<p>Now my own name … I am named after a well known doctor, who attended a certain university (undergrad and med school!) with the same name, and the doctor is related to the founder, whose name the university bears, although apparently the doctor was not a <em>direct</em> decendant, perhaps a cousin. </p>
<p>The kicker is that our <em>house</em> model is named after that university (the CEO of the building company is an alum) and while I would have loved to have gone to that university myself, MY KIDS GO THERE!</p>
<p>And I’m quite sure that y’all can figure out which university I’m talking about without too much trouble!</p>
<p>I had my kids’ names picked out before I even had a boyfriend. We ended up using 3 of the 4. Even then I wanted 4 kids.
S1: named for my maternal grandfather. My mother wanted to use it, but her sister used it first (knowing my mother wanted it). His middle name is my last name.
S2: just liked it. His middle name is also my last name.
D1: She would be the 4th generation of 1st D with same middle name, so used something that sounded good with middle (this was the only change from original). Also middle name is on H’s family tree. Pleased everyone.
D2: named for a person I met in college whose name I loved, unusual then, more popular now. If either S had been a girl, she would have had this name. Middle name: used my MIL’s middle name, but then found out she hated it. Oh well.</p>
<p>H’s last name is hard to pronounce and spell, kids have very traditional first names. However, many parents now spell them with variations, so dentkids have to spell their first names now, too.</p>
<p>Both kids have family middle names. We just liked the sound of the first names, but both happen to be of ancestor nationalities. We did not know gender of first child, who turned out to be a D. We gave S the name we would have given her had she been a boy, so I guess we still liked it 4 years later. Both names are easy to spell and pronounce. They are not extremely common, but there have always been a handful of each at every school. Both kids have chosen their own nicknames. I love the nickname my son chose (there are two obvious nicknames) while I really don’t like the one my D selected. S used to go by full first name until a boy he did not appreciate moved into his classroom with the same name. He came home one day and declared he was now “nickname” and that was it. It took about a month for us to adjust, but that was his choice. Interesting note: all of my dad’s grandsons have his name as either a first or middle name. He was a great guy and it gave him such joy to know he was honored in that way.</p>
<p>I know my parents chose both my sister’s name and my own from a baby names book. My sister’s name was half chosen because my mom liked it and mt grandmother hated it, and mine was chosen primarily by my dad because my mom had such a huge roll in picking my sister’s name. We also kept our middle names as family names, so there is a splash of tradition. I plan on keeping up the unique first names and traditional middle names when I have my own kids. </p>
<p>For the record, my sister’s name is Charis (pronounced Karis) and middle name is Michele (mom’s first name). My name is Charlotte (very traditional in England where we are from, but not so after we moved to the South) and middle name is Louise (mom’s middle name and first name of maternal great-great-great grandmother - Louisa). </p>
<p>As for my potential future children, I do have names I already like (which I know is ridiculous). I would like 4 and like to keep the naming ways my parents employed. For girls, I like Vivian Louise (again, my middle name) and Ava/Alicia Marion (my maternal grandmother’s middle name - she passed when I was 12). For boys, I like Elijah Michael (maternal grandfather’s first name) and Noah Andrew (father’s first name). Of course, all of this will have to pass with future father of children and how I feel at the time after meeting the little one. </p>
<p>I also agree that I like unique names within reason, and I hate trendy spellings, or misspellings, of names. It’s just obnoxious and makes the parents look uneducated. Our last name is bad enough, and my poor sister never had anybody pronounce her name correctly. </p>
<p>We were having a very hard time deciding on our first child’s name. It was right down to the wire and we just could not come to agreement. I stood up and out loud asked my Grandmother in heaven what we should name this child. Into my head popped a name and I looked in the “name your baby” book to find the meaning of the word. I said to DH “how about xxxxxxxxxx and it means xxxxxxxxxx.” He said yes that sounds good. I agreed. We thanked my Grandma and that is what we named the baby.</p>
<p>My kids’ names* are quite traditional, but not common enough for the rack of key chains in the vacation souvenir shop. </p>
<p>Son
First name = (formal version) my great grandmother’s maiden name
Middle name = my father’s name</p>
<p>Daughter
First name = (formal version) a queenly (;)) name that all the other women in the family have as a middle name
Middle name = paternal grandmother’s name</p>
<ul>
<li>Observant CCers will be able to figure out my kids’ names if they think really really hard.</li>
</ul>
<ol>
<li><p>My wife and I both have uncommon names, and we did want our kids to be able to find a key chain in the souvenir shop.</p></li>
