<p>…my father, clark edward, was named after my grandmother’s favorite actor (clark gable) who played a character from the movie of her favorite book (gone with the wind). no idea where edward came from.
…my mother, susan leigh, was named after her great-grandmother, sue. as the only girl in her generation or my generation, they were glad they got another susan! leigh was one of my mom’s mom’s favorite names</p>
<p>…my name, kristin leigh, is purely from my mom. she really wanted a little girl and thought the name kristin was pretty and unique at the time (i’m learning that’s not quite so true, as i’m meeting tons of kristins lately!). i got her middle name, which is coincidentally my maternal grandmother’s name and my godmother’s middle name.
…my sister, jacquelyn sue, is a tribute to my mother’s love for french and my family’s <em>very slight</em> french background. sue came from the same great-grandmother (now great-great-grandmother) that my mom was named after.
…my brother, thomas arlen, was named for my dad’s favorite apostle, doubting thomas, as well as my paternal grandfather, arlen.
…my brother, william maxwell morrison VI, was the last boy to be born in my family and my dad insisted on following the family traditional name. it’s a mouthful, that’s for sure! he goes by will.</p>
<p>i plan to give my daughters Lydia for a middle name because i think it’s old-fashioned but pretty as well as my maternal grandmother’s middle name. and since it starts with L, and many other girl names in my family start with L, it makes sense.</p>
<p>just, you know, in case anyone was wondering :)</p>
<p>patsmom - we have the exact same thing going on. My husband’s family is originally from Toledo, Spain and emigrated to ‘the New World’ in the late 16th century… his surname is very Old World Spanish. Even though his family has been ‘landed’ in America for centuries, to this day, they have kept very Spanish sounding given names (Sabino, Uvaldo, Cristobal, Teofilo etc…) in the family. So it seems a little odd for my children to have these very Scottish/English first and middle names with their very Spanish last name. </p>
<p>My husband was very supportive of the idea that we use my Scottish/English family surnames as given names because, as I mentioned, my brothers have no sons. A bit of well-intended chauvinism; but I know it made my father happy to have namesakes.</p>
<p>That’s interesting, srw. I purposely gave my sons names that didn’t have nicknames, because I got tired of being Susan to some, Susie to others, and Sue (which I hated) to still others. I still have trouble remembering how to sign Christmas cards, since I have to remember which name the person knows me by.</p>
<p>Susan, I guess we’re opposites! I think you should just go by and use what ever version you like, people will adapt. My best friend is named Susan, which she uses as an adult. Her family calls her Susie, I usually call her Suze.</p>
<p>You could always name your kids the way George Foreman did; each of his five sons is named George (George Jr., George III, George IV, George V, and George VI). Each son has a nickname they go by to distinguish one from another.</p>
<p>At least when he gets older he shouldn’t have trouble forgetting their names!!</p>
<p>My husband’s middle name is the name of the town in Germany his ancestor came from in 1805. He is the umpety-umpth to carry the middle name. Our son didn’t get that name or the William that goes back about seven generations on my side. My father, brother, and nephew all have the same name, just a different number. Nephew’s son doesn’t have the name, though.</p>
<p>Our family has the patsmom/idmom thing going on too…H is East Indian Catholic, with a Hindu first name and Portugese surname (think Dinesh D’Souza, who was one of H’s classmates)…my family is very Irish. I wanted to name S Aidan Patrick Portugeselastname. I lost that argument. May have been for the best.</p>
<p>Our sons all have middle names that have been in the family. We have 5, so when we can to naming S4, we came to names that are mens names but today are used mostly for girls. So, we chose a name we really liked and since then have inherited the family Bible and found papers in there that show we named our 4th son exactly after an ancestor from the early 1800’s without even knowing it at the time.</p>
<p>WashMom’s father’s family is full of “John” and “Hart.” An ancestor, John Hart, was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. The same family branch is full of “Charles” and “Lester,” but no one now alive knows why.</p>
<p>As for WashMom and I, we named our oldest son after our wealthiest living relative. I mean, we don’t have any relatives who are actually wealthy, per se, but we did our best.</p>
<p>I have my mother’s maiden name as my middle name. My Dad came from a family in which all the oldest boys (six siblings) were named Charles after their grandfather. In true Lower East Side Fashion they were then designated by their mother’s names too, for example, my father was Charlie Mary’s.</p>
<p>As a poet, I was careful to name my kids euphonically with their hypenated last name, which meant short names. My D was named after both her grandmothers: Minnie and Mary (Mia).</p>
<p>In the spirit of fair play after wanting to name S Gabriel which met a mixed reception I named him for H’s grandfather (but it was also the name associated with the most crushes I’d had), David. Charles is his middle name. (My dad is deceased).</p>
<p>However, the kids foiled my euphony because each dropped H’s last name from their hyphenated name and just have my last name, which is also a first name as I reported on an earlier thread.</p>
<p>So, IMHO my daughter’s name is now too short, actually both are, only three beats. But they each love their names.</p>
<p>I share my middle name (a last name from revolutionary times, and earlier, in my family–several minor heroes have it that we are related to) with my mom, my brother, my grandfather, my uncle, my cousin, my daughter, and others I don’t know or have forgotten. I disliked it as a kid but like it now.</p>
<p>The deal was that since I agreed to adopt and pass on my H’s last name, I got dibs on family names for middle names. So I gave my D my much-shared middle name. My S got my father’s name as his middle name ( Dad was deceased at the time, so I especially wanted to honor him.) D’s first name I just liked; S’s matched hers (Irish names with same initial) and happened to be H’s middle name.</p>
<p>Now, all cousins in family have that same first initial (we started the trend but had no idea H’s sibs would follow it!)</p>