Kintner, a 41-year-old who blogs about parenting on Mama Bird Diaries, said that they actually got the name Presley from a baby book and not in honor of the king of rock, despite of the fact that their older daughter was named Dylan.
“I actually like the name Presley — I don’t dislike the name,” said Kintner, who lives in Westchester County, N.Y. “It just didn’t feel like her name.”
Today at 4, Presley has been legally renamed Summer, inspired by the television teen drama, “The OC,” and Kintner said she is satisfied that she finally changed her daughter’s name into something that suits her better. “It’s such a difficult thing,” she said. “It’s hard to name a child before you meet them.”
Kintner is actually just one among the estimated 8 percent of parents who regret the names that they gave to their children, according to a nonscientific poll from the website YourBabyDomain, which is getting a lot of exposure from the press this week.
Some claim that number is actually higher. According to an online survey conducted by Baby Center on February, 11 percent regretted their name choice.
“It’s sort of an awkward thing,” Kintner said. “I don’t think anyone takes it lightly. But some people are really struggling with it.”
Parents who participated in the survey listed a number of reasons for regret, including being influenced by fads and trends (that later on lost the spotlight) or the discovery that other parents had also named their newborns with the same name of their choice.
The top girl’s name from the Social Security Administration in 2010 was Isabella, from the television series, “Twilight.”
“In our culture names are more important than ever before, and so parents want their name to be as unique as possible,” said Amanda Barden, author of “Baby Names Made Easy.”
“If they find one other child has the same name as their baby, they are upset about it,” she said. “But parents also don’t want their kids to stand out that much. So they make a decision and they regret it because it sounds too whacky.”
Some experts claim that Americans are just more narcissistic. Notice some of the Hollywood baby names: Sunday, Apple, Suri and Bronx.
The famous pop star Mariah Carey and her spouse actor-comedian Nick Cannon chose to name their fraternal twins Moroccan and Monroe – or Roc and Roe for short. “Most of that is part of their own self-image,” said Cleveland Evans, a professor of psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska, who specializes in the science of names, or Onomastics.
“People in the movie business or the rock star business see themselves as avant-garde, creative people who are keeping up their own image.”
A psychologist, Evans said there are no ill effects for a child under 1. Anywhere between 6 and 12 months of age, children will respond when their name is mentioned.”But even if they turn, it might just be because they’ve heard it so much and not at the point where they identify it as ‘me,'” he said. “I don’t think anyone has to worry about harming the child.”
Even school-age children easily deal with having multiple names and nicknames, according to Evans. Teasing naturally occurs, regardless at that age, no matter what the name. “And if you’re the daughter of Gwyneth Paltrow, are you really going to have to worry about a lot of teasing for the name Apple?” he asked.
Evans said most names are harmless. “I think sometimes parents worry a little too much about it,” he said. “Naming your kid things like Mayhem or Trivia or Cobra on the birth certificate are not good ideas. But very few end up with something like that.”
You Named Your Child Hitler?
Pity the poor New Jersey child who was called, “Hitler,” said Evans. “That child had a problem with his father no matter whether they named him Hitler or not.” Evans, himself, was named before his grandfather — Grover Cleveland Lively — who was, in turn, named for a former president.
“My mother might say she regretted what she named me,” said Evans. “I grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo and I was called ‘Ohio’ all the time.”
But like most people, Evans’ mother did not mind changing his name, she just “brooded about it,” he said. “I doubt all 8 percent [in the survey] are upset enough.” Another notable case would be Alexandra Jacobs’, who blogged on the website Babble that chose to name her son Seymour – a name that had “literary overtones” from J.D. Salinger’s famous Glass family to the writer Seymour Hersh and even the restaurant critic Seymour Britchky.
“To my surprise, ‘Seymour’ was greeted not with coos over our cleverness, but furrowed brows, curled lips and snorts of derision,” she writes. “And that was just the grandmas.”She was also reminded that the fictional Seymour Glass killed himself, Seymour Krelboyne was a character from the film, “Little Shop of Horrors” and a famous porn star was named “Seymore Butts.”
After thinking about changing his name to Issac and calling him “Sy,” Jacobs said she “fell in love again” with the original name.
But Kintner, now the mother of four — Dylan, Summer, Harlowe and Chase — did legally change Presley’s name. “My husband, along with our family and friends, would call her Presley and I would just bristle in silence,” she wrote in a 2009 column in the Washington Post.
The process actually took a long time to be done, up to a year of paperwork.”After 9/11 they don’t make it easy unless you are getting married,” said Kintner. “We went to court six times.””The most awkward part was the family,” she said. “People didn’t know what to call her.”
