I love talking about names. (Probably why I frequent Swistle’s baby name blog even though I am NOT pregnant.)
Recently, I came across a baby name on Facebook (the friend of a friend) that I can’t stop thinking about.
I’m always a little afraid to talk about names online, because they are so very personal. And I wouldn’t want to offend someone who has the name or wants to use the name for her child.
But names are SO FUN and SO INTERESTING. And I have never heard this particular name before and I thought it was so unusual I just HAD to talk about it.
The name?
Bronco.
Animal names are not terribly unusual… In fact, I rather like the names Fox and Wolf. (My husband does NOT.) And Colt seems to be growing in popularity. (Although that could be some sort of error of perception, seeing as the only two Colts I know of are a) a football player and b) a reality TV contestant.) Cat and Kitty, though nicknames, are not uncommon. I could see Hawk being a perfectly reasonable name. Of course, there’s Tiger Woods. (Not that I would really consider naming a child Tiger, for some reason.)
But Bronco seems… odd. I don’t know why. It seems like it should be a BETTER name than Colt: A bronco is a manly, powerful creature, while a colt is a spindly-legged child.
It got me thinking…
What makes one type of word (color, flower, profession) appropriate for a name when others from the same category just don’t work?
Consideration #1: Obviously, the general feeling about or meaning of the thing itself has a lot to do with it.
For instance, Heather is a lovely name… but Crabgrass is not. Marigold, Lily, Rose – all fine. Pansy, maybe not – but only because “pansy” is also a derogatory slang term.
Brown, Red, Silver, Grey, Goldie, Pink, Green – all perfectly fine as names. But I can’t imagine naming my child White or Black or Puce or Yellow.
For all of the animals that seem to make perfectly good names, there are many that seem out. Eel. Elephant. Ostrich. Snake.
Tanner and Hunter and Sergeant and Judge – good. Plumber and Pharmacist and Mortician and Manager – not quite.
Harmony and Honor and Earnest and Felicity – these all strike me as lovely. Obedience, Endurance, Reliance, Zeal – these just don’t quite cut it (for me, at least. But that is perhaps because I am not a Puritan).
Consideration #2: Once we get rid of the feeling of a name and the meaning, does the appropriateness of a name come down to sound?
Is it that Colt sounds enough like Cole and Colton and other similar, more-common names that it automatically “feels” more name-like than Bronco?
Is that why Petunia seems like an adorable name choice… While Carnation just seems out of the running, for some intangible reason I can’t pinpoint?
Or why Coriander and Sage seem (to me) to be lovely names… But Cumin and Paprika don’t quite seem to work?
Let’s go back to Bronco for a second. (Do you see that I am typing it over and over, to see if familiarity will make it more Namelike?) If we’re talking about sound… I believe I’ve heard the name “Bronx” before. And THAT sounds like a perfectly reasonable name to me… while “Bronco” – which has similar sounds PLUS a generally positive meaning – still seems like Not A Name.
Bronco also reminds me of Leo, which is a name I LOVE. They both end O (along with names like Milo and Willow) and Leo is animal-ADJACENT. But Leo is so much more of a NAME to me than Bronco. Leo is well-established as a name, though. So there’s that. In fact, that leads me to…
Consideration #3: Perhaps all it takes is for some established person to come along WITH the name to make it feel more like a name?
I mean, I never would have considered “Apple” to be a name until Ms. Paltrow popped out her own little seedling. Nor would I ever have considered “Pilot” or “Inspector” to be reasonable occupation names. Then Jason’s little Pilot Inspektor arrived. (I actually am still not convinced of either of these nouns’ appropriateness as a name. But whatever.)
When I was a teenager, I read a book (by, I believe, the wonderful Caroline B. Cooney) about a girl named Dove who had a “vanished twin” named Wing. I always thought those both SOUNDED like they could be names, but I haven’t ever heard them in real life. Nonetheless, if I encountered them in the wild, I wouldn’t bat an eye simply because the book made them real to me.
Consideration #4: Of course, we do have to consider that some names may seem unusual in the U.S. … but they may be perfectly common in other countries or cultures.
For instance, in the few minutes since I started writing this post, I did a little looking around. (Pro Tip: Do the research BEFORE writing the post.) And it turns out that Bronco is/may be (I never know which sites to TRUST on these matters) an established boy’s name, possibly of Spanish/Mexican origin.
