When we got back from visiting my sister and the new baby at the hospital, we decided to pop in
The Last Song. It got to the part where some girl named Blaze says her real name is Galadriel, from LotR, and it made me think of my niece and the story behind how she got her name.
(Am I crazy for thinking it's cool to have a strange name from a book character? I'd love to have a great nickname and go "Yeah, well THIS is my birth name
" But I've on and off had issues with how bland my name is
)
Anyway, when my sister in law got pregnant for the first time my brother had to broach the subject of possibly using a flower name for a girl. Noah doesn't hate our tradition, and actually liked the idea of continuing it, but he also didn't want to make Stacy feel like she couldn't use a name she wanted for her child. Stacy was well aware of our naming traditions, and was very nice about the whole thing, and agreed so long as she could find a name she loved.
She thought about it for a while then eventually came to Noah with the idea of Buttercup. They both
love the movie
The Princess Bride. She also mentioned Buttercup being her favorite Power Puff Girl and loving the flower and the song "Build Me Up, Buttercup", but I have a feeling that anything after TPB were just convenient excuses to back up the name she really wanted. She didn't need to do that, though. She had him at Princess Bride. I think she had a few other "reasons" to use the name, but those were the ones I remembered.
Stacy and Noah were both madly in love with the name, but not everyone else was. A lot of family members thought it was nuts for a while. I was iffy with it, Rose was iffy with it, Tyler and Brooke were iffy with it, our dad and step mom were...Seeing as my mom once wanted to name be Gladiola, she didn't see much of an issue with it. My Gramma Marigold didn't think it was too bad, either, but she has sisters named Petunia and Gardenia and one of them had a daughter named Sunflower aka Sunny. Strange flower names were nothing to her. My cousin Heather had a daughter named Jonquil, so she wasn't much bothered by it, either.
Well my dad has this thing where he's convinced he is right about everything, his opinion is the only one that matters, what he says goes, ect, so he tried hard to talk them out of the name. I wasn't fond of Buttercup, but even I thought he was going a bit far with it. Stacy and Noah seemed crushed by it. Then a lot of our paternal family members would call or email them like "You
seriously wanted to name your child that?!" I was visitng them when Aunt Kelly posted some nasty ranting status on FB about people naming their kids dumb things, pointing out how bad it was when celebrities did it, but normal people
really didn't need to do it, or something like that. Stacy just flat out bawled, saying how tired she was of people being so mean, that she wasn't trying to torture her daughter by giving her that name, only that she really, truly loved the name.
So Rose, Brooke, and I did our best to help cheer them up, enlising our mother and grandmother and cousins to come help convince them to follow their heart. When Stacy finally gave birth, they waited a few days before naming her. They seemed really upset at the idea of looking for baby names, very reluctant to even discuss the subject. We didn't hear anything for a while about the baby name. They brought the baby home and only when I called to check up on things, eventually flat out asking them if they had picked a name, that Stacy nervously said that her name was Buttercup Georgia Theard. They refused to tell a lot of people for about a month and a half, brushing off the question which made my dad mad. Daddy complained a lot about how they shouldn't be so upset just because he didn't like their silly name and that he was sure that whatever name they had chosen would be fine.
Needless to say, he was none too pleased to learn that her name ended up being Buttercup.
He got over it. Eventually. I think.
Anyway, I was thrilled that they had chosen the name they loved. While I wasn't sure about it in general, you could see how much they really liked it. It meant something to them, which was the important thing. The girl
is their child. But I was excited for them and it's hard imagining that little girl as anything else! I do have to admit she dressed up like the Power Puff Girl for Halloween last year...It was pretty great!
Anyway, I'm a bit more lenient with "odd" baby names these days. more than other people. But I see a lot of strange names come through the daycare I work at! I had to get used to them eventually.
...Besides. At least Buttercup is better than Galadriel
