How do you name your babies?

[steph08]

Nov 29, 2012 22:01:19 GMT -5 midjd said:

What do you guys think of alliterative names? DH's first/last names start and end with the same letter, as do all his nephews' names (even the one in utero)... still not sure how I feel about it (although I like DH's name )

My first name was alliterative with my maiden name but it was the first two letters, not just one. St--- St----. I loved it. It wasn't planned that way, but I worked well for me.

Is it wrong that after being married for over three years, I still miss my maiden name? Most people would have been glad to get rid of it, but I liked it.

[wvugurl26]

I googled my year and mine isn't even top 40. Until I got to junior high no one else had the same name as me. And then it was only one girl. No others had the same name in high school. There is someone in our DC office but she goes by the full name and I use a shortened version. I think she's a couple years older than me.

My brother's name is on Steph's top ten. One of his best friends has the same name. And then his two other best friends have first names starting with the same initial. Three out of the four of them also have the same last initial.

[Deleted]

Nov 29, 2012 18:49:05 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

When/if I have kids. First and foremost I want something that's professional and can work in the workplace. So really cutsie names would be out. Something short would be preferable, since I have a long last name. I would also try and find a balance of not naming my kid something too common (like a name on the list above) but at the same time not something strange or weird, so they won't get made fun of for their name?

DS's given name is Jake William. If "Jake" is not professional enough for his workplace we figure he can go by "J. William" which some of the doctors we bill for use.

DD is screwed though...her name is Nevada & her middle name is my MIL's maiden name, so both are unusual. We have been using "Neve" as her nickname since she was born and that is professional enough, I think.

[Cookies Galore]

Lol crone! Nutmeg is cute. Some of my close friends call me Meggie.

Beer, I like Neve!

[Deleted]

Thanks! I am happy she is a girl, because that was going to be her name no matter what sex she turned out to be. DH knew a male Nevada in HS but it is a girl's name to me. ;D

[CarolinaKat]

Nov 29, 2012 22:14:10 GMT -5 Cookies Galore said:

All this talk made me think of my grandmom and her sisters. I just realized I have no idea what my Aunt Teeny's actual name is. I know she's little and that's why everyone calls her Teeny, but for the love of god I have no idea what her given name is. But now I'm thinking about how old ladies have awesome nicknames. I have a great Aunt Dot (Dorothy) and a friend's grandmom is Pinky (real name is Violet). I want that. Meggie-Eggie isn't as awesome.

The Teeny in mom's family is a Christine.

[taz157]

My name was #10 in the year I was born and there were several of us with the same name while we were going through school. One of my HS friends has the same name too! DH's name was #18 in the year he was born. I'm sure he had others with the same name while he was in school, but I'm not exactly sure. Right now, his boss's boss has the same first name as him. When DH talks about his, he uses his last name.

Needless when it came time to name DD, I didn't want to use a popular name. I the name Sophie and Josephine (because I the nickname Josie). I didn't want to use Sophie though as there are a ton of "S" names in DH's side of the family. For Josephine, it's too close to my maternal grandfather's name and we want to let my brother variations of his name if he wants to. We named DD after my maternal grandmother (her maternal great-grandmother). I just found out that my maternal grandmother's name was #21 in the year she was born. Go figure! Anyway, both DH and I DD's name, and I love the fact that her name isn't on the Top 100 list of the year she was born. ;D

FWIW, I like the nickname of Neve. I think it sounds professional. Also FWIW, I think Nevada sounds more feminine than masculine.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I came across Gwendolyn's name years ago in a really old dictionary of my mom's. It has a list in the back of thouands of names and their meanings. I tend to be drawn to old fashioned female names.

I was also trying to find something that could not be shortened to end with a y or i because I HATE the shortended version of my name. I figured Gwendolyn has a built in short version. Of course the little girls at daycare managed to shorten it to "Gwenie" and everyone adopted it. It's cute for a 2 year old.

I liked David for a boy but that's apparently the name of the guy who slept with DH's high school sweetheart so he said no way.

DH wants to name a boy Hunter. He thinks that is a good strong masculine name and the logic is all his family are literal hunters. I said well why not name the kid "Fisherman" then and he said "good idea".

[teen persuasion]

I wanted names that were recognizable, but not too common. I also wanted names that were alterable (nickname potential), so that the kids could shape their names if they wanted. I tend to old-fashioned but not frumpy names.

