Latest news with #naming
The Sun
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I'm a nurse and here's the worst baby name I have ever heard – it's so bad it keeps me awake at night
WE'VE all put on a false smile when we've heard a baby name that gives us the ick. However, even the most po-faced of people would struggle to keep a straight face after hearing this moniker. A nurse has revealed the very worst baby name she has ever heard, claiming that it still keeps her up at night. 'Richie Rich Putin,' wrote the disgusted Reddit user from Germany, adding that labor and delivery nurses at a local birthing center had recently deemed it the the 'worst name' to ever curse the cradle. It's a 'creative' combination of actor Macaulay Culkin 's 1990s classic film 'Richie Rich,' and the last name of Russian president, Vladimir Putin. 'I used to think the name laws are more strict [in Germany] than in other countries,' wrote the Redditor. 'The city will decide whether the name you chose is an actual name or the child will be bullied for it.' However, this particularly unusual title clearly fell through the cracks. 'Just felt like I had to share that while lying awake thinking about my soon-to-be-born child's name,' she added. Fellow redditors were equally horrified, sharing their thoughts in the comments. 'Do parents really hate their child that much? Or do they think it's funny and don't think it through for the kid's future?,' questioned a concerned commenter. 'That poor child,' another sighed. 'Can you imagine all oligarch bootlicking that must go on in its home?' Channel 4 star horrifies fans as she reveals 'truly awful' baby names ahead of birth of second child Sadly, side-eye-worthy baby names are currently en vogue among expecting moms worldwide. Be they Disney-inspired handles such as 'Snow White' and 'Se7en Simba,' or geographically-influenced names à la 'Elae' — pronounced LA, like the abbreviation for Los Angeles, California. Emma Hutton, who crowned her daughter Elae, doesn't seem to understand why haters have a hard time embracing the unconventional name. 'I know everyone's not going to like it. I know it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea,' Hutton barked in a viral vid. 'But I like different names.' 'It's 2025,' she added. 'I didn't know that people wouldn't be able to understand basic English.' The struggle of choosing a baby name CHLOE Morgan, a Senior Writer at Fabulous, has revealed her dilemma on choosing a baby name... At 35 weeks pregnant, by far the trickiest part of pregnancy for me in the past few months (minus the insomnia and countless night-time wee breaks!) has been trying to decide on a baby name. The dilemmas are endless... My partner and I went for a private scan to find out the gender as early as we could - partly due to the fact we thought it would make baby naming so much easier because we'd only have to come up with a list of names for one gender rather than two. How wrong we were... I was absolutely thrilled to be told I was expecting the baby girl I'd already dreamed of, but being one of the last of my friends to fall pregnant, I've had countless conversations over the years with excited pals discussing their top baby which I wish I could go back in time and un-hear. With each friend mentioning at least 10 possible monikers, I can't help but feel like several are now a no-go even though I know it's something that none of them would mind in the slightest - it's a total me problem! The debate comes up time and time again on social media forums - can you choose the same name that was a "potential" for a friend's baby? It's a very divisive topic and opinions are always I don't want to be THAT person. While some will argue there's thousands of other names out there to choose from, others will say you need to choose YOUR all, there's no guarantee that person will even have another baby. Then there's also the issue of finding a name you to research it online and read one negative comment amongst hundreds of positives that you just can't shake off. I made that very mistake when I fell in love with a certain name (I won't reveal it because I don't want to ruin it for others!) ...only to see someone point out that it constantly gets autocorrected on a phone to something rather rude instead. So, back to the drawing board we went.. Just five weeks to go and it looks like our little one is going to be known as 'baby gal' for a little while longer!
