Baby name question

[BonBon]

<sigh>...It's 4 a.m. and clearly I am not destined for sleep tonight. There are more than a few things that are irritating about being pregnant.

I posted on a bad baby names website in the advice section. I've gotten mixed reviews. I've loved Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand for years. It is my favorite book. Yeah, some of it is a little over the top, but I love the character Dagny. I love her tenacity, intelligence, and bravery. I wish I was more like her. (Maybe I'd have an MD after my name by now )
Not only do I love the character, but I love the name. It never occured to me to lift the name off the book and give it to my daughter until I was reading an article written by a Dagny.

Would it be so bad to name her Dagny? Is it cruel? One guy implied that people would think the parents were freakish and named their kid when they thought Atlas was cool. COOL??? I don't know if I'd refer to it as "cool". And he thought that people would shun her. It is an actual scandinavian name which means 'day'. IMO, I think it's much better than a name with a ewe-neek and kr8tiv spelling.

This coming up with names is tough stuff. Kevin isn't any help, he refuses to mull it over until we know the gender. OTOH, he has offered that he thinks Urea would be a good name. Still haven't decided if he's joking or not.

Be honest with me guys!!!

[DCJenn]

I think Dagny is a great name.- I've always liked names that are non gender specific.

Jenn

[Rapunzel]

I think I would only have two thoughts if I heard a mom in a playground call her daughter Dagny: 1)sounds Scottish and 2)she's guaranteed to be the only Dagny in her class at school! I don't think the name sounds bad - it's unique but I don't think it could scar her. What my husband and I always do is sit down with our possible names and think of every possible way those names could be taken out of context or altered for teasing. The names that can be used in a derogatory manner are discarded. That cuts our list down quite a bit! Anyway, I don't see any obvious problems with Dagny.

[Auspicious]

2)she's guaranteed to be the only Dagny in her class at school!

I'm highly partial to names like this, so I like the name Dagny.

I should also say, though, that I already have a positive association for the name, because my grandparents have a friend named Dagny who's a very nice lady.

[PrincessFiona]

unique names...

You're free to completely pass on my thoughts...since I'm having an Aidan Adolf in a few months but..I like the idea of unique names. Our daughter is Amanda-Fionnuala (given an irish name because she was born in N. Ireland and it is also the name of our first sitter and dear family friend). Alex is named after..Alexander the Great...then has two middle names: Karl Friedrich (after Karl F. May, my husband's favorite author ) All of my kids have names that are a mouthful.

I wanted to call my daughter 'Manderley'..which was the name of the street that we lived on in N. Ireland. Can you say..pregnancy hormones? I don't know....I still think the name is pretty and unique...but my dh and mom nearly gagged when I suggested it over and over again...

I think Dagny has a nice ring to it and would be lovely....if you get gunshy, you can always pick it for a middle name....After my Manderley push, I went on a Fionnuala push.....and we finally compromised for it as a middle name....but I still call her Fionnuala....I'm the only one she lets call her that too

kris

[SueC]

I think its a cute name--not one I've ever heard of before. I think you can definitely be more creative with a girls name than with a boys name. That said, my sister is named Amy and she tells me she was never traumatized by having a "common" name. When we named our girls we tried to think of all the horrible nick-names a kid could come up with and immediately threw out anything that we thought would evoke lots of teasing. Right off the top of my head, I can't think of any obvious nick-names for Dagny that would be negative.

[Phoebe]

I tend to like unusual names after growing up one of many Jennifers. Dagny is a unique name and you shouldn't care what other people think if you and your spouse agree. People thought Avery was wierd or for a boy when we first brought it up. But it suits her.

One thing to consider is that you might like a name now, but end up hating it later. I have gone through about 3 cycles of names. We had two picked out and now I decided I hate them both. No one, including my dh likes the name I am stuck on now, Emerson and call her Emmy. So we are now considering Ella. I have 9 weeks to contemplate names and they are bound to change before the birth. Good luck on your pregnancy and your name selection.

I really like the name Ella -- that's the name of one of Bryn's playmates.

And I like Dagny too. But this is coming from someone named Nellie with a child named Bryn. We're kind of used to unusual names here. Sometimes, at the Dr.'s office for example, people will think Bryn is Byron and that she is a boy -- not that big a deal though. Also, when considered with our last name, it sort of sounds like a character in well-known novel. I don't think that many elementary school kids will be that well-read to be able to give her a hard time about it. That would be a stretch.

And you never know when a name will become popular or a talked about name. Who knew there would be some punk rapper calling himself Nelly? Or that Little House on the Prarie would become a tv hit and there would be that bitchy Nellie Olson? Oh well.....it's pretty minor in the big scheme of things.

[houseelf]

I am all for unique names and I think that Dagny is cute. Just be aware that you may have a lot of conversations about her name origin. We are on the hunt for good names too and we can not agree. We want something strong and original, but not so original that people stop and say, "what was that again?"

The only drawback to an original name is that you will spend a lot of time articulating the pronounciation and meaning. We eventually had to start telling people this ditty for our son so that they could get his name: We Made Cade. Otherwise people think that his name is Katie or Cad or Kate or Cain. I don't even think that this name is all that novel either.

Anyway, good luck with the decision process...one of the hardest aspects of pregnancy.

BTW, Jennifer, as in "JLynnB", for whatever it is worth, I love both Ella and Emmerson.

Kelly

I like the name Dagny. I love different names, though I stayed fairly traditional for my first three boys because of my hubby. I think it is harder to be unique with boys' names.

You will spend a lot of time explaining where you got the name from but the pronunciation is obvious (I would think) so at least everyone should say it right when you go to the doctor's office, school etc.

Kelly - I can't believe people don't pronounce Cade's name right. It is obvious. I didn't realize what a problem we would have with the name - Dallin. We have to tell people it is pronounced like Allen with a D in front. He has been called Dylan a lot, DA-lin, Dallion, Daylin etc. And of course explaining the origin, why we chose it etc. comes up a lot.

We had the name Dallin on our list the whole pregnancy but we would add new names we liked to it and see how we felt about it. In the end we had two names when we went to the hospital. The unique name of Dallin Christopher and a traditional name - Joshua David. When he was born he looked totally different than my other kids. One he was almost 10 pounds and he had black hair and dark eyes (my others were all blonde with blue eyes) so we went with the unique name instead. It fits good and his name is a good conversation starter with people we meet.

Robin