely to go for one like Miles Davis who eventually kicked his habit and lived to make music for a decent amount of time.
I wanted to name my son Fenway Parker, but my wife wouldn't let me.
When I was born, my parents had a wiener dog, papers and all, named "Sir Daniel David" and they called him Danny.
When I came along, Dad said, "we used up the good names on the dog!" and named me David Daniel.
And thanks to American Idol last year, my name-David Cook-is famous! (I was born roughly a year earlier though.)
I worked for a brewery last year. The owner's wife had a son. They named him Porter!
(For the Baptists and those who think beer is devil juice, "Porter" is a style of beer that is particularly tasty.)
I heard of a kid that was called Lucifer. The parents sent him to a Catholic school where they diplomatically called him 'Louie'.
Someone awhile back commented about it being horrible to name a kid Heaven Lee ___
I've got a friend named…Heaven Lee Friend. Yup. I don't blame her for hating her parents.
I want to name my potential daughter Zelda and my potential son Link.
For LotR names, Estel (meaning 'hope') is pretty cool, I think. Technically it's a male name, the name Aragorn grew up with in Elrond's house for those of you who don't know, but you'd probably have to give it to a girl.
And for unusual Bible names, I desperately want to name a son Baruch, the Hebrew word for 'blessing' and the name of one of the main people in charge of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem in Ezra and Nehemiah
I love the name Estel – it's so pretty. You're right though, it would work better as a girl's name in today's world. I love Elvish, and would love to give my children Elvish names.
Before she was born, we called our middle child Turd Ferguson. Yep, that's right….Turd Ferguson. Funny, isn't it?
I'm the mom of Fox Carson and Zoey Caroline…
On Tzipporah – it means "little bird" and the Greek version of that is "Sephora"
So I figure I can name my daughter after a place that sells lipgloss, but regain credibility by saying that it's a Greek translation of a Biblical name.
I think the trick is to go with the geek name but be subtle about it. Instead of the obvious Aragorn and Arwen go for stuff like Elanor, Estel (for a girl instead of a boy), Sam(wise), or the like something that sounds perfectly normal. Our daughter is named Laurelin – straight out of the Silmarillion, it's the golden tree, basically the sun, in Valinor – a fairly obscure and deeply geeky reference but sounds like the perfectly normal names Laura-Lynn (Laura is also a family name)
My former youth pastor's youngest son is named Josiah Aragorn. He figured both were amazing kings, so why not? And besides, the kid is so far only 6 years old AND he has an older sister with the middle name Ariel, so if they get picked on they get picked on together. It should also be noted that they both love their names.
I so wanted to name my daughter after the 'beautiful' third one of Job's daughters…. Keren-happuch…
I figured we could make 'Keren' the first name (sounds like the extremely normal 'Karen', right?) and 'Happuch her second name but my husband wasn't buying it.
Then we tossed around 'Anna Jubilee' (as in 'anno', latin for 'year of', get it?) – thankfully coming to our senses and naming our eventual lovely baby girl Katherine ('pure') Joy (um, 'joy')… which she carries off with aplomb and appropriate cheerfulness.
My siblings and i were born PKs. check it out.
My name: Ruth Miriam
Brother 1's name: John Michael
Sister's name: Anna Rebecca
Brother 2's name: Timothy Daniel.
oh yeah.
That does make sense to me….hopefully people won't misread this and name their kids after the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White…
"Hey, Dopey! Go to bed!"
"Grumpy! You're grounded! Don't take that attitude with me, young man."
You could see how that might turn out badly.
being a LOTR nut, I love this post. I want four kids: Arwen, Aragorn, Treebeard, and Elrond.
http://howmanyofme.com/
Boy name: Zachary Efrain Armand Kevin Antoine
^^^^^That is just for one boy.
Girl name: Glacier
Obviously, I want a boy more than I do a girl.
My high school youth pastor wants to name his first son (he has a two year old daugher, Paytyn) Blade, and pronounce it at eery opprotunity as BUH- LAAAAAAAAAADE!