Bargepole’s ELP thread has reminded me that I was at school with a kid called Emerson, named (his dad’s choice, obviously) after the keyboard spanker. I guess just calling him Keith didn’t cut it. So, Massive, who would be the best and worst rock stars to name your offspring after?
Naming children after rock stars
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I’m sure Bingo will be along in a minute to tell us all about his twins, Fred and Wes.
Better than calling them Fred and West.
Ahem.
Fredette and Weshelmina, actually.
The King lives on. I know several small boys here called Elvis which I find a little odd.
I’d pity any poor girl named after Diamanda Galas. Although if one forgets the extraordinary Mexican diva, (very talented but an unconventional role model) it is perhaps quite a pretty name?
There’s always a chance that they are named after the Elvis who was named after Elvis Presley in the wonderful books by Maria Gripe I suppose…but probably not!
‘Metallica’ is a nice name for a girl.
Mr Nordstuga has a first name which is quite common in Norway.
I pity any lad named after him that moves to the UK.
Somewhere in The Back of my forgetful mind is a memory of a country -I believe it may be a Nordic one that banned the “stupid-obscure” names – anybody else recall that.
I do recall a Scouser naming one of his sprogs after all the Liverpool team in the 60’s or 70’s – just imagine the calling of someone with 11 (not including the reserves) first names – would need a roll of wallpaper to write out the birth certificate.
How about Gomer Pyle’s son Lyle Pyle?
Doesn’t Iceland have a list of state-approved names that parents choose from? No chance of Ladygaga Magnusdottir there.
I wanted to call my son Nile, in honour of my favorite funky guitarist.
My wife would only go along with it if it was spelt Nial, which – to me, conjures up images of wimpy boy band members.
So we named him Jethro instead.
OK, so I lied about the last bit. He’s called Jamie
We had a boy at a previous school, called
Justin Hayward ( last name )
his parents had chosen it after the Forever Autumn hit maker.
Guilty as charged guv. My son Frank is named after the Hot Rats Hitmaker.
New Zealand has an annual list of names that have been rejected for registration – the most well known being “Telula Does the Hula in Hawaii”.
A few years ago a friend in NZ wanted to call her child Duke (not even after the Mood Indigo Hitmaker) and was refused. So she and many others bombarded the powers that be with complaints and it was allowed.
I proposed Lowell as a name for Twang Jr, which got an instant double thumbs down from Mrs. T. So he’s a Ben. I can’t think of a single hero of mine called Ben.
My eldest is named Joe after Joe Strummer.
Oh. And both his grandads were called Joe, too. I don’t know which pop stars they were named after.
My youngest has the middle name “Joe”, after Strummer. I’ve noticed that he caterwauls extra hard during Complete Control.
His older sister has the middle name “Lux”, most assuredly not after Interior.
Joe Strauss and Joe Seb Bach?
Rock & Roll !!!!!
That was meant for @tiggerlion obviously.
Bloody stupid reply function!
Oooh Lux- fab name, @bingo-little! Our daughter’s middle name is Grace after the Jeff Buckley album.
Grace is a beautiful name, and what a fantastic record to be pointed to when she eventually asks where it came from. I’ve always liked the idea of having a good answer to that question.
Lux ended up as a middle name because my wife was worried about giving our daughter a “weird” name. When said daughter arrived she had flaming red hair and a loud mouth. She has precisely zero chance of ever blending in quietly, and my other half has remarked many times since that if ever there’s been a little girl who should have been called Lux, it’s her.
On the upside, the regret over having chickened out of the unorthodox name first time round had the effect of convincing my wife that we should worry less second time round, and consequently my son is named Huck, after Huck Finn, who was my childhood hero and remains the most famous creation of my favourite writer.
My favourite passage that Mark Twain ever wrote was his description of Tom Blankenship, the real life Mississipi youth on whom Finn was based: “In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy’s.”
If here are two qualities I would wish for my kids to have, it’s a good heart and an independence of spirit. The idea is that my boy’s name will remind him to think for himself, and that the vagaries of a person’s table manners (or even their name) matters far less than the quality of their character.
That’s the idea, anyway. He’ll probably run away when he’s 13 and sail a homemade raft down the Thames. Either way, I live in a wanky middle class suburb where unusual names are a dime a dozen and you can get away with this sort of thing. Hooray!
Huck? Not Finn?
Or better, Fin? Or better yet, Fin59?
The youngest has the middle name Paul. **thumbs aloft**
My eldest daughter is named Kyllie. That’s right…two Ls – the American spelling. She was born in 1981, four years before Neighbours and the Aussie poppet hit any TV screens. SHE KNOWS HOW TO SPELL HER NAME! That’s to all the people who tell her she spells it wrong.
Jimi of Doves is named after Lenny Hendrix – who was knighted today in Bono’s New Year’s Day Honours.
I was a kind of parent for a while to a Josh and a Maya. Neither were named for Stars; Rock, thereof.
In the event of progeny, I’m going with Sigue Sigue for a boy and Sputnik for a girl.
Last year I worked with a woman called Sam, who was named after the song, Telegram Sam. She is in her mid-20s and her favourite band is Status Quo . In every other way, though – a young person.
My former neighbour’s son called his boy Marvin after some Motown singer or other.
My daughter is Layla. Strangely she wasn’t initially named after the Eric Clapton song. During pregnancy we knew we were having a girl and had disagreements about the name. Variously she was going to be Grace or Natasha. A couple of weeks before birth my wife was reading an article in Hello magazine about Paul Young’s new daughter Layla. She really liked the name and I pounced on it because of the Clapton connection. Our daughter was about 2 or 3 when she first heard the song. ‘Why is that man singing about me mummy?’
Somewhat shamefacedly, I must admit that when I started this thread, I kind of forgot that my own daughter is named after Ella Fitzgerald. Tsk tsk.
(Like Bingo’s she also has a very unusual middle name that I wouldn’t have minded for her first name)
You named your daughter Fitzgerald?!
Secretly it’s after the bloke out of Kitchens Of Distinction, but don’t tell the wife
Ganglesprocklet’s real name is Ghost Face Killah. We figured Wee Dirty Bastard wouldn’t fit as he might get quite tall. And Raekwon The Chef is imposing a role on him that he may not like. RZA and GZA, man, we’d be explaining the pronunciation all day and as for Method Man, I just don’t like that as a name. U God, I mean, I might as well call him Jesus or Allah or something. Cappadonna is a girls name, sorry, and Mastah Killah? Ghost Face is so much nicer isn’t it? As for Inspectah Deck, I hope he manages to do more than work on the buses…
I wanted my daughter’s middle-name to be ‘Flock of Seagulls’, but my wife put her foot down and we settled instead for a compromise choice: ‘Ultravox’.
A while ago, I started to call our vacuum cleaner “Jimmy”. It didn’t really catch on. For a start, it doesn’t look like a Jimmy – more a Keith.
If Lennon Gallagher and Beatrice McCartney get hitched in ten years time, father-in-law, Paul will finally officially get the billing he was asking for.
Actually, I got that wrong. He’d still be pissed off.
Hey Bingo – that’s a real coincidence. I swear this afternoon I thought of recommending ‘The Autobiography of Mark Twain’ to you. One of the true geniuses. Not of his time, nor of any time.
Thanks, Ian – I’ve read the first two volumes and they are absolutely wonderful. He could have written a book on drying paint and made it magical: the fact that he lead an extraordinary life only makes it all the better.