One of my brother’s classmates growing up had the name “Nacho.” Growing up in a tiny, very homogenous town in a relatively unpopulated, homogenous state, I always thought Nacho was very odd. But it turns out that Nacho is/may be a common nickname for the name Ignacio. And the instant I heard that it was an established nickname for an established name, I saw the name in a whole different light.
Likewise, I’d never name a child Tongue… but I have a friend of Chinese descent whose middle name is Tung. Both names sound the same. Both call to mind the same fleshy organ. But once I know the name is Chinese? It’s perfectly fine.
By the way – I am ALSO aware that names are totally subjective. I might love the name Ernest while you may think it is a hideous old man’s name. There’s a LOT of personal preference wrapped up in a name. I get that. And if it’s An Appropriate Name to YOU, then it’s an appropriate name. (Okay – with SOME exceptions. See below paragraph.)
But still. It DOES SEEM that – while there are outliers, some of them HORRIBLE (remember Talullah Does the Hula from Hawaii? And that poor child named Adolf Hitler?) – most names on the Baby Name Bell Curve fall into the big fat middle range of “acceptable” or “appropriate.”
What I’m interested in today are the names that lie along the edges of that bell curve – the ones that seem (or are) unusual but aren’t totally Cray-Cray-Crazy. And I’m also interested in what makes something Worthy of Being a Name.
So, Internet, please discuss. What makes a word Name Appropriate? And what do YOU think about Bronco as a name?
And, just for fun, let’s talk about some of the names you love the most and like the least. You know – the noun/color/occupation names. The names that you secretly love but make your husband look at you like you’ve lost your ever loving mind. (Or the names HE loves that make YOU think he’s gone off the deep end.)
Like I said, I secretly love Fox and Wolf. I also love Sonnet and Story. And Poem and Plum and Pepper. No way would my husband EVER okay one of those names. Hence the secret love.
I used to work in a department that saw a LOT of names and I must say, people may think that spelling a common name in an unusual name is cool, but actually it’s just confusing. Those poor children will, for the rest of their lives, be correcting people on how to say their names. For example, I’m from Texas. Jaime is a boy’s name, pronounces HI-May. If you name your daughter Jaime and you mean Jamie (Jay-MEE) their name will be pronounced like the Hispanic boy’s name HI-May. Every time. Forever.
Bronco as a name – totally not my style! But I think I tend to think most words are not good as names. My brother was thankfully born a boy, (and his name is Colt actually) because had he been a girl my mom was going to name him Treasure. Treasure?!
Anyways, even with all that said, I think once you get used to a name whether it is from a word or not, most anything can feel right. I know that naming my daughter Charley (which is not very common for a girl) is going to have some people wrinkle their noses at it and I’m okay with that!
Bronco Mendenhall is the head coach of BYU’s football team; as a BYU alum I am familiar with the name, although it does strike me as kind of odd. According to Wikipedia, his children’s names are Raeder-Steel, Breaker, and Cutter. Mormons/Utahns are famous for their weird names – often these are strange combinations of ancestors’ names and/or strange spellings of more common names. Check out http://wesclark.com/ubn/ for a taste.
I tend to like city names. I LOVE Sienna for a girl. I also like London (perhaps spelled Londyn) and Syndey.
Syndey is not a city. Sydney is. And a cool name too. If you meant Cindy, please dont do the weird spelling thing. From personal experience it is a PAIN in the -ss for your WHOLE LIFE!!! Thanks so much MUM!!
I am of the camp that you should name your children actual names – not the names of inanimate objects, or places, or animals. I just — I mean, they’re not the worst names (no, that award goes to two young girls I met named A’Miracle and A’Preciate) but still. And while I understand that a name tends to grow WITH a person, I use this rule of thumb: Will the name be as cute and wonderful for a 45 year old man or woman as it is for a four month old babe?
And I agree with Ris, misspelling names makes it incredibly hard on a child.
After going through the arduous process of baby names, I could write a week’s worth of blog posts that would end up getting me killed by various people I know and people on the Internet. Even a curiosity post such as yours can inflame people for some crazy reason. People are so very passionate about baby names.
Eh on Bronco, but it’s certainly not the weirdest or most outlandish name I’ve ever seen.
While I won’t comment on the craziest names I have heard (pitchfork avoidance, even through the internet…), I will comment that it is extremely difficult to give boys non-standard but masculine names. Girls do acquire many of the boys’ names, and then you’re left with the oh so common 10 boys’ names: Matthew, John, Luke, Joseph…you know, the Bible names. I do see that if you don’t want a top 10 name for a boy and you don’t want the name to be stolen by girls (ala Kelly, Tracey, Terry, etc.), you’re kind of stuck with using a name that is overly masculine and approaching not-a-name territory.
