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ArchivesRe: The name "Kelsi/Kelsey"
in reply to a message by Ryan
It's money winning out over integrity. A baby name book will sell more copies, or a website will get more hits, if they post flattering meanings about names. When a prospective parent looks up the meaning of a name they already love and it's obviously positive, they get good vibes about the site/book and continue to use it. Because that's their business, the content providers are not above making something up.
Other books and websites, also in it to make a buck and not always for the love of names, are lazy. Instead of doing their own research, they simply copy what other sources are saying. Usually the most popular ones.
I remember a few years back when the name Neveah started popping up everywhere. It's simply "heaven" spelled backward, and that's its only real meaning. However, somebody somewhere felt (rightly in my opinion) that that was a pretty insubstantial and silly foundation for a name. So all of a sudden, sites started popping up saying it meant "butterfly" in Native American, all copying each other. Trouble is, there was no one single First Nations language, there were a lot of them. And people who'd done research on those languages couldn't really seem to find "Neveah" in any of them.
Other popular names with genuine but not necessarily positive meanings like "misshapen head" or "crooked nose" or "Lincoln's wetland" get their meanings reimagined all the time.
It's hard to know the good name sites and books from the bad ones, but as a general rule, the ones that are geared toward babies-babies-babies are the usual suspects for making stuff up. The ones that are geared toward the name nerds doing research are much better.
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Where the name Kelsey is concerned, in the 90s and early 2000s there was a name trend boom where insubstantial names that included the letters K and Y got really out of control. Keely, Kaylie, Kylee, etc. Although Kelsey has a much richer history than many of the others, it rode that wave and got hugely popular. Its reputation suffered from the association for many people including myself. Moreover, because it was so overused during that time period, it's very dated now.
Other books and websites, also in it to make a buck and not always for the love of names, are lazy. Instead of doing their own research, they simply copy what other sources are saying. Usually the most popular ones.
I remember a few years back when the name Neveah started popping up everywhere. It's simply "heaven" spelled backward, and that's its only real meaning. However, somebody somewhere felt (rightly in my opinion) that that was a pretty insubstantial and silly foundation for a name. So all of a sudden, sites started popping up saying it meant "butterfly" in Native American, all copying each other. Trouble is, there was no one single First Nations language, there were a lot of them. And people who'd done research on those languages couldn't really seem to find "Neveah" in any of them.
Other popular names with genuine but not necessarily positive meanings like "misshapen head" or "crooked nose" or "Lincoln's wetland" get their meanings reimagined all the time.
It's hard to know the good name sites and books from the bad ones, but as a general rule, the ones that are geared toward babies-babies-babies are the usual suspects for making stuff up. The ones that are geared toward the name nerds doing research are much better.
____________
Where the name Kelsey is concerned, in the 90s and early 2000s there was a name trend boom where insubstantial names that included the letters K and Y got really out of control. Keely, Kaylie, Kylee, etc. Although Kelsey has a much richer history than many of the others, it rode that wave and got hugely popular. Its reputation suffered from the association for many people including myself. Moreover, because it was so overused during that time period, it's very dated now.
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