Permaculture Baby Names

I'm at that point in my life where the thought of children is in the air. I'm in a lighthearted mood today and an idea came to me.

What names are out there that are (or could be) inspired by permaculture?

The first one that comes to me is Bill.

It is a common name but Bill Mollison... I mean what a guy!

You should host a poor-man's poll to name your baby! :-)

Sprout
Brooke
Ash, Ashley
Ivy
Forrest, I went to school with a Forrest Green ..
Basil
Tansy, my Aunts name
Flower names, like Lily, Rose, Zinnia

William David (after Mollison and Holmgren)
Herb Spiral
Poly Culture (Hugo Culture if it's a boy)
Ruth Stout
Zone Two
One Straw (Revolution)
Synergy
Edge
Guild
Sepp
Paul

Permies Dot Com -- maybe call her Dot. :)

Christopher Weeks wrote:
...
Synergy
...

I thought of that, but it doesn't shorten well...

I'd probably go for Forest. Or anything tree-based. Hazel, maybe. Or Rowan.

Burra Maluca wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:
...
Synergy
...

I thought of that, but it doesn't shorten well...

Yeah, some of the "weirder" ones might make better middle names than firsts. Rowan Synergy Norton rolls along nicely and most people don't really advertise their middle(s) anyway. I can imagine people being averse to calling their child "Syn" because of the homophone Sin.

For girls, a flower name, Rose (Rosie), was very popular in my family.
For boys, OH... Thomas sounds good...

My youngest daughter's middle name is Rain... Cause it's pretty and we are always praying for it.

Flower names for girls are always popular.  One of my niece's middle names is Marigold.  I guess if you want to be really unusual you could do Comfrey.

Edit:  I also think Willow is a pretty girl's name.

thomas rubino wrote:For girls, a flower name, Rose (Rosie), was very popular in my family.
For boys, OH... Thomas sounds good...

I was about to say I didn't get it ...  Then I did.

Christopher Weeks wrote:
Yeah, some of the "weirder" ones might make better middle names than firsts.

Agree, and exactly what we did for both of our kids. Nice normal first names and odd middle names. Equipment used in the sport where we met and not Permaculture related, but this was almost 40 years ago.

Story time: My mother's given names were Margret Elizabeth. And for whatever reason, their parents treated it like a double barrel name and called her "Margret Elizabeth"... until she was an active preschooler when they shortened it to "Molly Beth".

Then she was sent to a Catholic School and the nuns word was law. They decided Molly Beth was too long, and shortened her name to Beth.

This led to complications, so when she married and started a family, all three of her daughters were given single syllable first names.

Fast forward to her attending Adult Evening University classes and one evening the Prof asks at the beginning of class, "Who's this Margaret Blank person? She's never attended a single class!" My Mother stuck up her hand.  The Prof's response was, "How on earth do you get Beth out of Margaret?"

Fast way forward to her being a non-verbal dementia patient in long term care. The staff all called her Margaret. She didn't respond to Margaret.

There's no way to be perfect with anyone's name, but when you're thinking of naming your kid, "Moon Unit", consider that some kids can swing with any name, but some kids can't.  I have a friend whose name often doesn't fit on Gov't forms. Think of her in Grade 1 when she had to struggle to write it all, when the kids with 4 letter names were on to the task they were assigned. Think of how it will sound when some bully intentionally mispronounces it. Try to predict the future, when the name, "Gay", suddenly takes on a very different meaning. Consider their perpetual frustration when they have to spell it three times for the clerk to get it right.

Please, for my mother's memory, be kind when naming your children!

“Excuse me, Swale? Is this Swale Farmer?”

That is a name that would not be likely to pass on Permies sadly.

I like flower names. Pachysandra, a medicinal herb and plant I love, could be shortened to Sandy or something like that for instance.

Char? Frog?

Edit to add: Char and frog and swale are NOT names I would give my child, they were essentially joking. Maybe some day Frog will be a popular name though, who knows?

Two of my daughters are named Cedar and Juniper (my oldest and youngest). They are in their forties - those names are somewhat in use now, but I think we were among the first to use either of them. (Their dad and I met while studying forestry at college. One of our fellow students named his daughter Willow, which, after the movie of the same name, I would not use. But at the time, just before Juniper was born, I wished he had chosen something else, because that's what we'd planned to name her! Had to come up with something else - we decided on Juniper as we were on the way to the hospital to have her!).

There are other tree names that are good, too. Ash. Birch, and Spruce (I've heard of people being named both of those). Rowan is another one, maybe a shrub more than a tree, depending on where you live.

What you could do is go through plant lists and see if anything stands out to you. But as others up there have mentioned, do be careful of names that are hard to spell or that might confuse people. Juniper, for instance, is constantly heard as Jennifer, and I'd always have to correct people. My middle daughter didn't get a tree name, but she always, always has to spell her name for people, AND tell them how to pronounce it (Maranatha).

As for flower names, my dad's mother's name was Rosie Rose (a clerical error - her name was supposed to be Rose Elizabeth or something like that). And I had aunts named Daisy and Violet. Flower names have been fairly common through the ages - you should be able to do a search for 'flower baby names' or something like that, and get some lists.

I've always loved Rosemary and Sage as fantasy girl names ( I have one boy ).
Seconding the suggestion to go with a more usual name as the first name, and a magic name as the second one.
My child has abandoned his first name, and changed it - even in the birth certificate - to only his previously second name ( Ilo = joy in Finnish).

I also always liked the names my grandmother and her siblings had; the whole bunch had qualities as names, or very descriptive names;
for the girls Lempi = love, or favourite (!), Lahja = present, Helmi = pearl
for the boys Arvo = value, ...I can't remember the other ones, but you get the picture!

But for permaculture-y names I'd go with nature names; flowers, trees, herbs, and maybe waterthings; River, Sade (=rain in Finnish!)

Enjoy the naming game, and let us know the result(s)!