I extracted all the occurrences of “van” and “west” from the 1990 Census database of male and female first names. The results are below with the name’s ranking and other statistics. Please note that the database contains names only for the top 90% of the population and is not comprehensive. Enjoy!
This is in no way an endorsement of naming the child after the VW Love Bus, as I agree with Tara.
NAME FREQ CUM.FREQ RANK
IVAN 0.053 77.369 272
EVAN 0.042 79.257 312
VAN 0.019 84.163 484
VANCE 0.014 85.686 576
DONOVAN 0.010 86.778 667
GIOVANNI 0.007 87.890 794
WESTON 0.006 88.440 875
VANESSA 0.111 57.607 195
EVANGELINE 0.011 80.432 849
SAVANNAH 0.010 81.017 906
EVANGELINA 0.009 81.205 926
GIOVANNA 0.003 85.598 1710
VAN 0.003 85.619 1716
VANNESSA 0.002 86.973 2189
VANESA 0.002 87.398 2378
VIVAN 0.002 87.586 2469
SAVANNA 0.002 87.973 2672
IVANA 0.002 87.994 2684
VANDA 0.002 88.030 2704
VANITA 0.002 88.086 2736
SILVANA 0.002 88.405 2928
EVAN 0.002 88.505 2992
VANETTA 0.001 89.229 3525
VANIA 0.001 89.401 3672
VANNESA 0.001 89.497 3757
VANNA 0.001 89.589 3841
JOVAN 0.001 89.631 3880
The files are available here, to satisfy your curiosity, if any: http://www.census.gov/genealogy/names/names_files.html
Tara,
I don’t have a suggestion for the name, there are many in this thread that are fine, I only have advice that might alleviate some of your concerns.
My wife and I conceived at the end of a wonderful, adventurous and extended honeymoon in an Asian country. We chose to name our son (middle name)after the country in which he was conceived. (Suffice to say the city in which this august event took place would have been HIGHLY inappropriate.) As a middle name it is unique and interesting.
Now, early in life our son had moments where he was a bit embarrassed by the name, but as he grew older the name and the story behind it became a source of pride, an encouragement to pursue a life of opportunity and adventure, a reminder of his parents abiding love and a hell of an ice breaker at parties. We knew he loved the name when we found out that he was using it as a nickname among his high school friends
I guess it has more to do with how YOU handle the name. If you don’t and won’t like it then by all means don’t do it. But if you can get past the apparent embarrassment and see it as a celebration of how your family came to be, as a symbol of love AND as a great story, you and your child will love the name.
I say go for it.
I have some friends who named their son Carson, after a romantic trip they took to Carson Pass, which I believe is somewhere in the Sierras. So my question to you is this… why limit the choices to the vehicle itself when your shared experience was really much larger than that?
Perhaps there are places you visited or people you met that also carry special memories and have a little more depth and history than, forgive me Car Guys, some mass-produced motorized box, when it’s the memories attached to it that are important.
I prefer Savannah, Vance sounds a little snobbish
reverse phone lookup