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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 8, 2006 What's in a name? pt 2 (pt. 1 here) FROM LEFT : Hesperus Di Properzio, Lilly Schehen and Anuttara Scherler. Jennifer Margulis | For the Tidings Ashland kids have a rainbow of colorful names By Jennifer Margulis Tidings Correspondent Second of two parts When Joel and Brigitta Carr first held their new baby girl, who was born May 7 at Ashland Community Hospital, they had not yet chosen a name for her. Although they had a long list of girls’ names that they liked, the Carrs decided to wait a few days to name their daughter. They wanted to get a better sense of who she was before they chose a name that would identify her for the rest of her life. Then they decided: Serenity Szofia. They chose Serenity for peacefulness, and Szofia for wisdom. Since Brigitta is from Hungary, the Carrs decided to use the Hungarian way to spell the common American name Sophia, which means wisdom in Greek. “The name Serenity just popped into my head,” explains Joel Carr. “She had been a peaceful one inside and she came out and was a peaceful one too.” Top Names for U.S. Babies According to the Social Security Administration GIRLS Emily Emma Madison Abigail Olivia Isabella Hannah Samantha Ava Ashley BOYS Jacob Michael Joshua Matthew Ethan Andrew Daniel Anthony Christopher Joseph Although the name came to Joel quickly, he and Brigitta did not make their decision lightly. “When you name a child, or name anything, you are almost pulling it into existence,” Carr says. “It’s the one thing they are going to hear the most for their entire life.” Carr, whose two-and-a-half-year-old son is named Taishan — which means peaceful mountain in Chinese — and is called Tai for short, believes that giving children unusual names helps them blossom into unique people. An unusual name, says Carr, “allows them a little bit of freedom to make it their own.” Gone are the days when memorable names were mostly reserved for film stars or literary characters. A quick look through the Ashland Middle School honor roll, published May 16 in the Tidings, finds an array of distinctive, poetic names. Among them: Oliver Soleil Light, Ariel Autumn Brooks, Travis Kiowa-Kuumba Bond, and Lyric Kaela Grace Tucker-Leeds, to name just a few. Reeger Cortell, who has a three-year-old daughter named Jasper Sage, explains her choice. “I feel proud that she has a name that’s like no other,” says the Ashland mother of two. Since Cortell and her husband did not find out the sex of the baby ahead of time, they picked two names — Jasper if the baby was a boy, Sage if she was a girl — and they started called the unborn baby “Jasper Sage.” Then her daughter was born, after what Cortell describes as “an amazing delivery” with supportive nurses. Her doctor, Jani Rollins, caught the baby and said, “Jasper’s a girl!” And just like that, the name stuck, even though Cortell had never really considered the name Jasper for a girl. “It’s just so her,” Cortell explains. “It’s spunky and original and unique.” It’s no coincidence that Cortell chose an unusual name for herself as well. Her first name is actually Pamela and her middle name is Reeger. Although as a child she disliked her middle name, in her early twenties she decided to embrace it. “I was ready for the power of a name like Reeger, and the persona of it,” she says, adding that she really noticed “the way the world treats you differently when you have a unique name.” But not every Ashland parent thinks it’s a good idea to choose offbeat names for children. “It makes it really hard to remember,” admits Emily Barnes, the mother of Anna, age four, and Tobias, age two. She sometimes feels awkward when asking a child about his or her name. “You ask a kid their name and you don’t know what they just said to you and you don’t want to ask again. It makes you feel bad,” Barnes says. Barnes and her husband Josh chose the name Anna for their daughter out of a name book. They named their son Tobias (but call him Toby) because Barnes had a friend in college named Tobias, and she really liked the name. “My husband was more along the conventional,” Barnes admits, adding that Josh is not very Ashland in his attitude toward names. “I probably stretched him with Tobias.” “I think it’s becoming more common for people to have unusual names,” says Adia Scherler, whose seven-and-a-half year old daughter is named Anuttara. In Anu’s first-grade class at the Willow Wind Community Learning Center, there are several other children with uncommon names, including: Loden, Bryce (one boy, one girl), Anaya, River, and Ula, among others. Scherler says that Anu’s father decided on their daughter’s name, and that he was inspired by the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hinduism. “‘Anu’ means great one and ‘Tara’ in Buddhism is the goddess of compassion,” says Scherler, adding that she interprets the combined names to mean “great goddess.” “I love it,” adds Scherler. “It just suits her personality. You know how names resonate with children according to some unexplainable vibration? It just resonates well with her being … That type of name is so powerful.” According to Scherler, most people share her appreciation for her daughter’s name, and Anu has never been teased because of it. “Everyone really likes her name a lot,” she says. “Most of the time she just goes by Anu, and that’s pretty simple. So people haven’t really had any problems with it.” “There’s a culture of free thinking in Ashland,” says Emily Strong, mother of Eliza, age four, and Harper, age two and a half. “People here aren’t uncomfortable making up names or finding them from unusual sources.” Strong chose the name Harper for her second daughter because she has always liked androgynous names. “It leaves all options open to her,” says Strong. “It doesn’t give her a girlie connotation or a masculine connotation. She does get mistaken for a boy sometimes, which I don’t mind.” DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Ceramic Piggy Banks Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Online Pharmacy Mailing Lists Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Student Loans Hammocks Water Filter Custom Made Computers Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. Site Search: RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams