Figgy the Ferret

Sport in Europe. Edited by F. G. Aflalo. Illustration by Edmund Caldwell. 1901.

most of Those White People Baby Names are originally Mormon baby names. they’re chosen (or invented) by women in Utah; they tend to filter out to the rest of the world through things like “mommy blogs” and “baby name books” and “parent forums.” 

you know how every culture has a “hey, welcome to the world, lil baby!” ritual? the mormon version of that is called a baby blessing. the baby’s father, and a handful of other men in the family, go up in front of the congregation during a Sunday service and say a special prayer. it begins by reciting the baby’s full name and then saying “I give you a name and a blessing.”  It’s not something you can avoid doing- if you try, people will think that you’re trying to hide something. baby blessings are mandatory, and everyone in the congregation will watch and judge you.

because of this, your baby’s name gets a good bit more of a spotlight in Mormon culture than it does in secular culture, and that’s saying something. 

 Mormon women start picking out names for their hypothetical future kids in fourth or fifth grade and snipe at each other for picking “weird” or “bad” ones. it’s something that’s supposed to be in the back of your head long before you have a kid. and because people will judge you if you pick a name that’s “too boring” or “too weird”, it is already an intricate dance of finding something that’s “interesting” enough to pass muster but not so “interesting” your kid won’t survive kindergarten.

and that dance becomes even more intricate when Baby Name Drama gets involved. 

see, because you’re supposed to put so much time into your baby’s name, a lot of women get… overinvested, let us say. the perfect name they picked for their baby is THEIR baby’s name and NO ONE ELSE’S. if you so much as dare to BREATHE that you’re naming your baby/pet/favourite laptop the same thing, you have STOLEN their BABY’S NAME.  

so here’s the thing… say you really wanted to name your daughter Amy. You love the name, it’s classic, it’s cute, it’s perfect for your little girl-to-be… and then your sister-in-law gets pregnant and LOUDLY ANNOUNCES that she’s naming her baby Amy! and you know for a fact that she’s the type of person to throw a massive petty shitfit over you STEALING her BABY’S NAME. your family will take sides. her family will take sides. 

if you want to avoid the drama, and you’re dead-set on naming your daughter-to-be Amy… well, then you name your daughter Aimee, or Aimi, or Aimy. It’s not the same name, it’s pronounced the same but it’s not the exact same name, so you can shut up, sis-in-law. 

from what I understand a lot of the Crazy Name Spellings came from this root- “it’s not Kaylee, it’s Kayleigh, I swear I didn’t steal your idea”- and then once it became a trend, people named their kids that to be ~trendy~ just like they did with every other stupid trend. 

I mean to give you some idea, the male mormon ‘uniform’ for sunday worship is white button up shirt, two piece suit, conservative haircut, and a tie. Your allowed points of personal expression are the knot you chose to tie your tie in and the color of said tie. If you are in a casual mood, you might wear slacks - people will look down on you for doing so. And wearing a not white button up shirt? Say you are in a blue shirt mood? You might legitimately get pulled aside by your Bishop (think congregation leader, all congregations are led by a bishop) and told that doing so is bad behavior. I know this because it happened to my brother when he wore a light pink shirt one time. And our bishop was a relatively relaxed guy with that sort of thing.

It is bad enough that Mormon congregations have to be reminded on a regular basis not to look down on visitors and treat them poorly if they show up in clothes that don’t match the allowed conformist uniforms because they either don’t know or don’t understand the seriousness of the conformist rules in Mormon culture.

And more than this these social rules matter a lot in a society like that. So you break the two piece suit rule? A good portion of the most influential people in your life will think poorly of you and it will effect your life going forward.

With so few allowed outlets for personal expression they are warped to be of much greater importance than they would be in any sane society. This level of conformity fucks with your mind. It warps how you see the world and other people.

There is a whole culture of expression based on tie color and tie knots among mormon missionaries because that is basically the only thing they actually get to chose about their own appearance. I had a friend who used a quadruple windsor knot and it was like his signature thing. Other people could use a quadruple windsor, but Elder Bird, he was the quadruple windsor guy.

I was notable among missionaries because the way I tied my tie caused a small but consistent wrinkle just below the knot, which was notable enough that I got many complements on it and was asked how I achieved the effect multiple times. I was just being lazy and tying the easiest knot I knew, but in mormon missionary culture tie appearance is so significant that it became known as my unique style. I was also notable because I managed to get special permission to wear my hair neatly trimmed to a half inch long, which is extremely rare and generally not allowed among mormon missionaries. I was the only missionary out of over 200 in that specific missionary group that had special hair permission, and it was widely understood that this was sort of a reward for my generally exemplary missionary behavior.

Think about how fucking insane that is. I had to get special permission to wear a highly conservative hair style because it wasn’t conformist enough. I still have regular nightmares about how oppressive and stifling mormon culture is. Christ I am glad I got out.

Anyway, the point of all this is that naming your child is one of the biggest points of personal expression a mormon will ever have. This is why “stealing” the name is such a big deal - it is devaluing an important choice of self expression. This will cause big divides in your family. It is going to be a problem, and a problem that will last for years if not the rest of your lives.