What's in a name?

Found a couple of good articles today that you all may be interested in. The first is:
America's Most Disliked Baby Names

The second is:
Does Your Name Determine Your Destiny?

The first could be particularly useful in developing characters that you want the reader to dislike.

Some of the comments are more interesting that the articles. Like the person who said her father delivered a baby and said, "The placenta's coming" and the woman called her child Placenta.

Otherwise, I can see the reasons people dislike these names. I don't really like surnames as names (I also think that's a much more American thing? I've encountered only one 'Jackson' in my life and no Hunters etc.). My brother is called Michael, but I can understand why people think it's ordinary.

I was surprised by some of the names on the list- I like Madison as a name, and I like "virtue" names. Not Destiny, granted, but I've always liked the names Hope and Mercy. But I know when I mentioned this to some friends they laughed and assumed I was joking. So clearly it's more widespread than I thought.

I don't know about my name controlling my destiny... but I am acutely aware that I share the first three letters of my name with that of my protagonist- even though she's nothing like me in temperament! But maybe my subconscious told me it was a better name than all the others because of this fact- which I only noticed about halfway through my first draft, at which point I was too attached to the name to change it. So my question is- how does your name affect your characters' names?

Nevah evah name her Neveah.

I get attached to the names of my characters. And I can't repeat names, because then he previous character's personality jumps into my head.

Unlike Stells there, I don't quite like the virtue names. Or the gems names like Pearl, Ruby etc.

Stella Thomas wrote:So my question is- how does your name affect your characters' names?

It doesn't ever. I guess the closes I've ever picked a name based on mine is Aanya.

I don't mind gem names, I actually really loved them at one point (especially Peri/ Peridot) but I'd not use them for a child. I have and do use them for characters on the other hand. In my head there's two lists of names and some of those that I love the most I would never ever give to my children.

Answer for Stella: My name hasn't affected my character's names other than one but that was on purpose. My sister and I decided we would each own one of the characters in our joint novel outright and so I decided to give my character a surname name that was a flower name since Heather is also a flower name. Most people would never link Rashel Lotus as being like Heather in any way though.