Deciding on the right name for a child can be difficult. Some parents decide on a family name. or name a baby after a sporting hero or even a pop star.
When I was pregnant with my first child we chose names for both sexes: a boy would be Leigh Stephen:
Leigh ( my husband chose this way of spelling because he thought it was more unusual)
Stephen (husband’s name)
If we had a girl, she was going to be called Melanie Kim:
Melanie ( because we liked it)
Kim ( after my sister)
Although Kim told me that she hoped I would have a son as she had trouble saying the name Melanie!
I did have a baby boy, the only problem was because of the way we chose to spell his name several people presumed he was a girl when only seeing the name written down.
I decided on a name for my second baby before I was even pregnant. I came up with Daniel James because I liked it. I made the mistake of telling my sister-in-law about my choice: when she had her second son she used my name for him! Because we all had the same surname I obviously had to find another name for my second born: Damon Mark.
Damon (after a character in a soap opera)
Mark ( after my cousin).
If he had been a girl again it would have been Melanie Kim.
Funnily enough when I married my second husband, he had a son called James Mark ( after his uncle Mark).
My third son is Adam Luke
Adam ( my mum’s maiden name was Adams)
Luke ( because we felt it went well with Adam.
If he had been a girl was had picked Abbi Rebecca.
I mentioned this to him when he was around 3 years old and he told me in no uncertain terms ” Mum I didn’t want to have a girl’s name!”
When I was a child minder a friend asked if I had a space for her nephew, I did so when she brought him along, I knew his first name was Harvey, but didn’t know the surname. When I asked what it was and she said. “Smith” I laughed and said that I needed his real surname for the official paperwork ( as my friend kept horses I thought that she was having a joke with me, imagine my embarrassment when she told me, ” Karen, he is called Harvey Smith!”
When I met my son’s girlfriend for the first time who has 2 daughters,we somehow got onto the subject of names and I told her that my grandmother had wanted me to be named Violet and thank goodness my parents had chosen Karen. I must have a knack of putting my foot in it as she told me “Violet, is my youngest daughter’s name, we call her Lette” I wanted to crawl in a hole in the ground, luckily she didn’t take offence and we laughed about it later.
My granddaughter called her hamster George after Peppa Pig’s little brother. When William and Kate named their son George the hamster became “Prince George”, then she proudly told her brother, ” they didn’t name the prince Daniel after your hamster, they named him George after mine”
When my son was at school there seemed to be a theme of strange names, one child had the same christian name as his surname ( such as Dennis Dennis this was because he was adopted and his new family thought it unwise to change his name. Another child was called Gwion ( a Welsh name) there were also girls named Silkie and Sapphire.
I have heard of people struggling to find names as every time they came up with one that they like, they would remember a child from school with the same name that they didn’t like.
Please share your children’s names and the reasons that you chose them.
As always questions/comments are welcome.
Until next time
Karen
x.
Some people seem to choose awful names for thier children, especially celebrities , it’s so important to think of your child growing up with a stupid name. My three girls were Karen ,Kim and Tracey and I think they were happy with my choice. My parents had seven children ,two unfortunately died at a young age but we all had three names. That must have been difficult to decide. We all had one name belonging to a relative . A very interesting subject Karen
My daughter’s first name is a blending of mine and my mother’s. Her middle name comes from my maternal grandmother. There is so much power in a name. I love that I feel like I’ve fill her name with generational support.
Wow! I didn’t even think of names until after I was pregnant. Though my names were chosen as tributes to ancestors, I just picked names I liked that I thought fit with the last name. That was almost forty years ago. I think I am pretty much still satisfied.
I new the name I wanted for a girl straight away, Anne Michelle (Anne after Anne of Green Gables and Michelle is my name of course) My ex-husband and I had a really hard time agreeing on boy names. Oddly enough, we had two boys. I never got a girl. But my oldest we decided was going to have his father’s first name as his middle name – to go with what I did with Anne Michelle – but it took until I was 7 1/2 months pregnant to finally come up with Adam – named after a childhood friend of my ex. My second son we decided to give a family name on his side Donato – It’s an Italian name passed down through several generations. Again, it took us until the third trimester to come up with his first name, Conner, to which we named him after a TV character. But we spell it differently and people, even his family members spell his name wrong all the time. He gets pretty annoyed with it lol. #AnythingGoes
Our boys are Benjamin, Matthew and Lucas – very biblical but we’re not religious people to be fair. Their middle names are Robert, Ryan and Riley. Robert after both of our grandparents (my grandfather passed away days before we fell pregnant) and we liked the idea of them all having the same middle initial.