The Drive
22-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Drive
Here's the Graveyard of Every Abandoned EV Naming Scheme so Far
The latest car news, reviews, and features. Between rolled back sales targets, rolled back product plans, and rolled back tax credits, we seem to be straying further and further from the silent, emissions-free electric car utopia once promised by lawmakers and automakers alike. As flawed as the entire trend toward full electrification and indeed some of the cars themselves might be, one of the more laughable aspects of this whole thing might just be how bad carmakers have been at naming the things. Companies came in hot with radical, new labels and entire nomenclatures that fell flat, confused potential buyers, and ultimately, got abandoned. Here's every one of those ambitious EV naming schemes that have been phased out… so far. Instead of, say, capitalizing on the immense value of 'Prius,' Toyota decided to call its first current-era U.S.-market EV the bZ4X, with 'bZ' standing for 'beyond zero' (it might as well have stood for 'buzzword') and being the brand's standard prefix for future electric Toyotas. From the jump, this was a terrible name, as evidenced by the fact that the just-facelifted version of the car has already dropped the '4X' part of the moniker. A Toyota exec also confirmed to CarBuzz this week that the company would indeed start to move away from the 'bZ' thing entirely, at least stateside, in favor of 'existing names in our portfolio for brand recognition and name recognition.' The lighting in this press picture of the 2026 bZ is weirdly gloomy, almost as if Toyota's saying, 'Yeah, we hate the name, too.' Toyota Similar to Toyota's 'bZ' setup, Volkswagen has so far denoted every one of its EVs with the 'ID' tag. There's the ID 4 crossover and the ID Buzz bus in the U.S., while the ID 3 hatchback, ID 5 and 6 crossovers, and ID 7 sedan hold down the fort overseas. Just last week, however, a board member said that the company would ditch this convention in favor of 'proper names.' Think Polo, Jetta, or Golf, but just, y'know, electric. The ID series gets extra bonehead points for being annoyingly inconsistent with its stylized dots and spaces when the names appear in VW literature. (It's 'ID. Buzz' but 'ID.4,' but I swear I've seen ' before and also 'I.D. Buzz') Extremely helpful for online publishing and search engine optimization! Volkswagen When Mercedes first started cooking up its EV strategy in 2016, it originally planned to have 'Mercedes-EQ' be its own subbrand, a bit like how Mercedes-AMG is (on paper, at least) its own thing. That never happened, and recent electric Benzes have even pushed the 'EQ' portion of their names back. Rather than 'EQG,' the electric G-Class is officially called the G580 With EQ Technology—no, really, that is its formal name—while the new, electric CLA's government name is CLA With EQ Technology. That said, both Mercedes and the automotive press seem to use those full names pretty rarely, and there isn't really any physical 'EQ' badging on the cars themselves. To most people, they're just the CLA and the electric G-Wagen. Now, was that so hard? Mercedes-Benz Mercedes Benz In early 2023, Audi decided that going forward, odd-numbered models (A3, A5, A7) would be gas cars while even models (A4, A6, A8) would be electric. As a result, the new-gen A4 sedan, one of Audi's most popular models and one with quite a bit of name recognition, would henceforth be known as the A5 since it was not yet an EV. Besides the unnecessary changing of names people have gotten used to hearing for decades, the even-odd setup's seemingly arbitrary EV-gas designation made it one of those binary distinctions that's hard to remember in practice. Like which side of the styrofoam takeout box is the top and which is the bottom; or which way the USB-A charger is supposed to plug in; or which Tokyo airport is the one close to the city—HND or NRT? I have to Google it every time. In the process of writing this story, for example, I had to check, like, five different times that I had the even-odd, gas-electric setup correct. Audi Quick, without scrolling back up two paragraphs: Which were the electric Audis, even or odd? See? You've already forgotten. In any case, Audi abandoned that naming scheme earlier this year, opting to add an 'E-Tron' suffix to the names of its electric cars. While it was never the actual name of a car or series of cars, General Motors' battery and electric powertrain moniker 'Ultium' arguably deserves a place on this list. It sounded cool, I'll give it that, but it seemed to get axed with about as much rhyme and reason as it had for ever being a thing in the first place. Underpinning GM EVs from the Equinox to the Hummer, Ultium was introduced in 2020 and mentioned pretty consistently in GM EV marketing and press materials. Late last year, the name was dumped as the company pledged to move away from a 'one-type-fits-all' approach to batteries. GMC Got a tip or question for the author? You can reach him here: Chris Tsui is The Drive's Reviews Editor. He oversees the site's car reviews operation in addition to pitching in on industry news and writing his own evaluations of the latest rides. He lives in Toronto.
