<p>First two have traditional first names with their middle names being my grandmother’s and also my mother’s middle names. All traditional , not trendy. My third daughter got her name on the way to the hospital …also because my husband and I couldn’t agree. His family is in Sweden and he wanted them to be able to pronounce her name. He had suggested some Swedish names that would have been difficult to both pronounce and spell. Since she was being raised here , I saw no need to make her life more difficult than it needed to be . It turned out to be a good call because she happens to be on the sensitive side. Our last name looks like it would be pronounced one way but there is an accent over the second syllable. No one pronounces it correctly , which is understandable.
I am not a big fan of a lot of the trendy names that are so common now. Especially the ones that seem to be named after celebrity’s children or cities , cars or beers ;)</p>
<p>I wish I knew the identity of all these mystery names!</p>
<p>If either of our daughters had been a son, his name would have been Roland.</p>
<p>Both of my girls are happy to have escaped the fate of carrying this name.</p>
<p>Arrived at the delivery room with 2 names for each gender, name to be decided when seeing the child.
D1’s first name has meaning in the original language of each of our ethnic backgrounds, her middle name (and siblings middle names) chosen because it sounds nice with first name.
Oh, first name starts with the consecutive letter of H and my first names.
S’s first name is the name H’s dad would have wanted H to be named, but they stuck with a family naming tradition for H. (He was one of 7 such named children in his class).
It also starts with the same letter as D1.
D2’s name options- one started with the next consecutive letter of siblings names; the other actually started with the same letter as her siblings. That is the one she looked like-so our kids have the same first inital.
Incidentally, their names are in alphabetical order!</p>
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<p>I cannot stand alternate spellings. People think they are being “unique” when it just makes them look uneducated. Plus, in the younger grades it doesn’t matter if the child’s name is Brittany or Brytni or Britnee–when the teacher calls it, they’ll all snap to attention.</p>
<p>Since D is the only kid in the family and there won’t be any more until she makes some, she got all family names. Her first name is my mother’s maiden name, her middle name is my maiden name and her last name is her fathers, of course.</p>
<p>we wanted a colonial name for our 13th generation son. For our D, it was just looking at a book of names until we found a name we both liked.</p>
<p>For Kid #1, my husband suggested both a boy’s name and a girl’s name, in a casual, unplanned conversation, and I liked them both. Then, a few weeks before the baby was due, he had a different idea for a boy’s name. I liked that name, too. That last-minute choice ended up being our son’s name.</p>
<p>For Kid #2, we knew that we would find out the sex of the child in advance because I was going to have an amniocentesis, so my husband insisted on delaying conversations about names until after the test (so that we would only have to pick one name, not two). Then, once we had the test results and knew she was a girl, we each made a list of girls’ names. There was only one name on both lists. That became our daughter’s name.</p>
<p>Our criteria were simple. The names had to be standard, conventional ones, with conventional spellings. They had to sound OK with our last name. We didn’t want names that clearly identified the child’s ethnic heritage (because ours is a mixed marriage). And my husband was strongly opposed to using names of anyone in either of our families, living or dead, even as middle names.</p>
<p>Neither of our kids has ever expressed any objection to their names. Our daughter, in fact, likes her name very much and is very glad that we didn’t choose something cute or trendy.</p>
<p>One more point: We didn’t tell ANYONE what names we had chosen until after the kids were born, and then the names were presented as an established fact. I highly recommend this tactic.</p>
<p>I have a friend who chose her kids names but putting a few which she liked into a hat and having her mother pull one out at random. </p>
<p>Agree with keeping your name selections under wraps. When I was expecting and people asked I gave ridiculous answers - like rumpelstiltskin to stop the conversation.</p>
<p>Oldest D:
First name - a family name that is my mother’s, is my middle name and the middle name of a niece - it is French and I am French Moroccan and my husband is French Canadian…
Middle name - named after her paternal grandmother’s first name, Louise</p>
<p>Middle S:
First Name - a French boy name that we like. It is not Pierre.
Middle name - my dad’s name and my H’s middle name, Joseph </p>
<p>Youngest D:
First Name - a French female name we both liked.