We found it so hard thinking of boys names but we found it super easy with girls names which we’ll never have!
Thank you for sharing this with us at #TriumphantTales. I hope to see you back next week.
It seems that people either put too much thought into this process or not enough. Its important to remember that these names will stick with them for the rest of their lives #anythinggoes
We argued over names. I like more out there names with ‘potential and promise’ and my husband more traditional. Finding middle ground is difficult. #TriumphantTales
And #StayClassyMama
My first was to be called Benjamin, but my mum called him Benji and I switched it to James Marc, 2nd son had no name for two weeks, he just didn’t look like any name would suit him, Ken Barlow on corrie had just had another child and called him Daniel, so that’s what I called my sone, with Thomas as a middle name, just because. My 3rd child was going to be Alexander or Alexandra, I had another boy #triumphanttales
I loved naming our kids and now that they are older, it’s fun to see them grow into themselves.
It’s so much responsibility choosing a name as it’s going to be with someone all of their lives. I read somewhere once that the key is finding something unique that you like and then asking yourself if it sounds plausible with “doctor” in front of it. I kind of like that way of thinking
Debbie #ablogginggoodtime
My daughter is called Shalini which is an Indian name meaning modesty. I just love how it rolls of the tongue and is a very feminine name. My son Shivam is named after the Hindu god Lord Shiva. It’s a name that denotes strength and masculinity x #stayclassymama
When I was first dating my now Husband a co-worker of his had a daughter and he mentioned to me he liked the name, we ended up using it 4 years later for our daughter, her middle name is Michelle which was after my sister. My second daughter I just loved the name, my husband didn’t at first, so we decided on Abby only I wanted Abigail and he just liked Abby, and we couldn’t even agree on the spelling of that. Then one day he saw the name I still really wanted in the birth announcement section and changed his mind we finally agreed! Her middle name is Lindsey Joy, Lindsey is my maiden name and Joy is my mums middle name. Both times we would have called our boy Noah James, but when we had our son I felt he spoke his name to me the moment he was born and so his name was a complete surprise. We still used James as that is a long standing name in my husbands family but we also added Douglas for my mothers father. Thanks so much for sharing this post with us for #ABloggingGoodTime
My eldest is named Matthew because that is what I would have been if I’d been a boy. The surname Matthews is on both sides of my family. His middle name is David which is my dad’s name. Anya is named for my great grandmother and godmother (Annie/Ann) and her middle name is Elizabeth; named for the Queen in her diamond year. Zach was more complicated: I liked Jack but Chris didn’t, middle name is Franklyn as this was Chris’ onlone name and the one he used when I met him on match.com Thanks for linking up with #globalblogging
We had our first son’s name picked out before we even knew he was a he (although I ‘knew’ I was carrying a boy). His name is Stanley Benjamin, we both loved the name Stanley straight away and couldn’t get past it and Benjamin is my hubby’s name. There is a bit of a tradition within my hubby’s family where the son takes his Dad’s name as a middle name so we wanted to continue that. My second son is James Richard, again this was an easy naming but at a difficult time. My Dad Richard James was in hospital battling terminal leukaemia and we weren’t sure if he’d ever get to meet his name sake. He did thankfully and had his last cuddle when James was around 10 weeks old. Our third son was a whole different story, we really struggled. Having three of the same gender is so hard as we’d already used a lot of the names we had liked. We also didn’t want the same initials so that ruled out names beginning with S or J. We also wanted something that would sit well with Stanley and James. He is Eli Robert, Eli was a name I loved but my hubby wasn’t overly enamoured with but he couldn’t come up with one he loved. So we compromised, I chose Eli and we had Robert as a middle name, named after my hubby’s Dad which worked out well as collectively my boys have their Daddy’s and both their Grandad’s first names as their middle names. Sorry for the essay! #TwinklyTuesday
No apologies necessary, thanks for sharing your story x
I always love reading how people chose their children’s names. Both my husband and I have popular names and wanted something a little different for them. We found it really difficult, I had a long list of names I loved and struggled to whittle it down. Thanks for sharing and linking up #twinklytuesday
I think children’s names have to have meaning so they have a sense of belonging. Thanks for linking up with #stayclassymama