Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Palindromic names for babies

In my post about Melissa Rycroft's baby, who she named Ava (fortunately it's a girl), I speculated on how many palindromic names there are.

This being the Internet era, I found a list of them.

Palindromic baby names

I see very few that would likely be used by English-as-a-first-language parents (i.e., us whitey Caucasoids) in the United States. This is not meant to slight those of foreign extraction, it's just most of the names obviously originated in countries/regions other than the United States. For the U.S. crowd, I think the only likely kandidates for kids are the following:

Eve
Ava
Hannah
Elle

which are all pretty obviously names for girls. There's only one boy name that might be considered by the typical whitey U.S. parents, and I would think/hope that they would still have a pretty direct connection a Germanic origin if they chose it:

Otto

A few other commentary gleanings from the list:

Longest name: three at seven letters, Haeleah, Reidier, and Reinier.

Shortest: There's lots of three-letter combos, but none with just two. Unless someone wants to name their kid for blocky basaltic lava flows, I doubt that will ever change.

Hopefully: if a boy's named Tit, he doesn't ever live in an English-speaking country, or if he takes up long-term residence in one, he has a preferred nickname.

One of the names on the list is Level, and another is Neven. I supposed it would be cruel and unusual parents to name one kid Level and the other kid Uneven. (Or Tilt, noting that Tilt is a legitimate name for a boy in Scandinavian/Nordic countries. )

Your assignment: find me a real person with the first name of Level. Too late: I Googled "Level Smith" and there is one on Facebook. Really.

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