Irish Times
18-05-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Can a name determine our fate? Florence Knapp on her debut novel
In the opening pages of Florence Knapp's powerful debut novel The Names, her lead character Cora is faced with a dilemma. Her husband wants to call their new baby Gordon, after him and his father before him. Cora does not want to name the child Gordon. Not simply because she doesn't like the name, but because she is afraid the name will somehow contribute to her beautiful new baby emulating his father. Cora only hints at it in that exact moment, but subsequent pages make it clear: Gordon Atkin is not a nice man. Although he is a doctor and respected in the community, at home, Cora and her nine-year-old daughter Maia live in fear of Gordon's every move: he is controlling, unpredictable and violent. So, in 1987, at the registrar's office, Cora makes a decision that will shape the rest of their lives: she gives her baby his name. Three different narratives spin off in parallel from that moment. As the novel unfolds, we find out what happens if the child is called Gordon, after his father; or Julian, Cora's chosen name for him; or Bear, his sister's hoped-for name for him. Each decision has enormous consequences, because, in the coercive control situation Cora is in, no decision is small. 'I've always been interested in the things that shape us as people,' Knapp says, describing the roots of the novel over a video call from her home near London. 'Whether that's our upbringing or our circumstances or the people we're friends with, or just those moments where something that's meant to be an innocuous, small thing happens, but it lodges in our psyche and becomes a far bigger thing. To me, a name felt at the root of all that, because we're given it at birth, and then carry it through the whole of our lives with us.' READ MORE The naming device is a clever route into the issue of domestic abuse and its effects on a wife and family. No decision that Cora makes can be the correct one; whether she defies Gordon or obeys him, as long as she remains in their home, she is at his mercy. When Cora names her boy Bear, the first thing she does on returning home is to put him in his Moses basket and hide him in her closet, to protect him from the anger she knows is coming. When Cora names him Gordon, her depression mounts to such an extent that she feels detached from her own body and cannot bond with him. When Cora names him Julian, the narrative jumps to Ireland, where Cora's mother Sílbhe must take care of the children because something awful has happened to Cora: she has disappeared from her own narrative. The book is devastating to read, as early reviews have acknowledged: plaudits have poured in from authors including JoJo Moyes , Marian Keyes and Ann Napolitano . In Britain, the book was snapped up by Orion after a 13-way auction and in the United States after a 10-way auction; it is being translated into more than 20 languages. Clad in a simple black top, her hair scraped back, and positioned at her laptop in front of a dark green library full of books, Knapp is nervous at the prospect of doing interviews and becoming a more public person. She has been deeply moved by the responses to the book. 'The thing that has really shocked me is how many people I've heard from who have said that this has been their situation or upbringing,' she says. 'It means a lot to me to hear from people, but I feel so sad that it feels so familiar and real to people.' It's perhaps not coincidental that the idea for the novel came to Knapp during Covid, a time when 5km travel restrictions were in place in many regions, effectively trapping sufferers of domestic abuse in their homes. The Names by Florence Knapp is published by Orion In 2020, Knapp was part of an online Royal Literary Fund community reading group that happened to have a worker from a women's refuge log on to speak to them as part of their course. 'She told us the details of her job and I found it really hard not to close the lid of the laptop,' Knapp says, 'because it made me feel like crying and I was embarrassed to be seen crying in front of her when that was the reality of her job. The things I'd heard: I couldn't get them out of my mind. On an emotional level, I [wanted] to write to gain an understanding.' As with Emma Donoghue's novel Room, or Adolescence , the Netflix show about the murder of a teenager, Knapp was conscious of the delicacy and the enormity of the task, the need to balance light and shade. 