(whispers)….I do not think nouns should be names.
(Hides in shame.)
I KNOW. It isn’t popular, but perhaps I’m just too old fashioned.
I think Bronco is fine, doesn’t strike me as being very odd. This is coming from someone who once was in love with the name Arson for a boy. I still think it’s a great word and name, but no disassociating that one from it’s meaning :/ But, with a name like Holland, I suppose I’m pretty open-minded and supportive of unique and creative names.
I think naming a child is one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to do. It defines the personality, I think. I don’t know what makes a name more appropriate than another, but I do like established ones and more old-fashioned sounding ones. For example, I have a “Pearl” in my family tree and absolutely love it while the husband refuses to entertain it as a possibility.
I laughed out loud at some of your “not so okay” names. Cumin is definitely not okay. I do love Poppy and Pepper. I probably would not name a girl Pear, lest she be doomed to a round bottom.
One of mine is Marigold. I love it. I wouldn’t QUITE use it. (Middle name, though, I might!)
I do think it’s time and exposure that make the difference. The name Jennifer was shockingly exotic when it hit the scene. My grandparents had never heard the name Kristen.
But it’s also The Times. Like, Violet was a totally ordinary name for a long time, and then it went out and would have seemed kind of shocking again. And now it’s back in, and no one would blink.
Talon. A baby named Talon. I saw it in a house we were looking at buying, in letters over the crib.
I kind of like the name Paprika. I mean, I would never name an actual child that, but I kind of like it. What was the one from Firefly? Saffron. I liked that one too, but would never use it.
I always loved the name Angelina, but with our last name, it becomes a joke.
Oh, and just for a bonus, names that I’ve always liked (but would never use myself) are what Ridley Pearson (the writer) named his daughters- Storey and Paige. I always just think of that as being so sweet and I loved it when his book was dedicated to them. I think it only works if you are a well established, published author though.
My 9yo actually has a classmate named Bronx and a classmate named Talonvor. And I like your point about names being acceptable as soon as they’re brought to our attention. Like Bronx and Apple, once we’re familiar..they’re acceptable. I agree that Pilot and Inspektor…not names. My husbands cousin recently named their son Brix.
Hmmm…I don’t know how I feel about Bronco personally, but I appreciate it being unique without being completely out there.
I try to contain my judgy pants when I see regular names spelled all wonky. I don’t get the point. When someone verbalizes ‘Payton,’ it’s still pronounced the same even if you spelled it ‘Paighten.’ If there’s a legit reason behind it (honoring a particular individual) I understand it more, but if you’re trying to be different, choose a less common name.
I really like Pepper, and Milo is on my short list if we ever have a boy! I have a thing for old-fashioned and literature based names: Asher, Holden, Estella, Cordeila, Brynn, Malachi. I grew up with multiple Ashleys, Jennifers, Jasons, etc. and want to make sure that my kids’ names aren’t one of a dozen, just maybe one of a few.
I love talking about names too! I tend to not like overly popular, tradtional names, however, I don’t really like too many nouns for names. I do like last names as first names; Parker, Jackson, Hudson, which my husband generally does not like. I really love the name Emerson for a girl, and then call her Emy for a nickname. Unfortunately my husband does not. I do like names like Ruby and Pearl, so I might not have a complete set of rules!
Nacho is, like you said, the popular nickname for Ignacio (or in Basque, Natxo for Iñaki).
But Bronco sounds so odd to me. Probably because it’s similar to “bronca” in Spanish, which means scolding, and thus has a negative connotation.
I am in love with my daughter’s name. Good thing too huh? It took me FOREVER to pick it out and part of the reason we chose it was because husband wanted all three names to flow and mean something. Yeah, try making a first and middle name make sense with their ‘meaning’ in conjuction with a last name. It worked though and I think it’s beautiful. (I’ll tell you it’s Blythe now, so as to not keep you in suspense). I think picking a name is very important and should not be taken lightly. It really miffs me when I hear of a child named Muffy or something like that where you tell there wasn’t much meaning behind it (unless it was a family name, in which I’d be very wrong)
one of the prettiest names I ran into working in insurance was Velvet Brown. She had auburn hair and big brown eyes….
the worst was Harry Asses…….Yes…that.was.his.real.name.
