A friend of mine wants to name her unborn son Madison. She insists this is a unisex name and she likes it for a boy. I think naming a boy a name that is unisex but more common in women (Dana, Leslie, etc.) is just asking to be teased constantly during childhood. I know dozens of Madisons and they are all little girls.
What do you think?
I know a couple Madisons who are boys. And it's better than naming her boy Courtney or Ashley.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised you know Madisons who are boys because the ranking for that name for boys is like zero.
DeleteI'm not so sure Courtney or Ashley are better. At least the nicknames sounds a little more boyish (Court or Ash). Mad still sounds girly to me.
Meh. I know a woman who named her son "Awesome." Madison seems rather tame by comparison.
ReplyDeleteOne of the hottest guys I knew from hs was named Dana. I strongly doubt that his name was a huge burden for him, and if he was teased as a small child he seemed pretty over it by the time he reached age 16.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's like the boy named Sue. It makes you tough to have a girls name.
DeleteHe wasn't tough, just super hot. I think I need to go jump my husband now.
DeleteMeh, I was friends with a girl named Micael during my childhood, and I don't remember her ever getting teased. If she did, it was never a horrible on-going thing.
ReplyDeleteI knew a guy named Shannon during college and he seemed to have turned out fine too.
I think if a kid is going to be teased constantly (about any subject in their life) all relates to how they react to the initial attempt at bullying (and how persistent the bully is). If a bully says "ha ha you have a name that doesn't match your gender" and the kid reacts badly and it upsets them, the bully will know that's a weak spot they can poke at. If a bully says that and the kid reacts by saying "meh, there isn't anything wrong with that, I like my name" then the attempted bully knows they can't hurt them in that regard.
As noted, this depends on the bully in some regard, and how persistent they want to be, but I think if a bully is going to be that persistent and wants to bully a kid that much, they'll find something else to bully them about and at that point it's far more about the bully than the child being bullied or their name.
In my country there are no unisex names :S
ReplyDeleteI am named after alcohol and it was never a big deal growing up. Being picked on is not really related to your name IMO.
ReplyDeleteChavis I love your name! Is your middle name Regal?
DeleteMadison (and other the other 1000 spellings) is definitely girl. Especially if you are under 10.
ReplyDelete-A pharmacist who sees all the crazy names people use for their kids
I know about a billion girl Madisons (and Addisons). I have not met a single boy one. I don't get the insane popularity of it right now.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you 100%, Fizzy. Madison isn't worse than Apple, North, or Rocket Man, though.
ReplyDeleteNever seen a boy Madison. I've seen girl and boy Dylan's though. I just met a baby girl named Lennox, which I assumed was a boy's name. There are better options for unisex names than Madison is all I'm saying.
ReplyDeleteWhy would ANYBODY name a kid after a state capital?
ReplyDeleteThere's that "millionaire listings" show on Bravo and one of the male realtors on it is named Madison. It doesn't seem to bother him.
ReplyDeleteI thought Madison was a President. Too many kids out there with Presidential names. Regan, McKinley, Kennedy, Lincoln....
ReplyDeleteCan you tell I'm reading David Sedaris.....?
Its a girls name. and a dumb one at that.
ReplyDeleteI guess the mom and the kid can just point to Madison Bumgarner... Pitcher for the Giants, big burly dude, kind of a badass. I agree it makes me think of a girl first, but there are some compelling counterpoints. Hard to find a more masculine nickname than 'Mad'...
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely much more common for girls, especially for kids under age 10. Suggest Mason as an alternative, much more acceptable for boys and almost the same.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, Madison means "son of Maude" and Addison means "son of Adam" yet these names are used on girls. It's like Mackenzie means "son of Kenneth" (and kenneth is the English form of the Scots Gaelic Coiineach, which comes from the word caoin which means handsome). Madison became popular after the movie Splash, and that character was named after a street. In modern times, Madison, Addison and Mackenzie are surnames.
ReplyDeleteSo, if you want to dissuade anyone from using what I consider to be a bad name for a girl, tell her it means son of Maude and it's a last name-used-as-first name, it became popular because of a movie where a mermaid was named after a NYC street. It's like all those non-Jewish boys who were named Cohen after the show The OC came out, but people who were Jewish would never ever use it as a first name. It's still a bad name for a boy because it's so heaviy used for girls now, as well as the movie reason it is used now and the fact that it's a last name not a first name.
As for Addison, it's a disease, a town in Illinois and a street in Chicago, as well as the last name of a famous male author (Joseph Addison) and that was who the town of Addison was named after.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splash_%28film%29 Considering that the name "Madison" was originally a joke from a movie, I think it's rather silly for either sex.
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