We were also working w/ DH's French/Canadian last name (always mangled by English speakers) and his family tradition that at least one male child (sometimes ALL) be named Joseph (and often go by their middle name).

We threw in a few middle names to honor grandparents.

We ended up w/ this list of names (firsts and middles):
Genevieve
Therese
Elizabeth
Naomi
Joseph
Ethan
Alexander (Xander)
Daniel
Thomas
Liam (variant of Gfather's William)

[imawino]

My name never shows up on any of those Top Names lists, but I don't think it's a weird name. Just not common. My mother had it all picked out since she was 15 or so, and it turned out to be a little funny with my dad's surname, but I like it. Every once in a while people will ask me if my parents were kidding. I sure hope not, I've been using it for 40 years now.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

My name was #3 in 1983. I'd believe it. One year I was in a class where three of us had the same first name AND our last names started with the same letter. It was a pain to have to write my full name on every single piece of homework I had to turn in.

[chiver78]

Nov 30, 2012 10:21:58 GMT -5 teen persuasion said:

his family tradition that at least one male child (sometimes ALL) be named Joseph (and often go by their middle name).

that's not just *his* family's tradition. my dad and all his siblings - all the boys had Joseph as a middle name, all the girls had Marie. my middle name is Marie too.

[Deleted]

There's another advantage of being one of the last ones to have kids -- my sisters got stuck with carrying on naming traditions and we could do whatever we wanted!

(not really -- our kids are the first grands for his parents so their middle names have family significance. MY BIL and SIL are the ones who could do whatever they wanted name-wise since we took care of his side of the family and her sister took care of her side).

[ontrack]

speaking of old-fashioned grandma names as a middle: I got stuck with Winifred as my middle name (Grandma on one side, Great-grandma on the other).

[andi9899]

Nov 29, 2012 18:55:20 GMT -5 kittensaver said:

Coming from a not-so-distant-immigrant family (I'm second generation), we do it the old-fashioned way: family names. Names of saints. Often the same thing.

I'm 3rd generation and my kids have old school mexican names. I like them and their friends don't have the same names. I think their pretty too.

[Chocolate Lover]

I've had good luck with not so common names in my immediate family if you only go by siblings and children.

Expand further than that and it gets odd. My parents both have a sister named Nancy, mom and her sister both married a Bill (yes, William but they both went by Bill, so they got referred to by last name), dad's side of the family has a half dozen (or more) Neils and 3 or 4 Johns. At least 3 of the Neils have the same last name.

[andi9899]

Nov 30, 2012 10:24:46 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

My name was #3 in 1983. I'd believe it. One year I was in a class where three of us had the same first name AND our last names started with the same letter. It was a pain to have to write my full name on every single piece of homework I had to turn in.

I could totally see this happening if I had named my kids more common names. Our last name is very common, so I didn't want there to be multiples. We live in an area that is primarily hispanic.

[garion2003]

I went all through elementary school with Jennifer A., Jennifer B., and Jennifer C.

Kids seem fairly easy to name - just use a family name or a popular name. Same logic the use to name battleships, I guess.

But how do you name your pets?!

[Deleted]

Both of my pets were named by someone else! My cat was a stray and I was dog sitting when we found him so my friend took him until the dog left. She named him Harley because his purr reminded her of a Harley engine.
The dog was adopted from the Humane Society and that is what they called her. It suits her so I kept it.

[thyme4change]

1. Aiden Emma
2. Jackson Olivia
3. Ethan Isabella
4. Liam Sophia
5. Mason Mia
6. Noah Ava
7.Lucas Lily
8.Jacob Zoe
9.Jayden Chloe
10.Jack Madison

I know at least one of every one of those names - except the Jayden I know is a girl. I know a million Jacks and Jacksons, multiple Madisons, several Chloes, a dozen Jacobs, a handful of Lilys, a couple of Lucas, two Noahs, more Mias than I can count, I've got Sophia's out the ying yang, so many Emmas we use last names (not even letters!), tons of Isabellas - but they all have different nicknames, so they work.

But only one Liam.

[teen persuasion]

Nov 30, 2012 10:29:04 GMT -5 chiver78 said:

Nov 30, 2012 10:21:58 GMT -5 teen persuasion said:

his family tradition that at least one male child (sometimes ALL) be named Joseph (and often go by their middle name).

that's not just *his* family's tradition. my dad and all his siblings - all the boys had Joseph as a middle name, all the girls had Marie. my middle name is Marie too.

