> well, who would want to be named Jane or Mary though? the perfect balance comes when you find a name that isn't too common, but not so odd that people are just like, what? like "Emerik" and "Odracer" and "Shaquita" kinda fall onto the bad side on the oddness scale. "Mary" "Elizabeth" "Jennifer" "Robert" "Steven" (etc) are all too normal. then there are names like "Lynette" "Brent" and "Elissa" (those would be my family), "Byron" and "Darien" (let us salute the RinkForum), "Tyler" (although that's supposed to be one of the top ten boys names in the US i only know one person (sigh) with that name) and "Colin" (what's with all the sibling names here? so far I've had 3 groups... aie)
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> uni"and then there are the names that would be good but make people think aswiss alps and dogs"peg

Colin is *such* a name for a dachshund. Or any kind of very small and ridiculous dog. At the risk of sounding like I approve of either one of them, I like the names Byron and Darien very much. They both sound very masculine. Darien because I always liked the line in that poem by (was it?) Shelley. Byron because of the handsome-romantic-poet connotations, although *that* particular image is rapidly being replaced in my mind ...