Ranking the Names of Namesakes of Biblical Books From Most Conventional to Most Unusual

I like to think that my children—Meyer, Resha Kate, and Malachi—have names that are unique without being strange. But I occasionally find myself thinking that "Malachi" is a funny name to give a kid. Why would I think such a thing? "Malachi" is the name of a prophet who wrote a book of the Bible, a collection of texts considered sacred by almost one-third of the world's population. Other namesakes of biblical books include John, Daniel, Ruth, and Joel. No one considers those names unusual. On the other hand, I've never known anyone named Nahum or Haggai.

With that in mind, I've decided to rank the names of all Bible-book namesakes from the most conventional to the most unusual to see where "Malachi" lands. I've determined how conventional or unusual a name by considering the name's current popularity and popularity over time among English-speaking North Americans. (I wouldn't know how to compare "Juan" and "Pedro" or "Matthieu" and "Luc." And I have no idea how popular "Zechariah" is in New Zealand or Ireland.) Very little research or hard data has gone into the creation of this list, aside from several trips to the Name Voyager.


1. John
2. Matthew
3. Daniel
4. Timothy
5. Mark
6. Peter
7. Samuel
8. Joshua
9. Ruth
10. Joel
11. Luke
12. Jeremiah
13. Judith*
14. Jonah
15. Isaiah
16. Esther
17. Ezekiel
18. Ezra
19. Micah
20. Amos
21. Malachi
22. Zechariah
23. Enoch**
24. Titus
25. Hosea
26. Job
27. Baruch*
28. Tobit*
29. Obadiah
30. Zephaniah
31. Philemon
32. Nahum
33. Habakkuk
34. Haggai


*Book is in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but not Protestant and Jewish Bibles.

**Book is only in Ethiopian Orthodox Bibles.


One could make a case that Malachi is more conventional than Amos, but I'm certain (thanks to Name Voyager) that "Malachi" is more obscure than "Micah" but more common than "Zechariah."

For what it's worth, none of the names ranked 26–34 is among the 1,000 most popular names in any decade according to Name Voyager. Every other name, including "Malachi," was at least marginally popular at some point in the past century.

Yeah, Insurance Companies Don't Like to Pay for Babies

Seemingly each week in Malachi's first few months of life, we received a statement from our insurance company regarding some part of the labor-delivery-postpartum process that the company had decided not to cover. Paying for the birth of our third child required most of the money in our checking account, and Malachi came through the birth canal with no significant complications and was healthy and ready to go home in two days. (I can only imagine what sort of medical debt we would have accrued had a C-section been necessary or had Malachi required a trip to the NICU.)

But our experience was mild compared to writer Sarah Waldman's recent ordeals. From Double X, via Slate:

Our six-month-old daughter cost over $22,000.

You’d think, with a number like that, we must have used fertility treatments—but she was conceived naturally. You’d think we went through an adoption agency—but she is a biological child. So surely, we were uninsured.

Nope. Birthing our daughter was so expensive precisely because we were insured, on the individual market. Our insurer, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, sold us exactly the type of flawed policy—riddled with holes and exceptions—that the health care reform bills in Congress should try to do away with. The “maternity” coverage we purchased didn’t cover my labor, delivery, or hospital stay. It was a sham. And so we spent the first months of her life getting the kind of hospital bills and increasingly aggressive calls from hospital administrators that I once believed were only possible without insurance.

I'm Sure You're Wondering Why Malachi Doesn't Have a Website Yet

Meyer and Resha Kate both received websites as first birthday presents. I used my limited HTML skills to program Meyer's from scratch. Resha Kate's was just a Blogger blog with a customized template and links to a couple HTML pages (which haven't been updated in eons). In both cases a domain name—www.meyertinley.com and www.reshakate.com—was part of the birthday website package.

Malachi is nearly 14-months old, and he still doesn't have a website. He doesn't even have a domain name. I have a plan for giving my youngest child a web presence; I just haven't gotten around to executing it. (I've also done a poor job updating his siblings' sites.) If you would like to see Malachi on the Internet sooner rather than later, here's what you can do: Offer to babysit all three Tinley children next Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights (for free). If you do that, I promise that I will have a new website finished by the time you leave the Tinley residence on Tuesday.

Malachi's First Video

It isn't one of our better efforts, but the time was right to get Malachi on video. Also, Meyer does some theologizing. (We'll need to work with him on that.)



Music: "Everybody Sing, Everybody Play Bass" by Meyer, Resha Kate, and Daddy.

An Update on the Mouse

Now that I have three kids, I find that I rarely have the time or energy to blog about or make videos of my kids (or about anything else, for that matter). Thus while Meyer and Resha Kate's formative years have been thoroughly documented on the Internet, Malachi doesn't have much of web presence (and probably won't anytime soon).

But I should tell you that, this weekend, Malachi Wayne "The Mouse" Tinley, learned to crawl, even if I have no video evidence of the feat to share with you. Nice going, Mouse.