Yeah, I got Marie for middle name, too. Everybody did, it seems. When I married, I took my maiden name for middle name. It's unusual, but I liked my first and last initials together; now they're followed up by DH's last name.

[Deleted]

Another Marie here!

When I married, I took my maiden name for middle name. It's unusual, but I liked my first and last initials together; now they're followed up by DH's last name.

I like your idea teen! I was happy to be rid of the bastardized German last name that I grew up with. Seriously, when my family got here the guy at immigration spelled it incorrectly.

[Phoenix84]

"I'd go for something in the top 100 but not the top 10, not too long, not too hard to spell/pronounce (our last name is an atypical spelling)."

*nods* that was my thinking. Something within the top 100 but not top 10. I think having name that's not extremely common, but at the same time not weird is important. Since my last name is three sylobols, a short first name is better.

[sheilaincali]

My parents had my brother first- Michael- and everyone started calling him "Mikey" and it pissed my mom off so much that the rest of us have names that are not easily shortened. Mine is the worst. I was the only Sheila in all of my school years. I knew one lady named Sheila but she was much older than me. When I was in the USAF one of the Lt's had a wife named Sheila. That was the first time I ever met someone my age named Sheila. Plus no one every freaking spells it correctly.

DS is named after his grandfather "Stephen". We call him Stephen because my dad goes by Steve and we wanted to avoid confusion. The little nieces and nephews call him "Stevie". He gets frustrated because people often pronounce his name as "Stefan" and he gets annoyed having to correct people.

DH is a Nathaniel with an odd middle name. He used to be militant about the Nathaniel part but he has given up on that for the most part. When he introduces himself as Nathaniel people ask what they can call him since apparently his name is too long to say. IDK. So now he just introduces himself as Nate.

ETA- DS has rarely had another kid in his class/grade named Stephen. There was a Stevie in elementary school but they moved away so now he's the only one.

[teen persuasion]

Actually, Beer, I was just following what my mom did. She took her nice Irish maiden name for her middle.

Dad's last name always gets mangled just because it starts w/ Z, so whenever they used to order pizza over the phone, he'd use her maiden last name!

[steph08]

Nov 30, 2012 13:00:38 GMT -5 sheilaincali said:

DS is named after his grandfather "Stephen". We call him Stephen because my dad goes by Steve and we wanted to avoid confusion. The little nieces and nephews call him "Stevie". He gets frustrated because people often pronounce his name as "Stefan" and he gets annoyed having to correct people.

I am a Stephanie named after a Stephen. I had no idea that people didn't know that Stephen was "Steven" until I was at my in-law's house last month and they kept saying "Stefan." It drove me bananas.

[Phoenix84]

"I really wanted Josephine for a girl's name, but NO... MIL had the cat from hell named Josephine and my DH said no way in hell. The cat tormented the DH and his siblings for 20 years and this was after they became adults! We also can't use any variation of Anna because that is our dog's name."

Yes, there are some names off the table from the get go because they bring up too many bad memories of people I didn't get along with. The list is short, but crucial.

[chiver78]

Nov 30, 2012 12:40:17 GMT -5 @beerwench said:

Another Marie here!

When I married, I took my maiden name for middle name. It's unusual, but I liked my first and last initials together; now they're followed up by DH's last name.

I like your idea teen! I was happy to be rid of the bastardized German last name that I grew up with. Seriously, when my family got here the guy at immigration spelled it incorrectly.

I really don't know how Nana's family made it through wherever they landed with their name intact. her maiden name is an 11-letter, vowel-filled Italian family name that I now use as my wifi password. family will always be able to spell it, and nobody else has a shot.

[thyme4change]

Mine is the worst. I was the only Sheila in all of my school years. I knew one lady named Sheila but she was much older than me.

I have a very good friend named Sheila, so the name makes me very happy. But when Will & Grace were talking about getting pregnant, they were in the dr's office and discussing names. Will suggested Sheila, and Grace answered "That's a sluts name." And the nurse turned around and said "Hey - my name is Sheila. But I am a slut, so it is okay." LOL!

And even better - my friend Sheila is, by far, the least slutty of all my friends.

[Phoenix84]

I've got an old fashioned middle name, after my great grandfather.

Earl.