Is There A List Of Non-Religious Names? Anndal Narayanan (Reply) (5-02)

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Is There A List Of
Non-Religious Names?
Anndal Narayanan

From: "Anndal Narayanan"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: May 26, 2002 11:53 AM
Subject: non religious names

Hello,

I have been an atheist for almost a year now. (I'm 13.) Your online magazine and quotes have helped me a lot in seeing through the untruths that others' genes tell them to believe in.

Anyway, I have a question pertaining to non-religious names. I know that most names for people have some religious meaning. My name is a Hindu goddess's name, and my last name is a nickname for the god Brahman, I believe (something like "he who rises over the waters"). I wish to change it when I move out of my parents' house. I want a name that has no religious meaning or connotation. Perhaps you could make available on your website such a list. Well, maybe there is such a list, or this question has been asked before in the Q&A section. If so, just ignore me and I'll probably find it eventually.

Thanks very much,
Anndal Narayanan

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From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Anndal Narayanan"
Subject: Re: non religious names
Date: May 26, 2002 1:16 PM

Obviously there is no such list put together -- nobody has bothered to go through a list of names to see what they all mean. This would take a lot of work, probably a month or two of full-time work for an able-bodied person, perhaps longer..

There are books of names and what they mean, so doing it would be no problem. However, I do not have the time. If somebody did this, I would gladly offer the Internet space to post it.

Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six-and-a-half years of service
to people with no reason to believe

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From: "Anndal Narayanan"
To: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
Sent: May 26, 2002 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: non religious names

Dear Cliff,

Thanks a lot for responding. Well, after searching your site for names, and finding none, I went to Google.com and did a search for name sites. If and when I come up with a list of names that have nothing whatsoever to do with religion, I will send it to you!

Peace,
Anndal Narayanan

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From: "Positive Atheism" <editor@positiveatheism.org>
To: "Anndal Narayanan"
Subject: Re: non religious names
Date: May 26, 2002 5:37 PM

This is one of those things that if you ever want to see it, you're going to have to be the one who makes it. You might do well making a small one and posting it on a web page (we'd post it for you!): Baby Names that are not Religious! Yeah, if you come up with a list of names, with a Name column, an Ethnicity column, and a Meaning column, I'll put it into alphabetical order and divide it into files and post it for you.

When we go to the grocery store, you wait in line to pay your money. This place always has weird magazines for sale and often has tiny books as well. I bought one just last week called "Food From the Bible" and sure enough, they had a recipe for Locust Caramel Popcorn! -- because John the Baptist used to eat Locust!! Yecch! Often I see, in the checkout stand magazine rack, a tiny book called Names For Your Baby. This has about 5,000 names and what they mean.

This is the kind of book you are looking for: Names For Your Baby, and the like, only you might want one that's more sophisticated than you'll find at the checkstand. Maybe not! If you want to create a small list, you'll want a small reference to start out with. Get the list from a small book and check the meanings against a big list or even an Oxford's dictionary or other sophisticated reference work. If you start with 500,000 names, you'll be working on this project for the rest of your life!

I went to Google.com and typed in
names for baby
and here are the first ten "hits" I got.

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http://www.popularbabynames.com/
This one had so many pop-up ads that my computer died and I had to turn it off and reboot. When I turned off all the ads, the sound effect was of several knives flying through the air and hitting a wall, like the knife-throwing bit at the circus. What!? Yup! I turned off all the ads (so I could see the main attraction) and it went "Shick-thud! Shick-thud! Shick-thud! Shick-thwack!"
     SICKO!!
     This is a baby page!!
     Sick, sick, sick!!
     It's no good for your purposes, on top of that, as it had a selector to tell the search which religion you want the name to be from.

http://www.babynames.com/
This one had popular names, but best of all, it has message boards. You can ask around and see if anybody knows of anything that specifically avoids religion!

http://www.yourbabysname.com/
This one has 10,000 names with meanings, but readers send in the suggestions, so there is reason to distrust the information.

http://www.kabalarians.com/gkh/yourbaby.htm
This is a religious (superstitious) web site where they believe that certain criteria should govern your choice of the baby's name, and that the name, like the star's positions, governs ones life! For example, if you name the baby "Fenton," then "this name creates weaknesses in the fluids of the body, kidneys, or glandular system." Once you get past this stuff, they have 525,000 baby names listed alphabetically and 800,000 baby names divided into 288 categories. Unfortunately, this list does not give the meaning of the names! Also, you'd need to look up each name individually even if it did.

http://www.dfcreations.com/
This one sells baby-naming and fictional character-naming software. The character CD sounds interesting because it shows the popular names by generation, so you know that a woman named Myrtle is no spring chicken, that name having gone way out of vogue during my grandmother's time.

http://epregnancy.com/directory/Baby_Names/
This one has 17,000 names in categories and search, but makes you search for the meanings (you want one with a big list, with meanings opposite the name). Pop-up ads!

http://www.babychatter.com/babynames.html
Way too many pop-up ads to be useful. Search and lists. Meanings listed opposite name, though.

http://www.babycenter.com/babyname/
Nothing spectacular, not bad, either: has meaning search.

http://www.babynamer.com/
Great meaning info; 23,000 names; interesting lists (such as "all the names on the Civil Rights Memorial" then click the name and see what it means and how popular it is).

http://123-baby-names.com/Baby_Names/baby_names.html
I had trouble navigating through the ads. I'd click on what I thought was a link, but it was an ad! However, I did find their Links page (the link above) with links to other people's web pages about baby names! That was the best part about this one: they told you where other, better pages are!

http://www.surebaby.com/babynames.html
This one is short, but it has the meaning right next to the name.

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That's what I got on the first ten "hits" (plus one link) at Google.com. If you come up with a simple list, I'll be glad to post it no problem!

Cliff Walker
Positive Atheism Magazine
Six-and-a-half years of service
to people with no reason to believe

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