From graveyards to orange juice labels, baby naming is getting creative

John, William, Mary, Elizabeth: for genealogists, these names can be a nightmare. However, for parents in the Western world from the 17th to early 19th centuries, unwritten naming rules typically involved honouring older generations within the family, such as grandparents. Sharing the same name was seen as a sign of honour and respect, which also streamlined the baby-naming process.

Today, however, choosing a name for a child isn’t always as straightforward. Many parents now opt for less traditional routes to find the ‘perfect’ name, often selecting more unconventional options.

Carmen Waters with her four children: Tyga, Ziggy, Meera and Lotus.Credit: James Brickwood

A social researcher from McCrindle, Ashley Fell, says that the desire for less common names stems from a broader societal shift towards individuality and self-expression.

“In a world where personal branding and uniqueness are highly valued, parents often seek names that set their children apart, hoping to bestow a distinct identity that reflects creativity and originality. Additionally, unique names can be seen as a way to honour personal or family history in a non-traditional manner, making the name more special and meaningful,” she says.

This was the case for northern beaches’ mum, Carmen Waters, 31, when naming her four children – Lotus, 7, Ziggy, 5, Meeka, 4, and Tyga, 2.

Waters says that having unique names that were different to their peers, with a personal story and meaning behind them, was important – like Lotus, which in Bali, a special place for her family, the lotus flower symbolises grace, beauty, and rebirth and is sacred.

“It was also important for the names to flow well with the middle names Ann, Frank, Rose, and John. This was extremely important to me as they are family names that have been passed down through the generations,” she says.

While for Waters, the process of choosing names for her children was relatively organic, others seek inspiration from dedicated resources like baby name books and websites or even enlist the services of professional name consultants, like Auckland woman, Sonya Prior, also known as The BB Namer.

Regularly documenting the process on “NameTok” – TikTok’s baby naming world – Prior starts by asking her clients to complete an online consultation form to gather information.

She then does a combination of name associations, inspirations, recommendations, and research, and ultimately completes the process by having conversations with the client until a name has been selected.

Since 2023, when Prior began working as a professional name consultant, she has helped over 100 couples and individuals from across the world, including Australia. Along with choosing first names, she has helped parents rename their children and generate new surnames for them as well.

Like Fell, Prior believes the demand for her services has a lot to do with an increasingly individualistic society. “As millennial parents have children, they’re aware of not naming their child a name that four to five kids will share in their classrooms, as this was the collective experience of many millennials,” she says.

While my youngest daughter Milla inadvertently became one of these – there were three other Milla or Milas in her class last year – my husband and I chose her name thinking it was unique after reading an alternative spelling of it on an orange juice label. Serendipity also inspired my niece’s name, which was read by her parents on a street sign, and my own – Shona – was a character from a novel my mum was reading when she was pregnant.

Fell says that there is a wide range of methods used to source name inspiration, including historical documents like birth registries, literary sources such as classic literature or mythology, as well as nature and geography. Sometimes, too, more ‘out of the box’ approaches are utilised – including death notices or, like in a now-viral TikTok post, headstones at a cemetery: a trend that has been dubbed “Gravestone Baby.”

For Ballarat couple Megan and Andrew Green, it was the movie Braveheart that inspired their eldest daughter’s name, Murron and the AFL team, Richmond Tigers, was the source of her middle name, Tigerlilly.

Megan and Andrew Green named their daughters with Bravehart, the Richmond Tigers and their family in mind.

“We both have Scottish heritage so wanted something to reflect this,” Megan says. “The Tigerlily came from me wanting Lily as her middle name and her dad not liking it much. However, we both barrack for the Richmond Tigers, so Tigerlily became so much more meaningful,” Megan says.

Their younger daughter, Reagan Belle, 11, was named with her family in mind.

“It is a combination of my husband’s mum’s middle name Rae, who we lost to cancer, and my name, Megan,” she says. While Megan and Andrew value their children’s unique names, perhaps more importantly, so do their kids.

“I love my name because it’s one of a kind, it’s different to everyone else’s and it’s unique,” says Murron, 13. ”I’m glad my parents didn’t go with something simple and plain.”

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