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Any born and bred southerner has difficulties a comprehending why folks from up North get a hoot out of Southern baby names. People not in the know think that double or even triple names are paired together for no other reason than good syntax. It may be unreasonable of me, but the idea of anybody making jokes about a tradition they don't understand just makes me mad. Southerners choose their babies' names for good reasons. Never mind that the names that they prefer are most likely different from those in the list of most popular baby names for any given time frame. Southern moms don't just scan the most recent books and pick names because they are cute or cool. These moms take more pains in finding the perfect name for their children than they did in having them. That statement may be a little excessive, but parents in the southern part of the country really agonize over what to name their baby. This is because selecting southern baby names takes much more than considering the different words printed in some generic baby webpage that has the copied definitions of different baby names. Definitions are all fine and good; they have worked for the people who publish Webster's Dictionaries for quite a long time! But when you start considering naming southern children you're talking about the history of names with families, not what they might mean to a person who is looking at a definition and only a definition! As far as syntax goes, I don't care how lightly a certain name trips off the tongue, a certain amount of care and study has to be practiced in the what these babies will be named.Care must be taken so as not to chance naming a child after a relative somewhere in the bunch that made some type of faux pas in the past. The unlucky ancestor's misguided misdeed might have been anything from having befriended one of the Yankees to having spent time in Atlanta for not having been tightlipped about the location of the local still. The mistake would be in having been found out, as there is certainly no dishonor in cooking up your own beverages even in the contemporary South. Don't be confused to dream that only the names of a southern baby's parents are treasured or even that their grandpappys are the only ones passed forward. There may have been a valiant great great uncle who battled fiercely in the war and deserving of remembrance. In this situation there could be a contest every generation or so among children to have the first boy child. The prize for winning this rather odd contest will be that the first son can have first choice for the famous great grand uncle's name name. Talk about confusion at family get togethers! How would you ever be able to differentiate between all those namesakes? How does a person manage to call one of them without fetching in the entire group? That's where middle names are so helpful and that brings me to a possible theory on southern tradition of double names! As we all know southerners are famous for double names. Some are forced to resort to triple names so that their little Johnny and Sally stands apart from the rest. Why this is a tradition attributed to the south I'm not really certain. I would like to think it's because southerners have so many famous ancestors that they want to claim. This fact makes it necessary to give each baby several names so that eachillustrious dead family member is sufficiently remembered. I can't name the many theories where credit can be given for the reasoning of traditional southern baby naming patterns and the traditions behind them. There seems to be no definite answer on why family names and history appear to be more important to new parents in the sunny southland than in other regions of the country. There is however, no disagreement that the results are some of the most lovely and unique names you will find printed on a birth certificate anywhere. The next time you feel motivated to laugh at a baby named something a different consider that the first person that bore the identical name may not have died defending a southern lady's reputation but that he may have died fighting for our liberty and our country.
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Jan Bay is a Freelance Author of Nursery Decorating Articles Baby Gear Reviews and Webmaster for www.unique-baby-gear-ideas.com Use of this article requires an active link to Popular Baby Names
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