BABY NAMES SHOW FLAIR ON PARENTS' PART.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

In this corner of the hospital nursery we have Bill and Anne, Patrick and Christine, Kevin and Cathleen, Steve and Jennifer, Bob and Julie, Scott and Kim, Michael and Jill, David and Jean, Kenneth and Victoria.

In that corner are Courtney and Cameron, Taylor and Carson, Miranda and Camden, Kaitlin and Logan, Summer and Zane, Allisandra and Colton, Mollie and Austin, Shelbi and Griffith, Brianna and Chase, Brittany and Bailey.

Guess which group are the proud parents, and which are their newborn offspring.

In this scenario, you don't need a program to tell the players. Just assume the group that drools and wears diapers carries the oh-so-trendy, often gender-neutral monikers that will forever brand its members as children of the '90s.

Even the nation's first kid, Chelsea Clinton, has a decidedly modern appellation.

Names that started out as unconventional have become so commonplace that they now define an American generation - just as our grandparents and great-grandparents were named Ethel, Alfred, Mildred, Herbert, Agnes, Harold, Gertrude, Herman, Gladys and Fred.

A review of Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital's 1996 ``cradle roll'' listings reveals that Santa Clarita Valley parents strive for creativity and uniqueness when naming their children. The irony, however, is that the twenty- and thirty-somethings have traded the common names of their generation for another set that have become the norm for these turn-of-the-millennium kids.

Ronda McPhail, a registered nurse and certified Lamaze instructor with a somewhat unusual name of her own, has been privy to many a conversation about what to name the baby during her years in the delivery room and in prenatal classes.

McPhail teaches six-week childbirth and parenting classes for expectant couples at Henry Mayo, Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank and Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills.

The name game begins there and often continues even after the baby arrives, McPhail said.

Increasingly, parents wait until after delivery to settle on a name their child will carry for life. ``Sometimes, they'll have some names in mind, but they decide once the baby is born to see what it looks like,'' she said.

``The baby has been born and they'll say, she doesn't look like a Sara,'' McPhail said. ``Women fantasize a lot of times about what a baby will look like. The baby's born and it's not anything like (the mother) had imagined, so they have a hard time linking a name with the face.''

McPhail said movies, television, music and popular culture have been influencing choices for baby names. Parents will name their children after celebrities or characters on soap operas, she said.

``About 12 or 13 years ago, there were a lot of Ericas,'' McPhail said, referring to the Susan Lucci character on the popular soap ``All My Children.''

Creative spellings have been another trend. ``It seemed like in the 1980s, people tried their hardest to spell the names in an odd way,'' she said.

In recent years, Victorian-era names seemed to make a comeback for girls, McPhail said.

In general, parents tend to give their sons names that are more traditional and timeless - while bestowing on their daughters decidedly more cutesy names that might not age well, McPhail said. ``Usually the girls have the trendy names,'' she said.

``You know what's really common is for parents to choose a family middle name, like the mother's maiden name,'' McPhail said. That has long been the practice in Latino cultures; in this age of career women who keep their maiden names after they marry, the practice has carried over into how a wide spectrum of working mothers with strong professsional identities name their children, she said.

McPhail recalled in particular a name given to a baby girl she helped deliver at Henry Mayo about seven years ago.

``A woman wanted to name her kid Satin, but she spelled it S-A-T-A-N,'' McPhail said.

The mother's native tongue was English, so it wasn't a case of her not realizing what that word meant, McPhail said. She tried to explain to the woman that the shiny fabric was spelled with an I and the devil was spelled with an A - and her child likely would be the target of lifelong ridicule if the latter spelling was used.

``She said, `No, I like that spelling,' '' McPhail recalled. ``That's what went on the birth certificate. That made me feel uncomfortable because you want to protect this little baby.''

As trends come and go, a conventional name has endured, the nurse said.

``You know what name has stood through the years? The name that has always stood the test of time is Michael,'' McPhail said. ``That name has been used for centuries,'' she said. ``Michael is (still) very popular. I can't think of a girl's name like that.''