Personally, I find it hard (unless I actually meet someone) to like surnames-as-first-names, particularly for girls. I tend to like feminine names, so naming a girl Cameron, for example, or McKenna, is just an alien concept for me. However, my daughter has a little American friend at school called Ainsley and now that I know this cute little girl, the name doesn’t bother me at all, even though I would have put it in the Cameron-McKenna category before.
The names I loved that my ex shot down in flames were things like Daisy, Poppy, Rose, Sebastian, Orlando, Crispin… All very gender-specific, classic and English-sounding (normal – I’m British). My ex, however (being French) HATED them all, preferring Ida, Angéla and Barbara (we didn’t need boy names). And of course I didn’t like any of those either. Yup, naming our girls took forever (we chose Carla and Lydie in the end, but it was tough!).
The only object-as-name I ever thought about much growing up, was Brick, which at the time was highly unusual but now that the TV show “The Middle,” (tell me I’m not the only person who likes “The Middle”) has a “Brick” character, I guess it’s becoming mainstream. (The kid I knew… his last name WAS Wall. No kidding.)
Some other nouns that I could kind-of imagine people snagging as names in the future… Hearth. Arrow. Deck. Ash. Dryer. Cord. Spade. …Right? It’s kinda funny to try to come up with them. (Boy, am I glad all my kids are already born and named! Very traditional, boring names, btw.)
Oh, the name game is SO fascinating! I can’t get enough of what people name their babies. My friends have been pretty tame in the baby name department, I have to admit. But my stepmom is a labor and delivery nurse in a small town (with a large women’s prison population) and she has the absolute BEST stories about what people name their kids. I get so embarrassed for these children. Naming a baby is going to be so incredibly hard! My husband and I are doomed.
Thank you for visiting my blog and commenting on my Time Warp Tuesday post last week about which of my blog entries got the most attention and how things have changed in my life since!
I loved this post and how you analyzed the ways and whys of what makes a name work for a baby (in our families, our culture and others)! There is a chapter in that book Freakonomics that talks about the rise and fall in popularity of various names that I found really interesting.
I also wrote this post on my blog awhile back when we were pregnant with our third child (after the death of our second) about the top four names we had narrowed it down to (we knew we were having a girl), but I didn’t actually share what the names were, just what I liked about them and why (if that makes sense): http://chicagobensons.blogspot.com/2009/05/final-four.html
I grew knowing a girl who had an older sister named Sonnet. I tend to like more traditional names, but am still fascinated by the discussion. Thank you for sharing!
Good post! I know of a Bronco, Bronco Mendenhall. Football coach for the BYU Cougars. No, I wouldn’t have heard of him if I wasn’t married! It does have a nice feel as a name to me. We’ve opted for more traditional names for our kids but there are some words and names that are just beatiful – like Hazel or Felicity, or many of the others you mentioned.
Hello, I think I need to respond as I am one of those parents who named his son Bronco. Yes, the name game was very difficult for us. However my wife and I agree that we wanted to have name that wasn’t the norm.
Our only problem is that the non normal names are now normal. A friend of ours told of about a neighbor’s kid who was on a baseball team nick name the Zachary. They jokingly told us that the kid’s team had like 5-6 Zacharys on it.
So now Zachary isn’t so unique.
Back to Bronco, my wife and I were brainstorming names when she was expecting. I threw out the name Bronco because of a old football player from the ’30s named Bronko Nagurski. To my surprise my wife really like it. Closer to the due date, I was like ‘maybe we should reconsider’. And I was worried and influence by the many comments people had in saying they thought the little guy was going to get pick on. But my wife really hard it on the nail, kids will tease other kids REGARDLESS. We could have named him John Smith and kids will still find something to tease. It is the way he respond would build his character.
We do come across people asking what Bronco’s real name is. And we explain to them that it isn’t a nick name. Generally it is usually older and more conservative people that would give a little notice *gasp*. But the majority of the people love it. And you know, my boy LOOKS like a Bronco. I can’t image his name being something else. It doesn’t brother me one bit.
And to the people who don’t like the name Bronco, simply do not name your kid Bronco. We don’t like the name Randy so we won’t name our second son Randy.
We also named our son Bronco and the reaction of others has always been favorable. He was born two months premature weighing in at exactly four lbs. and spent 33 days in the NICU. My husband and I always planned on the names Elliot for a girl and Bronco for a boy. Yet our little guy remained nameless for the first few days after he was born. I just wasn’t sure it was his name. Then on the third day we brought our just barely two year old daughter to see him through the glass window. When it was time for her to leave she called out “Bronco” and we knew that would be his name. He was and is a fighter and a mischievous troublemaker and I love him to pieces!
