Naming a baby is challenging! We’ve all been children before and can remember name calling and bullying, especially when someone had an unusual name (amongst hundreds of other ridiculous reasons). Growing up, I never personally thought too much about names other than tossing around some boy and girl names of my future children… the usual childhood make believe. Fast forward to real time and the realization that I need to name my kid and hope that he’s not teased or anything as a direct result. Ever since those childhood days, I’ve always known I prefer more unusual names rather than your common, “most popular” ones.
Growing up I can remember liking the names Roxanne and MacKenzie for girls and the name Campbell for a boy. Current day, I just had a baby boy and when I was thinking of names, Campbell just does not mesh well with my last name. If you are someone like my mother, than you will also think that name is silly because of Campbell Soup.
My mother was a very dominant force in the name game. It was something that came up almost daily in conversation, despite my regular request of not wanting to talk about it. Normally I probably wouldn’t have minded her involvement, except for the fact that fairly early on the in game, one of the names my husband and I had decided we liked the most struck a negative chord with my mother.
Going through names early on, we really liked Gianni. I preferred it spelled with a J (Jianni) because then I could use the abbreviation JT as a nickname, which I also always really liked growing up; however I thought it looked strange spelled that way- definitely less traditional than the standard spelling with the G that I’ve seen. I also liked the way it sort of rhymed with our last name and thought my mom would really like that name since she’s Italian and was surprised when she didn’t love it.
As my husband and I considered more names, one that came across my attention was Tate. I can’t recall if I specifically saw the name Tatum or if I started playing around with it, but somehow it came out and really caught our attention. We knew the baby’s middle name would be Thomas, after both my father and grandfather. We instantly loved the way “Tatum Thomas” sounded together and the ability to use nicknames such as “Tate” or “T”. I was excited! The only Tatum I was familiar with was an actor- Channing Tatum- so it wasn’t even a first name in that instance. I had heard the name Tate used once for a girl’s younger brother growing up, but that was it. When I told my mom, I was so taken aback when she told me Tatum was a girls name! Apparently there was an actress, Tatum O’Neal, from her generation, whom she affiliates the name with. I googled and sure enough Tatum was listed as a unisex name, mostly favoring girls! I couldn’t believe it. My mother expressed she liked “Tate” but couldn’t possibly see me naming my male child a female name. After teaching for 30+ years, my mother has expressed (more than once) that she doesn’t like unisex names because she could never tell her class gender count in advance. My mom is a bit old school, so clearly she is talking pre- existence of class lists with any gender listed. I was so disappointed and super annoyed with her at first.
Weeks and then months passed and the same “so did you decide on a name” conversation came up literally almost daily. Both my mom and sister would either text or call me with baby boy names they had heard of or saw somewhere regularly. It got to be beyond annoying. I would either respond with a snarky comment shooting down whatever ridiculous name suggestion I just got, or not respond at all. The whole time the name Tatum stuck in the back of my head. My parents would call the baby “Tate” in reference sometimes to test it out and I was really getting used to the sound of it. Whenever someone asked, I was pretty weird about it. Occasionally when asked, I’d bring up the name Tatum to see people’s reactions and I really got a mix. Some people loved it and thought it was very masculine, whereas others found it feminine.
My husband also really liked the name Santino. One day he started looking up soccer names (he loves soccer) as a joke and stumbled upon it. We both liked it, but I thought it might be too much. Nicknames would probably be either Santi or Tino and after much thought, I came up with the negatives that Santi could backfire into Santa and Tino sounds too much like a forty year old man.
I found the name game to be extremely stressful. We didn’t even have the baby’s name officially picked out until he was born and in my arms. We had a few leading names picked out, but decided it would be best to see him first and then pick.
I actually really like unisex names, but usually I more typically like them for females when the name is more commonly male (ex: Charlie or Stevie). I can’t really think of many circumstances when a male has a more commonly used female name except for maybe: Riley, Sawyer, Parker, Morgan or Courtney (I literally just googled these to find solid examples). Names such as Alex, Sam, Taylor, or Jamie all seem to evenly go both genders in my experience.
Once my baby was in my arms, I looked at my husband and said, “so what are we naming him? Does he look like a Tatum?” I was still unsure and stalling with my subconscious fears of bullying for the future in the back of my head, but after a bit of time and pressure from my husband, we decided that would be his name!
The first few weeks after his birth, I still had some post naming anxiety. Even today I get a little anxious if I think about it too much. Tatum hasn’t met our whole family yet and I have a loud, large and opinionated Italian family to get through. Many of them are from my mom’s generation so I anticipate a lot of that female- sided prejudice towards his name, but we shall see! In the end, my husband and I chose that name because we love it and that’s all that matters. Tatum becomes more fitting of a name for our little man every day and I love that it’s unique and certainly can’t be found on the 2020 most popular baby name list!!
What are your thoughts on unisex names?! If you have a unisex name or named your child one, have you had any experiences or concerns regarding bullying or negative comments?
HOLL 
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