'What's often used in entertainment is a woman being scared, and I was very concerned about how I could do this book without falling into that trap. To me, it was that each instance of domestic abuse should be there in isolation to show what Cora is contending with, but it didn't need to be repeated. I hope that I've taken care of the reader. I know the first three chapters are a lot. But what kept me going as a writer was I knew what I was going to do with the book after those first three chapters, and also that I wasn't going to be asking the reader to endure that continually. There was going to be light as well.' A remarkably skilful novel, it almost certainly helped that – although Knapp may be a debut published novelist – The Names is far from her debut novel. It's been more than a quarter of a century since Knapp first started writing fiction, something her husband reminded her of recently when he found an old manuscript in a box of papers. 'It was from 1999,' she says, in a tone of wonderment. 'Twenty-six years!' Knapp, now 48, first began to dream of becoming a novelist when she was just a teenager. She has a deep and abiding love of fiction, and a particular respect for Irish authors, including Claire Keegan, Colm Tóibín, Sally Rooney and Paul Murray. 'Irish fiction, the fiction I like, tends to be very quiet, but the books have huge emotional wallop,' she says. But after studying sociology at Southampton University, she became a secretary and had her two children, now aged 23 and 21, when she was in her mid-20s, putting thoughts of novel-writing largely on the back burner. It was in the crafting world where Knapp first came to public attention with a blog, Flossie Teacakes, which became popular in sewing circles, and then with her non-fiction book, Flossie Teacakes' Guide to English Paper Piecing, published in 2018, which explored fussy cutting and English Paper Piecing, a technique where fabric is wrapped around shapes made of thin cardboard. The crafting community suited Knapp, even if her blog name didn't: the moniker 'Flossie Teacakes' had been a private joke with her sister about her love of the Hunter Davies children's books, and she had never imagined anyone would actually read the blog. 'The quilting community to me feels uniquely warm and gorgeous and embracing,' she says. 'I didn't have a sense of, 'Oh, I'm being read.' It felt more like, 'I'm part of a community, like sitting around someone's kitchen table.'' But her non-fiction success didn't take the desire to publish a novel away. In 2019, an agent agreed to represent a manuscript from Knapp, but the book didn't make it to publication. It felt like one door was closing and another was opening at the same time — Florence Knapp 'I did find that hard,' she says. With The Names, 'after the experience of 2019, I felt like I [couldn't] have too much hope. I hadn't expected it to find a publisher or an agent. I knew I had to keep writing novels, but I couldn't quite believe it could actually happen after I'd been rejected.' Much to her surprise, a bevy of agents were keen to sign up the manuscript, and she went with Karolina Sutton at CAA, with whom she worked on the manuscript over several months. 'She sent it out in September. It was sent out on a Friday and we were hearing from people on the Saturday. We met publishers and with US publishers over Zoom over two weeks. It was a very intense, extraordinary two weeks.' Now that her book is making such waves, how does she feel? 'Incredibly uncomfortable!' she says, with a smile. 'I would have thought that's probably true of most writers – you're writing fiction because you're more comfortable being the onlooker than the looked-at. I'm probably at my happiest just at home with my family. I really like my life and I wasn't looking for it to change in a big new way. I just wanted to write a book and for it to exist out in the world. My goal has always been to be traditionally published.' There's a neat synchronicity in the timing of it all. When Sutton sent out the manuscript to publishers, it was the same week that Knapp's youngest child was leaving home to go into higher education. A bittersweet time for any parent, Knapp's experience was leavened by the realisation that 26 years after she had started writing novels, her debut was going to be published. 'It felt like one door was closing and another was opening at the same time,' she says. The Names by Florence Knapp is published by Orion
The Guardian
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Names by Florence Knapp – the verdict on spring's hottest debut
