A creative schoolyard bully can make a teasing nickname out of almost anything. Some names, though, are like giant bullseyes for taunts. It takes a strong kid to live with a name like "Benjamin Dover" or "Candace Barr."

Twenty is a perfect age to reconsider your childhood nickname. It's a time when you look to the future and think about who you want to become. Since you're in nickname-shedding mode, it's natural to think formal. Yet it's often easier to shorten a name than to lengthen -- to go from Katie to Kate rather than to Kaitlin. (Kate is an ageless classic, too, a la Kate Hepburn.) Picture yourself in different settings, a year from now and twenty years from now.

Many a fine baby name plan has run aground on rocky initials. I've heard from lots of anxious parents fretting over the wisdom of names like Emily Zinn and Andrew Stephen Summers. Your full-family question, though, is a first. Before we start digging for every possible baby name acronym, anagram and inversion (Lana?), it's time to set some limits on how much we let letterplay rule our naming decisions.

So you want to name your daughter a common English word, but you don't want people to think of that word when they see her name. At first glance, that may seem a little backwards. Most parents choose word names because of their meanings, not despite them. You'd hardly name your daughter Angel thinking, "I hope nobody thinks of angels!"

You're not alone in wanting your baby's name to do double duty. Lot of parents today want to honor two (or even three or four) relatives with a single name. That's inevitable in this era of smaller families. When you have just one or two grandkids to carry on the traditions of two whole families, those kids' names have to do a lot of heavy lifting.

The Name Lady's Recipe For a Modern Nickname: Take first syllable of name. Add -y to taste. Let stand until bored. Once upon a time, nicknames went deeper. We took bits and pieces of formal names, combined them, stretched them and tweaked them. They evolved over time, with Rich spinning off into Rick, which in turn became Dick. William gave us Will, then Bill; Margaret was Marge, then Meg, then Peg. Did you even realize that Polly was "short" for Mary, via Molly?

This nickname buffet was essential back in the days when formal names were in short supply. In 18th-century England, the top three boys' and girls' names accounted for half of the population. With every village crammed with Marys, some Mollys and Pollys helped sort neighbors out.

When you choose a name that goes against the fashion tide, you can expect mixed reactions. How should you react to nasty comments? You can take them to heart and reconsider your name choice. You can ignore them and hold fast to your own opinion. Or you can try to understand where they come from, to prepare an effective response. Let's try to understand your mom's reaction to Agnes.

With so many old-fashioned names making a comeback today, style can seem mysteriously choosy. Why has Emma risen from the ashes but Ida stayed idle? Why hasn't an old favorite like Hans come roaring back to the top the way other old-time names like Caleb and Lucas have?