The Mouse

That's what we're calling Malachi: The Mouse. We had been calling him Mal, Mal being an obvious abbreviation for Malachi. Mal soon became Mals, because we're into faux-plural abbreviations. Sophie, Resha Kate's twin cousin*, heard Mals as Mouse, giving us no choice but to refer to our youngest child as "The Mouse." There you go. Here's The Mouse:



* Resha Kate and Sophie aren't actually twin cousins, foremost because there is no such thing. They weren't even born on the same day. But they are a mere four days apart, so I won't apologize for my use of "twin cousin."

Halloween 2011 Links

• Here is the Tinleys' 2011 Halloween album on Facebook.


• Here is Malachi's Halloween 2011 post.


• Here is Resha Kate's Halloween 2011 post.


• Here is Meyer's Halloween 2011 post.

Mally Making Animal Sounds

Click here for eight seconds of Malachi mimicking a dog and cat.

Meyer, Resha Kate, and Malachi Work on Some New Songs

Malachi

I haven't posted a picture of the little guy since he was a newborn. (Such is the plight of the third child.)

Mally: "Costa Rica'

Here's a video Ashlee shot of Malachi when I had taken Resha Kate to choir practice and Meyer was in Costa Rica with his grandparents:

Malachi on the Piano

Enjoy:

He Loves His Baby Brother

Meyer loves having a baby brother and expresses his love by making cards and pictures for Malachi. You can see his latest effort at Meyer's blog. (Funny, Meyer never did this sort of thing for Resha Kate.)

Introducing Malachi Wayne Tinley

Born at 10:26 p.m. on September 29, 2008, 7 pounds, 3 ounces:

The Costume Industry Has a Very Low Opinion of Little Boys

I went to Hobby Lobby today in search of materials with which to make a Halloween costume for Meyer. Unable to find what I needed, I decided to walk down to Halloween USA—a costume store occupying a space vacated by Circuit City—to see if I could save myself some work by buying a pre-made costume. We've had success with pre-made costumes in the past: Meyer has been a giraffe and a chicken; Resha Kate has been a ladybug and Uniqua. Resha Kate and Malachi both will be wearing adorable pre-made costumes this year.

Here's what I learned at Halloween USA: Costume companies make fantastic pre-made costumes for children age 3 or younger. Once a child grows out of his or her 3T clothes, cute pre-made costumes are hard to come by. Tacky and disturbing costumes are not . Halloween USA has, in children's sizes, every sort of demon, zombie, and ghoul—costumes that would be awesome to a ten-year-old but terrifying to a five-year-old. The scary costumes didn't really surprise me. Halloween, after all, is a celebration of the macabre, and the spirit of the season surely prompts many parents to dress their children in get-ups that aren't age appropriate.

What did surprise me were the pimp and executioner costumes. (Pimp costume pictured.) Considering some of the costumes on sale for little girls (that's another rant for another time), I suppose dressing up a little boy as a pimp makes a certain amount of sense. But who (aside from Ice-T and the parents of the model in the picture) dresses up a child in a pimp costume? I wouldn't even know how to explain to Meyer what a pimp is; I certainly can't imagine allowing him to walk around the neighborhood imitating one. The executioner costume is nearly as baffling. "Daddy, why do I need to carry this axe?" "Well, that's what you use to chop off people's heads."

He May Have a Future as an Eyewear Model

Malachi in goggles and shades:

New Pictures of the Kids

Meyer's in the choir; Resha Kate sleeps at the top of the stairs; Malachi doesn't do much of anything; all three hang out on Meyer's bed:

"And the Kids"

A couple days ago I signed a Facebook birthday card "Josh, Ashlee, and the kids" because the Group Card application did not allow me enough characters to write "Josh, Ashlee, Meyer, Resha Kate, and Malachi." Never before had I denied my children their unique identities by naming them as a collective—"the kids." (At least, I had never before done such a thing in a greeting card.)

Early in our relationship, when Ashlee and I would exchange cards for different occasions, we would include in our salutations the names of individual cats (i.e. "Love, Josh, Naomi, and Reggie"). As our cat population grew and listing the name of every cat became untenable, "Naomi, Reggie, Rivers, Curtis, etc." became "the cats." (Now the cats are lucky to be mentioned at all.) It's weird to see the same thing happen to our children.

Meyer Makes a Case for Playing With the Little Legos®

Seldom do we allow Meyer to play with the regular-sized Legos®—preferring that he play with the Duplo® or Quatro® blocks—because of the potential for smaller people (or animals) to swallow the tiny blocks. But today Meyer made a compelling case:

"I'll make sure Kate doesn't eat them, and Malachi won't eat them because the only things that are yummy to him are nipples."

Halloween Pictures

I know; I lied about having these up yesterday. Anyway, here are Meyer as Spiderman, Resha Kate as Uniqua from The Backyardigans (actually taken while trick-or-treating), Malachi in his pumpkin outfit, and all three kids on the love seat. (Some of these pictures courtesy of Grandma.)