Aiden, Braden, Caden and Jayden

You are Not A Unique Snowflake Because Your Name is Still Snowflake

Aiden, Braden, Caden and Jayden are 4 of the top 100 Boy’s Names for 2007.

Also on the list are “Kaden, Hayden and Jaden.”

This is nothing new. My graduating class was peppered with Michaels, Johns, Christophers and Matthews.

The question is, do you want to name your child something that guarantees he will be forced to use either a nickname or a last initial to differentiate him from other members of his class for the first 18 years of his life? 22, if he goes to a 4 year college.

Do You Care About the Other Snowflakes?

On the other hand, it’s your child, and you should name it what you want. At least that’s what my Mom told me, until she found out I was researching insect species as potential names. (Eleodes the Darkling Beetle is a perfectly acceptable name.)

We have a few names picked out, one in particular, but we’re not going to share it until birth. This gives us the chance to change our minds last minute, and also to discourage the unavoidable, “There was an Eleodes in my first grade class and he pooped in the cloak room,” or “Oh, I don’t like the name Beetle, it reminds me of termite infestations.”

We’re currently stuck on the middle name. We want to give him a middle name that has some meaning attached to it, since Jon can’t ever remember his, whereas I love mine, because it incorporates my Korean name, which makes me feel special and multinational. (Another plus for Eleodes – he would feel multi-species.)

The Rejects

In any case, we know for sure we can count out anything ending in a “K” as it runs into “Heller” (i.e. Zack Heller becomes Zack Keller”) and would doom him to a life of spelling out his name to government agencies and irritated credit card company representatives.

First names starting with “H” don’t work (case in point, Hubert Heller) because the alliteration just sounds silly with an H, especially if you give it a little emphasis.

Names that can be horribly nicknamed aren’t encouraged. I figure, we name him what we want, then call him by the nickname so he can own it, and also teach him Tae Kwon Do really early in life, so kids are afraid to make fun of him anyway.

The Solution

If we really get stuck, we’ll just name him Sam, after one of our cats. We’re already used to yelling that around the house, and it would be a nice shortcut on all those stupid standardized tests where you fill in the bubbles to spell out your name, because it’s only 3 letters.

Or, we could just really live it up and call him Aiden Braden Kaden Jaden Jayden Heller. We could call him “alphabet” for short.

Image credit: Eleodes