Middle Name - Grace - the American name of my Moroccan grandmother and after my MIL’s favorite song “Amazing Grace” - MIL was very ill when I first found out I was pregnant - I whispered to her that I was pregnant before we told anyone else because I wanted her to know before she died - as her family circled her bed as her last breaths were drawn, Amazing Grace came on the radio - I knew then that I needed to included “Grace” in the new baby’s name (if she was a girl - which she was!!!)</p>
<p>Our kid’s names are not fully common but not unusual. I like that they each have a story. :)</p>
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<p>My sister is the one with the “fun, exotic” name. I am thrilled that she got stuck with it instead of me.</p>
<p>My name and my 2 brothers’ names all start with the same letter, as does my brother’s daughter’s name. So son #1 name starts with same letter which narrowed choices down a bit. His middle name is wife’s last name. </p>
<p>Son #2 name started with same letter as my father, which also narrowed things down a bit. His middle name is same as my wife’s father’s middle name.</p>
<p>Slightly off topic…when I moved to the South, I was surpised to see how many girls had odd names. It’s a huge tradition to use the mom’s maiden name for the DAUGHTER’S first name. I know that in other regions that tradition is popular for naming boys…but here it’s popular for naming GIRLS.</p>
<p>I know girls named: Collins, Battle, Bonner, Harper (which isn’t so odd anymore), Brady, Jeffrey!! (yes!!), Jansen, Hunter (not so odd anymore), Tinsley, Carlton, and a few more if I thought about it.</p>
<p>I can’t go into detail or it would reveal at least one of my kids’ names, but I’ll just say that neither of my kids were named what I would have preferred. I still get mad at myself for not being more assertive in the matter.</p>
<p>My first child was going to be named after my brother, but once we met her something else fit perfectly and still does. It’s sometimes a diminutive of a longer name, but not always. When she was in grammar school, the class bully had the longer name and wanted to be called by my D’s actual name. It was a thing for a while until I put a stop to it.</p>
<p>My D2 is named after my favorite doll. It’s one of those long, elegant names with scores of nicknames. One year I gave her one Christmas present for every nickname I could come up with. There were 26. She spent all of her middle school years trying on different nicknames to determine which was best. Guess what she ended up? Yup. The whole, formal name. And heaven help anyone who is lazy in pronunciation.</p>
<p>My son has a strong, classic Biblical name that I love madly. The Biblical holder of that name is known for something that my son came to share just by coincidence. I love his name madly. However, my husband wanted a junior but I refused because every third person in our community has his name. My FIL was incensed because the name is often found in the Jewish community. My FIL was a serious anti-semite.</p>
<p>I have an uncommon Gaelic name that I’ve always had to repeat and spell for people but I’ve always loved it. When we were expecting our first, H said I could give the children Irish/Gaelic names but they had to be “normal” ones. First S has my mother’s maiden name for his middle name, S2 has my mil’s maiden name for his middle name, and my daughter has my maiden name for her middle name. So we passed history on to the children through their middle names and we used the “normal” Americanized spelling of their first names.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, some of those are pretty awful. Battle?! I guess i am of the camp that believes names should not generally be nouns or inanimate objects or sound like the last names of the “help” on Downton Abbey. My son goes to college in the south but I haven’t heard of any names like that. There are some surprising retro-“mom” names (Barbara, Susan) but that’s about it.</p>
<p>My husband, second of 2 kids, has an older brother. He was supposed to be a girl So we named our daughter what my husband would have been named if he was a girl! My mother-in-law finally got her girl. Luckily, hubby and I both really liked the name, and the initials also worked out well for naming our daughter after relatives.</p>
<p>I am no lover of overly trendy or overly unique names. I also don’t care for variant spellings. One thing we never considered when our kids were born was how much easier it is to find via an internet search someone with an oddly spelled given name. It reduces their privacy quite a lot. I know that my sister the teacher doesn’t. She’s had to deal with 5 or more students all having the same trendy name with unique varient spellings. It upsets the kids when she spells their name wrong. While I am sure that she makes the effort to not let that prejudice her, I can’t see the advantage of taking that risk with my kid’s name.</p>
<p>When my MIL was in the nursing home in a semi-rural town, the nameplates revealed some real doozies, the vast majority of which are unheard of today. I sometimes imagine walking those halls in future years and seeing plenty of ___ and ___ (fill in trendy names here).</p>
<p>I find it interesting that people are so reluctant to elaborate on what their children’s names are on an anonymous internet forum, while awkwardly leaving other posters to their imaginations ;)</p>
<p>We literally didn’t have a boy’s name picked out even as our daughter was born (no, didn’t know sex ahead of time). We agreed on a girl’s name as we strolled the hospital halls to move along my labor. Unfortunately my parents didn’t like the name because it’s the feminine version of a guy they really didn’t like (how would we know). They got over that quickly, though (I think/hope)</p>
<p>We had agreed that the middle name would be chosen after my mother or father, since the baby’s surname came from DH’s side!</p>