As my friends have started having kids I’ve been supplied with a near-steady stream of perplexing names. It seems that some are determined to name their children after objects… Stetson (a hat!) and Gibson (a guitar!). One must really like Tom Cruise movies (Maverick), one used a Spanish word (Rio) thoulgh she doesn’t speak Spanish, and some I just don’t get at all (Zaiden).
I’ve seen other friends go with themes, like the one with daughters named Hazel and Iris, and the one with a son named Will and a daughter named Kate. (To be fair, both kids were born before the royal wedding. But the Duke and Duchess had definitely been dating for years.)ou
I don’t have kids yet, and I know I’m going to be a nervous wreck trying to choose names for them if I ever get around to it. There really is a lot of pressure to “do it right.” I do tend to favor unusual “real” names though — ones that are recognizable but not seen very often.
Haha, the person with the kid named Bronco HAS to be a Mormon. Mormons are infamous for naming their kids crazy things. This website is really fun to browse through if you like names: http://wesclark.com/ubn/. Some of these are jokes, and sadly, some of them aren’t.
A kid in my hometown is named Gunner. Gunner!
My husband and I did lots of thinking when we were pregnant about names. I definitely didn’t want a super common name, so even though i LOVE the name “emma” it was out for a girl b/c it’s just too popular. Mostly I wanted a name that was meaningful – our son is named “Judah” which means “praise” in Hebrew. We had a hard time getting pregnant and were so thankful to finally have a child that we wanted everyone to know that we were praising God for his birth.
Worst names I ever heard – I once overheard a dad calling out to his sons while we were in Babies R Us. He called them “chaos” and “fury”. I’m sorry, but both of those names are awful – unless you want your child to end up in jail.
Names for kids are an interesting breed. You know how there are some people that you just associate now as the name? Their parents named them. Yeah, I know, it’s shocking and very scary to think about. I’ll tell you one funny name story:
Jon’s friend from HS got pregnant (in high school….) and she had a girl that she named Pajamas (pronounced “Pah”-ja-mas with the accent on “Pah” – on second thought this story is way better in person….). Anyways – she was looking for baby names by flipping through a dictionary and stumbled on a word she thought would make a cool name. When you see it in writing it kinda kills the punch line, but basically she named her kid Pajamas, misprounounced. Another reason not to have kids at 16?
Okay, I read this post a week ago and didn’t comment, but I guess I need to get this out.
Now that all four of my children have names, I have strong feelings about this. I would rename ALL of my children if I could. I have actually thought about doing it, really, a few times.
I wish that I had chosen names that meant something to my husband and/or me. I wish that my children were connected somehow to their ancestors, to people that I love that they will never know, to people that possessed amazing (to me) qualities. I know that this is an “old school” mentality, and when I named my children, my only priorities were that their names would be unique and not trendy, names I could not get tired of, ones that we could shorten, etc, names that we liked. Yes, I was so immature. Names are names, and that is all.
But, now I truly believe that names are so important!! I wish I had placed more weight on the ones I chose. For example, I would love to use illustrations often to remind my children about the people they were named after.
Oh well. It is what it is now, but if I could go back… Now I have to live with the reality that when my children ask me why they were named what they were named (for two school projects so far), the answer will continue to be “It was the only name that your dad and I could agree on at the time.”
Names….sometimes they leave me shaking my head. As a teacher, I have seen/heard it all! Children with last names they have NO CONTROL over….Cox, Dorko are just two that I have had. I also had a student named Tahel (TA HELL) and a little boy named Go. I made the mistake of saying, “Go, Tahel, please line up for lunch!” I never used their names together in the same sentence ever again. My friend’s sister work at a hospital and drew blood from someone name Pierce Hiscock! He was in his 80′s and it was the late 80′s. She took one of the stickers home with her because she didn’t think people would believe her. While working in a pharmacy I saw names like Thomas Thomas, Steve Stevens or Joan Jones. I am sorry, what are people thinking? I knew someone with the last name Hammer who named their child Jack. And someone else wanted to name their little boy Smoka because the last name was Winston (they type of cigs they smoked at the time). Thank G-d they didn’t. Of course when someone brings up a name I often wait for them to comment first. The last thing I would want to do is say something negative and then find out they are naming their child that.
Ford! I love the name Ford! Different, but strong and masculine! Have a boy and name him that puhleeese!
As for the other names, I like family or older sounding names {Ruth, Sloane, Julia, Esther, etc} My husband has a weird name and it gets annoying…