Parents Talk: Can a Unique Baby Name Have Lasting Impacts?

When the celebrity couple of Beyonce and Jay-Z recently had their new baby and named it Blue Ivy Carter, speculation as to the source of the unique name was across the board, Huff Post Parents reported. The couple, like thousands of parents nationwide, probably went through a phase during pregnancy of deciding on their baby’s name. 

But, does the uniqueness of a baby's name have an impact on the child later in life?

According to an article on LiveScience website, parents are picking more unusual names for their children than they were decades ago. And, the shift in baby names could influence kids into adulthood.

"If you're choosing between a relatively likeable, common name and one that is really odd, that definitely could have an impact," Jean Twenge of San Diego State University said in the article. 

She says a unique name can be a “proxy” for the parents' philosophy on life. “… The type of parent who would give a really unusual name is often going to parent differently from a parent who says 'I want to give my child a name so they fit in,” she says in the article.                          

When my husband and I struggled over baby names with our two children, we generally had two criteria—and uniqueness wasn’t one of them. The baby’s name couldn’t be made into an unpleasant nickname and it couldn’t be the name of someone we knew.

Other than that, we were pretty open to ideas. We ended up settling on fairly traditional names, with only minor complaints off and on throughout the years from our now teenage children.

Overall, I still think our criteria is a solid way to choose a name for a new baby—I think I’m safe in saying no one wants his or her child to be picked on or live in someone else’s name shadow.

However, it doesn’t bother me in the least when I hear a new unique name for a baby, such as Blue Ivy. In fact, I think it usually shows the parents had some in-depth thought into the name rather than blindly picking out of a baby name book.  

I think a baby name can have some impact on a child—but the parenting environment the child is raised in is the bigger concern for me.   

Whether the name you choose is Michael, Sarah, Blue Ivy, Apple or Suri –  I suggest you try to choose a name with no regrets.