Choosing Baby Names-The Forgotten Problem
A word of warning if you are currently thinking about baby names.
I know you, think about whether the surname goes with the Christian name so that things like North West don’t happen. What do you mean it has?
Same goes for acronyms. Obviously the parents of Timothy William Arthur Turton did not think that one though.
There is one thing that is just not spoken of enough. Something I have called ‘Long-Nameism’.
That’s right, folks, long nameism is at large in our society.
People with above average length names are being penalised all over the place.
Emma, George, Jack, even Anastasia are all acceptable lengths, according to the powers that be.
When it comes to the likes of Christopher, Elizabeth, even Catherine however you are in deep trouble.
I have found out the hard way.
You see a well known bike retailer, will only personalise bikes up, to eight letters. Don’t worry, a strongly worded email, was sent to the head office saying, should, HM The Queen ask for a 12-inch pink bike, with streamers to be personalised with her name would they refuse?
I also complained that I had to push a pram and carry a heavy box to the car with no offer of help so they addressed this part of the complaint not the name bit.
Likewise, any kind of letter-based gift or wall-art at, say 3-5 £ a letter ends up being very expensive for the Stephanie’s and Alexander’s of the world.
I bought my friend’s little boy some personalised chocolate. You could buy letters individually and slip them into a pre-sized cellophane box.
![tch01b[1]](https://farmerswifeandmummy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/tch01b1.jpg)
Guess what? They only went up to eight letters so poor Boo would either have to have the last letter missing off her name or we would have to shorten it. Why should we have to?
I asked her today whether she prefers her full name or the shortened form (people do sometimes call her the pet-versions) and she said the full name. How can you argue with that?
Even the new, Princess Charlotte would technically have trouble with getting things personalised.
I am appealing to companies to stop this nine letter prejudice now.
We only realised how expensive Zs full name was after we started ordering personalised things and paying £4 a letter. Boo to 9 letter named prejudice!! Next kid is going to get a 3 letter one like joe. 😉
Hehehe thank goodness we didn’t have to get tattoos 😀
Thank goodness I went with Henry, the 5 letter bargain name.
Great post, had me laughing at North West. They are planning on calling their son Easton West…hmmmmx
See you’ve missed a trick, I’ve got a 4 letter & a 3 letter, cheap as chips 🙂
Haha…that is so true, we are quite lucky all ours are short but I have the names that never show up in the personalised pens/key rings etc. Mine never did when I was a girl so I think I’ve inflicted the same misery on them 🙂
I had no idea! So Emma is a good name for my little princess… I was thinking of Charlotte too…
We were going to have Charlotte if G had been a girl but we would have ended up with the same problems as poor Elizabeth who can’t have her name on her bike 😉 I know it’s not the end of the world but still…
Totally agree!! My two are Finley and Noah so we don’t get the length problem but there is the personalised gift problem – Finley is hardly ever on them! #maternitymondays xx
Great post… I had a bit of name OCD whilst preggers with all 5 of mine and insisted that they all have 6 letters… I have no idea why it was so important to me at the time but it is quite handy! Although haveing chosen alternative spellings for most of them I do find this frustraiting when people can’t e bothered to check and spell correctly! Thankyou for hosting #maternitymatters
Luckily I don’t think my two will have this problem as their names aren’t too long.. They’ll never find their names on anything though so no personalised bits for them haha xx
That’s crazy that they don’t go up to at least 9 letters! So many people have long names. Luckily none of my family have the length problem apart from my little sister Gabriella. But she was born a few years before High School Musical was released and you can actually get her name everywhere now. xx #maternitymondays
I can kind of see both sides to this, a box of chocolates with 10 letters is obviously going to cost more than a box of five but to limit it to a certain number of letters is just bloody ridiculous. Also being a girl called Toni I never, ever had anything personalised when I was little. The amount of times I was traumatised that my brother Gavin & sister Amy had their names on things & I just got ‘Princess’ or something similar! #MaternityMondays
We were fine and dandy with a seven and a six. But we’ve saddled our poor boys with a double barrelled name, when it comes to learning to write their names they are in trouble!
My eldest will have 20 letters to write…..oops x
Haha this really made me chuckle! Yes, I love it when you look at personalised gifts online that are ‘from £15″ and then they end up being £50 by the time you’ve entered all of the letters (*goes and finds another gift*). Great post #MaternityMomdays
I had no idea about all this! We though long and hard about Emma’s name. Being Swedish and having a seemingly impossible name to pronounce here in the UK, I wanted her to have a name that had no funny spelling and worked universally. And reading this turns out it’s a good length too 🙂 #MaternityMondays
Fab post hon and honestly not something I have ever thought of before but it does seem odd! We have 3 and 7 letter for ours so thankfully we will be OK ☺ xx #MaternityMondays
It does seem odd this – maybe charging per letter would be better?Then there is no limit? Although could get expensive if you have a long name. Hmmmm
We always struggle finding pre personalised items for our daughters – seems Gemma and Eliza are not common enough to be included. My boys are Jacob and Max and we can always find their names lol.
I had no idea that Tin Box Tot was going to be so expensive when it came to bikes and chocolate! I support it’s a bit too late to change her name now, but I’ll support your campaign 😉 #MaternityMondays
How interesting! I have never thought of that! My hubby is a Christopher but Chris to us all so is a bit easier. It is a bit unfair for those with the long names especially if each leter cost adds up!! Thanks for hosting xx #maternitymondays
That is very unfair, both my 2 have shortish names so I’ve not had a problem but I would be majorly pee’d off if I couldn’t get my personalised item because of having too many letters in a name. Cray, cray. Thanks for hosting.
#maternitymondays
Oh dear that’s such a shame and something we’ve not yet come across. It’s such a shame especially if all their friends have it. Thank you for hosting #maternitymondays x
This is such a good point and a problem that I haven’t encountered with my 6 letter name. I unintentionally chose well with Aria’s 4 letter name, cheap personalisation here I come!