Happy~Sounding Surname Names
July 30, 2008
With the surname-as-first-name trend catching like wildfire, I’d like to take a moment to focus on surnames of which I’ve always been a bit envious: those that sound bright, happy, and upbeat. Why not co-opt these as firsts? Ladies and gentlemen, scour your family trees, perhaps something intrinsically spunky will turn up. In the middle spot, these would lend a classic quality to a modern name, say something like Kyla Bloom, or even liven up an old musty family name like Arthur Albright for example. Likewise, if you are the forunate possessor of one of these family names, you might want to, on balance, think about choosing a weightier name for your son or daughter. That said, Holly Golightly and Mary Poppins’ parents thought differently.
Intriuguing in the same vein as a virtue name, many of these have potential to be descriptive of what qualities a parent would wish for their child. These kinds of names have a literary quailty, might vivify life, and might inspire a joy of language, or, most importantly, a joy in names themselves! Loveday Ophelia, a baby I came across in a birth announcement not too long ago, is a person I would be curious to meet, any day. Even if they may not be part of your ancestry, I say why not? With the plethora of word names on the horizon, at the very least these have a long history of being names, and I say go for it, just because we like the way they sound. 8)
Albright
Appel
Bell
Bellamy
Berry
Bliss
Bloom, Blume
Blythe
Bourne
Brightman
Cassel
Cheer
Cruise, Cruz
Day
De los Angeles
De la Sol
Dove, Dovey
Fairchild
Freeman
Friend
Gardner
Golden
Golightly
Good, Goodman, Goodwin, Goody
Grace
Hart
Holiday
Joyce
Lilly
Love, Loveday, Lovejoy, Lovelace
Miranda
Pallas
Poppins
Smiley
Sparrow
Rose, Rosen
Winsome
I’m sure to be missing boatloads!
Image Above by Yoshimoto Nara.
