My own experience with odd names concerns my daughter, an otherwise sensible girl who named her boys Chase (not too bad, although I note quite a few girls named Chase on your site), Bryce and Tristan. I begged her not to give names that would have these lads get the crap beat out of them daily at school, but she just didn’t get it. Bryce’s middle name is Joseph, so he suffers the double ignominity of having B.J. as his initials. I’m going to call him Joe (and Tristan Jeff, since his middle name is Jeffrey).

It’s not likely that Grandpa can have a whole lot of influence in this, but we’ll see — perhaps if either one of them likes it well enough they’ll start using it and subvert their mom’s well intended but otherwise misguided naming efforts.

And my (relative) named his daughter Zephyr — I told him he should name his next one Monsoon, or Twister. And that she’ll marry a guy named Zeb and they’ll be Zeph and Zeb and run around without shoes and have lots of kids named after Carnation products. He doesn’t speak to me much.

Thanks again for the fun — keep writing.

-M.