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Kreativ Spellings

© Kristen Hanley Cardozo

This is a highly biased opinion…be forewarned.

These days, it is fashionable to make certain that your child’s name is different from all others. This is a fairly new preoccupation, and while it is not a problem in and of itself, there are trends emerging from this preoccupation that I find disturbing, foremost, the use of creative spelling. Following are a number of guidelines I have devised to avoid the pitfalls of creative spelling.

One of the worst mistakes parents make with creative spelling is to take a simple name, that they do not plan on pronouncing in an unusual way, and respell it. Emily is spelled Emily, period. Unless you are using an ethnic variation on a name, in which case it may well be pronounced differently, respelling a name confuses things at best, and causes the parent to look illiterate at worst. Emilee, Emmaleigh, or Emmilie, the name is pronounced the same way, and spelling won’t make the name any different if there are five of them in class. If it is so important to be different, pick a different name.

Avoid the trend for replacing all names ending in the sound “lee” with the spelling “leigh”. Technically, this spelling should be pronounced “lay”, and it makes a name longer, and harder to spell. The same goes for silent E’s at the end of names. Unless it was there to begin with, it doesn’t improve the name.

If it’s a new or made up name, spell it phonetically, in the simplest way you can come up with. You’ve already made the name unique, so keep it easy to spell. Shorter is better in this instance. It ultimately is a lot more sophisticated, even if it is tempting to keep adding vowels and silent consonants.

It is OK to change a spelling to be more comprehensible. (Braden instead of Braeden.)

It is OK to alter a spelling to reflect ethnic heritage. There are often several accepted spellings of a name already. Many baby name books and websites list the variations of common names.

When blending names, try to preserve as much of the original spellings as possible.

No apostrophes! Ever! D'ylan isn't any different than Dylan in pronunciation, but it looks a lot sillier, and is much harder to spell.

Second capital letters should be forgotten, even in a name like Mackenzie. MacKenzie is much harder to spell, even though the second capital makes a certain amount of sense in a former surname. However, in names like EmmaLeigh, the second capital can only make things seem really schitzophrenic.

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