W hat's in a name? More than Shakespeare might have led us to believe, according to research. Ever since 1985, when a study found that people tend to prefer the letters of their own initials over the other letters of the alphabet, research has confirmed the name-letter effect, proving that not only do consumers favour brands matching their initials, they are actually more likely to donate to relief efforts for a natural disaster such as a hurricane if they share an initial with that disaster. How far the name-letter effect influences our bigger life decisions – where we live, our choices of career or life partner – remains contentious, but there are clear indicators that, far from serving simply as identifiers, the names we are given at birth have the power to influence our psychological, social and economic outcomes. Florence Knapp's strikingly assured debut novel, The Names, takes this idea and gives it a high-concept twist. It is October 1987 and Cora, trapped in a wretched and abusive marriage, has just had a second baby, a son. As she and her nine-year-old daughter Maia push the pram together through the debris of the Great Storm to register the birth, they talk about names. Cora's husband Gordon has always insisted that the baby will take his name, a tradition passed down through his family, but Cora shrinks from the prospect. It is not just that she dislikes the name Gordon, 'the way it starts with a splintering wound that makes her think of cracked boiled sweets, and then ends with a downward thud like someone slamming down a sports bag'. She fears that the name will force an unwelcome shape on her baby son, corrupting his innocence, locking him into a chain of violent, domineering men. Cora prefers Julian which, in her book of baby names, means sky father; she nurses the naive hope that, since the name honours Gordon's paternity, he will find it an acceptable compromise. Meanwhile, Maia suggests Bear because it sounds 'all soft and cuddly and kind … but also, brave and strong'. Deftly and with great tenderness Knapp explores the complex effects of domestic abuse At the registrar's desk Cora must pick one – and with that the narrative neatly divides into three. First Cora thrills and terrifies herself by impetuously deciding on Bear. The second time she finds just enough courage to opt for Julian. Finally she folds and helplessly agrees to Gordon. Three names, three choices with very different consequences, and, from this point on, three distinct stories that fork away from one another down their own particular paths, all with their roots in a single decision on a storm-torn October day. The novel spans the next 35 years, each section set seven years apart and each divided into three: Bear, Julian and Gordon. The rigid structure can occasionally feel overly schematic but for the most part it works; partly because it helps the reader to hold three alternate realities in mind simultaneously, but more because Knapp has such a light touch. Deftly and with great tenderness she explores the complex and often horrifying effects of domestic abuse. She offers no easy answers. The Cora who decides for her son's sake to stand up to her brutal husband can no more guarantee her own and her children's future safety and happiness than the Cora who seeks to protect them by placating him. A boy who grows up never knowing his father carries a different kind of burden from a son whose family is torn apart by violence and a different burden again from the boy who is relentlessly bullied at home, but all three are fundamentally shaped by their experience. All three, as they face the possibilities of the future, must come to a reckoning with their emotional past. Knapp's plotting is skilful, her tapestry of stories cleverly woven. Characters that play a significant role in one of the three storylines appear fleetingly in others. Personality traits and preferences emerge in subtly different forms. As nature meets nurture, Cora, Maia and Bear/Julian/Gordon grow into distinct versions but remain recognisably themselves. Each version contrives to inform the others. There are times – inevitable, perhaps, in what is essentially three novels in one – when scenes feel rushed, depth sacrificed to the breadth of the enterprise. Cora's GP husband Gordon, a paragon outside the home, a monster within it, is a frustratingly one-dimensional villain. Such cavils aside, The Names stands out as a compelling and original debut, a book that asks at least as many questions as it answers. In the end, and despite the neatness of its premise, this is not so much a book about the impact of our names but about the implications of our decisions, how a moment of courage or recklessness or blind terror can act like a finger on a scale, shifting the balance of a life for ever. The Names by Florence Knapp is published by Phoenix (£16.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
