Surnames as First Names?

In 2012, a big trend for baby naming is set to be naming your child after a famous person’s surname. While to me this sounds like a horrible infliction on a child, (this might be because I have a terrible surname!) there are some celebrities and parents alike who love this new craze.

Obviously there are some names which legitimately translate into both first and surnames. These are names like Finley, Jasper, Kenny, Bradley and James. Also, some celebrities have given themselves stage names so their surnames are pretty amazing; Alicia Keys, for example, used to be Alicia Augello Cook. While ‘Keys’ might catch on as a baby’s first name, ‘Cook’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it? Same goes for Barry Manilow whose original name was Barry Alan Pincus…

To me, Keys and Manilow both sound like pretty cool first names, but I’m not sure how far the craze is going to go. What if your all-time hero is Brad Pitt or Steven Spielberg?

Perhaps we’ll all just have to be realistic when deciding whether or not to jump on the craze. Some surnames do sound beautiful as first names. Jolie and Cadance spring to mind, but other surnames could end up causing your little one a lot of grief at school. Luckily, celebrity surnames do tend to be nicer than everyone else’s (mainly due to the luxury of being able to name yourself!) so the craze might end up OK for the next generation of babies. But if it starts spreading to everyday surnames like Young, Baker or Cox it could spell out trouble for your baby when their peers reach a bullying age.

What do you think of the surname/first name craze? Going through some of the most common surnames, some of them do make lovely, unusual first names. Bell, Garcia and Miller are quite nice but not crazy enough to get someone teased.

So perhaps if you’re stuck for names for your little one, you should go through your facebook friends list and see if any mates have a surname you might want to steal… (Or you could just go to our baby name generator, your child will probably thank you for it later!)

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