Searching for a name

Americans generally aren't much concerned with the etymological meaning of their names. I had to go look mine up just now ("Bright Fame"), remembering only that it was something Nordic and warlike.

Many popular choices go back to ancient mythology or the Bible, and the distance is far enough to keep the meaning out of mind.

For Chinese people, though, the literal definition is important. A name should mean something auspicious, preferably something suggesting the values or attributes parents desire for their child.

Week before last, I thought of the perfect name. It's lively and bright. It's a little out of the current mainstream. It sounds good in combination with a clunky, consonant-heavy Germanic surname.

My wife e-mailed me back. "It means 'blind'. I don't like it."

I pressed the case. "It doesn't really mean blind. It comes from the name of an ancient Roman family."

...whose name is derived from a word meaning blind.

"And the patron saint of music!" I tried.

She's also patron saint of the blind.

There's just no getting around the inauspiciousness factor. I could just see it -- little Cecily needs glasses. Or worse, falls off her bike and injures her eye. "It's because of the name! It's your fault!"

And yet, the West has no shortage of Cecilys, Ceciles and Cecilias. How can this be?

Some friends of ours want to name their daughter "Cordelia". Is it auspicious to name a child after a murdered character in a Shakespearean tragedy?

I once knew someone named "Regan". What about that?

I think Westerners, especially Americans, place value on the social connotations of a name, rather than its denotative meaning. When people choose the name Cordelia, they are not thinking about the grimness of King Lear; they're thinking educated, literate, classy.

We tend to resist the idea that a name has a fixed value, and prefer the idea that names have meanings which we ascribe to them, as part of our efforts at self-fashioning.

And yet isn't this also a way of wanting something auspicious, "suggesting the values or attributes parents desire for their child"?

What are we aiming at when we call a child Sophie? or Madison? Maud? Georgia? Summer? Felicity? Caroline? Phoebe?