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Help[Opinions] Destiny
I used to work at a high school, and I noticed there were a lot of girls named Destiny. I personally don't care for the name, but I'm wondering what you guys think of it...is it corny, or can it grow on you? Have you ever met a Destiny? Do you think most Destinys have the "story" about their mothers giving them the name because it was their "destiny" to have them?
"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." -Charles Bukowski
"What matters most is how well you walk through the fire." -Charles Bukowski
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I find it laughable, and it attracts imaginative spelling variations. Bad enough to be Destiny, but Deztynee?
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There's a Destiney in Valerie's class this year, and I think there was a different one, maybe a Destiny, in her kindergarten class. I don't find it an attractive name at all, very low-class-sounding and cheesy. I don't know about anybody's back story, but my guess is that only happened very often with the very first wave of Destinys in the eighties or nineties or whenever people started using it for a name.
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I think it's a little corny, too corny for my style by far. But I don't feel nearly as negatively about it as I did around 1995, when I met my first Destiny (a sickly Pomeranian whose dam was named Lexus). I sneered at it then.
I wouldn't say it has grown on me, but I do think of it as an ordinary name now, not stupid, and not totally unattractive. Just ever so slightly tawdry, in the same way that Desiree is (and I do like Desiree) because it could be interpreted to imply that the bearer herself is someone else's destiny, an object of desire ... which is not a very high-minded motif for a name, and I care about that a little bit. Of course that interpretation is in the mind of the beholder, since the word Destiny is just abstract, it's not truly tacky like Coquette or Delicious or something like that. I also don't personally like the sounds in the word destiny, as name-sounds. Anyway if I met a Destiny I would not even bat an eye ... it's just a name that was a fad, like Brittany or Nevaeh.
I doubt that it usually comes with a story. People probably just like it, and make up the story afterwards. That's ok.
I wouldn't say it has grown on me, but I do think of it as an ordinary name now, not stupid, and not totally unattractive. Just ever so slightly tawdry, in the same way that Desiree is (and I do like Desiree) because it could be interpreted to imply that the bearer herself is someone else's destiny, an object of desire ... which is not a very high-minded motif for a name, and I care about that a little bit. Of course that interpretation is in the mind of the beholder, since the word Destiny is just abstract, it's not truly tacky like Coquette or Delicious or something like that. I also don't personally like the sounds in the word destiny, as name-sounds. Anyway if I met a Destiny I would not even bat an eye ... it's just a name that was a fad, like Brittany or Nevaeh.
I doubt that it usually comes with a story. People probably just like it, and make up the story afterwards. That's ok.
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I think Destiny is pretty. I also think Serenity is pretty. I don't have too much of a problem with turning pretty words into names, as long as the words don't have either negative or humdrum meanings. I don't like Trinity, but that's because I don't find "trinity" a pretty word.
I doubt that most mothers of Destinys are thinking at all of the word's meaning, just as I doubt most mothers of Trinitys are thinking of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. (I used to hear "The Holy Ghost" when I was a kid, but I understand that's gone out in favor of "The Holy Spirit.") I can't say the same for the woman I met who had a daughter named Reality, though.
I doubt that most mothers of Destinys are thinking at all of the word's meaning, just as I doubt most mothers of Trinitys are thinking of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. (I used to hear "The Holy Ghost" when I was a kid, but I understand that's gone out in favor of "The Holy Spirit.") I can't say the same for the woman I met who had a daughter named Reality, though.
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Reality?
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Yeah, I've told the story here a couple of times and figured everyone would remember it. I met a woman who had gotten pregnant and wasn't going to be getting any emotional support from the father. She told me that she named the baby Reality because the reality of her situation didn't hit her until the baby was born and she saw her.
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You know, I don't hate the sound of it. It could work.
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When I first posted about it, and this was several years ago, I said that I actually liked the sound of Reality. I had a problem with the meaning, though. The word "reality" has a neutral meaning generally, like the word "destiny". However, "destiny" is a more high-minded concept than "reality", which I think makes it more suitable as a name. And then, the reason that this particular girl was given the name Reality gives the word "reality", in this case, a negative meaning. But sound-wise, yes, it's kind of pretty. As I recall, not surprisingly, the responses were all negative.
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I remember there being a girl named Destiny in my 1st grade class. All I really remember her for was that she was gone for a like a month, showed up one day, had to go home early because she was sick, and then we never saw her again. Honestly that is what this name makes me think about. With that being said I think that it is very pretty but it sounds tacky. It is in the GP pile for me along with stuff like Charity, Clarity, Chastity, Trinity, Serenity and Journey.
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