I have met girls named Brandy, Candy, Crystal, Havoc, and other unlikely names. Legal given names. Why do parents do that?
I do get the joke about the book covers.

"Why do parents do that?"
If you are the 18th Alice in your high school it gets boring. often an over compensation for having a common name and not liking it. add to that drugs and stupidity.

Add to it one joke I've heard that goes something like. Didn't know how hard it was to choose a name till I tried to find a name my spouse had never dated.

When I see a name like Brandy I assume it's either a stage name, or the parents reminding themselves of the mistake they made by having her (or why they did).

A name like Purity, on the other hand, suggests that her parents belong to a creepy cult.

Here's a poster child for all sorts of damn-I-want-to-smack-the-parents bullshit.

And of course, Moon Unit Zappa and Moxie Crimefighter Penn would like a word...

When I see a name like Brandy.... ~ jdgalt1 at December 14, 2021 10:57 AM

But, Brandy's a fine girl. What a wife she would be. She lays whiskey down and her eyes could steal a sailor from the sea.

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A name like Purity, on the other hand, suggests that her parents belong to a creepy cult. ~ jdgalt1 at December 14, 2021 10:57 AM

I read once that some Quakers give their children striving names - i.e., something they strive to attain or be. Curious, I did some digging and found out that the list of famous Quakers - including converts to and from - includes:

• Richard Nixon
• Herbert Hoover
• James Michener
• Johns Hopkins
• Judi Dench
• James Dean
• Bonnie Raitt
• Joan Baez
• John Cadbury
• Smedley Butler
• John Hickenlooper
• Ben Kingsley
• Edward R. Murrow
• Daniel Boone
• John Greenleaf Whittier
• Kevin Bacon
• Nathaniel Greene
• Susan B. Anthony
• William Penn

None of these are what you might call "striving names," and I was otherwise unable to confirm if that is or ever was a practice in which Quakers engage.

My mom once told me they considered naming me Crystal Dawn. Never in my life had I been so happy to have my non-phonetic un-intuitive-to-pronounce name.

Years ago, I knew a guy with the last name of Parts. He said he wished he'd been named Otto. His mother said she should have named him Harry. I remarked once that it was a good thing he never enlisted.

It's still better than to be bound by tradition ie. You firstborn son should have his father's name and so will his first son and so and so and so.

I once knew a woman named Kelly Green. Her sister was named Olive and her brother was named Forrest.

I once knew a family with the last name of Phifer They had four boys. Their names were, Wood, Brook, Sky and Star.
Star became an actor. Screen name was Zach Phifer. If you want to see him, he had a bit part in Romey and Michelle’s High School reunion.

Crystal Dawn? Isn't that a dish soap?

Conan: "Striving" names was once characteristic of Puritans, not Quakers. (I suspect an old school Quaker would think such names were a symptom of pride, a sin that Quakers worked hard to avoid but is easy to find in the Puritan leaders.) Striving names seem to have been most common in womens' names such as Purity, Chastity[1], Faith, Hope, etc. These names are still used, but there were once male names.

An example from American history: the Massachusetts Puritan preacher Increase Mather (1639 - 1732). From Wikipedia,

"The stated reason for his first name was "...the never-to-be-forgotten increase, of every sort, wherewith God favoured the country about the time of his nativity."[6] The name "Increase" is a literal translation of the Hebrew "Yosëf" (Joseph)."

It could be worse. One member of the English Parliament that enabled the Cromwell military-religious dictatorship had an entire Biblical phrase for his name, but I can't remember it.

Increase didn't carry on the tradition of striving names. His son Cotton Mather was named after his father-in-law rather than any sort of aspiration.

[1] "Chastity" reminds me of Cher and Sonny Bono bringing their baby out on stage at the end of each of their TV shows, about 50 years ago. How did that work out? Not as badly as I kind of expected; she never became a hooker, but "Chas" is now a man...

Striving" names was once characteristic of Puritans, not Quakers. ~ markm at December 16, 2021 6:14 PM

Thanks for the info. I got my Quaker striving names information from Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse universe. However, as I mentioned, when I researched the practice on the Internet, I could not confirm it.

I read a biography of Cotton Mather a few years ago, but it had nothing about how Increase got his name. Increase married Maria Cotton. That's where Cotton got his first name, kicking off a whole 'nother American tradition of naming a child with the mother's maiden name.