<li><p>My wife’s family is Ashkenazic. Ashkenazic Jews often name children after deceased relatives.</p></li>
<li><p>My family is WASPy. We wanted names that sounded good with my WASPy family name (that is, we didn’t want to name our daughter something like Shulamit Huntington-Smyth), but we also didn’t want the name to sound so good with my WASPy family name that people at the Hebrew School would say to them, “Oh, honey, I think you’re probably looking for St. Andrew’s Episcopal, two blocks over.” Most, but not all, names that sounded passably Jewish but went with my WASPy name were biblical.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>My older daughter is named after my wife’s maternal grandparents (both her English name and her Hebrew name). Her first name is the grandmother’s name (which is biblical), and her middle name is a common feminized form of the grandfather’s name.</p>
<p>My younger daughter’s first name is another Biblical name. As it happened, my father died unexpectedly on the day she was born, so her middle name is my father’s very WASPy given name. Her Hebrew name is the Hebrew version of her biblical first name, followed by Nechamah (which comes from the Hebrew word for “solace” and is a name often given to baby girls who are born into a family in mourning).</p>
<p>* but we also didn’t want the name to sound so good with my WASPy family name that people at the Hebrew School would say to them, "Oh, honey, I think you’re probably looking for St. Andrew’s Episcopal*</p>
<p>lol</p>
<p>S2 has the OPPOSITE scenario. </p>
<p>Our last name is Jewish (FIL was Jewish) and S2’s first name is common amongst Jewish boys. So, I’m sure during his K-12 years at a Catholic school, there were some who wondered if he wandered into the wrong school. lol</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>lol…yes, Battle (thank God she was blessed with very good looks to carry off a name like that!)</p>
<p>I also know southern girls named Painter, Rainey, Peyton (also more common now), Presley (also more common now), and Finley.</p>
<p>If any of you are Shirley Temple fans, in the movie “The Little Colonel,” which was set in the South, Shirley’s name was Lloyd…named after her mother’s maiden name. The mom was the daughter of Colonel Lloyd.</p>
<p>Count my vote also against ‘alternative spelling’ names. They’re typically too clever by half, or frankly not clever at all. And I’m sorry but most made-up names just sound dumb, like so easy that the parents didn’t put much effort into thinking them up at all. Reminds me of a very funny skit on the old ‘In Living Color’ comedy show.</p>
<p>Of course, I’d never support the Icelandic policy of outright forbidding particular baby names. The latest example of names that make me cringe is that of the star running back for the Houston Texas, ‘Arian Foster.’ Ugh! What, did his mother read Mein Kampf during her pregnancy? LOL.</p>
<p>Lol. We always check those key chains racks. Never have we seen our son’s name on any of them. Key chains with our daughter’s name are usually sold out.</p>
<p>I hate weird spellings and made-up names, too. I once had a student who was a teen mom. I asked her what her son’s name was. She said, “Christopher” and then spelled it for me. K-R-I-S-T-I-F-F-O-R because she “wanted it to be different.” My thought was she wanted to make sure he suffered a lifetime of screwed up spellings and mail. Also had a student with the same name as a banana brand. She used a nickname.</p>
<p>My own kids? Well, we never did come up with boys’ names. Good thing we had girls. Oldest’s first name is a feminized version of my brother’s. Youngest’s is the same name as a famous actress/philanthropist. Middle names are ethnic. No way to use those as first names as they just beg to be messed up in spelling and pronunciation.</p>
<p>Also don’t care for alternative spellings. And how people get offended that you don’t pronounce the name correctly when they haven’t followed a single grammar rule.</p>
<p>My son’s first name was my great grandfather’s. Lots of kids in previous generations have been named for him but only by using the initial. The name became popular again around the time my son was born, so. </p>
<p>His middle name is for my grandmother who was still alive when all her grandchildren and other great grand children were born and because in Jewish culture we don’t name children after someone living, she had no one named for her until my son came along.</p>
<p>For those of you who hate weird spellings - sometimes they are correct culturally. My mother was born in Ireland and my name is spelled correctly! I like my name very much but have endured ignorant comments about not being able to spell, etc. I don’t mind spelling it for people, only when they are rude about it. It is not hard to pronounce - it rhymes with several common words that are spelled in the same manner.</p>
<p>For my kids we went with old, classic family names. My S’s first and last names are very Scandinavian together, so he has a very Irish middle name (that people in the US often spell wrong when they use it for their kids). No people, it’s correct spelling is Seamus, not Shamus!</p>
<p>the Irish name that really confuses people is Siobhan…people don’t know how to pronounce it or spell it unless they used to watch Ryan’s Hope. lol </p>
<p>I, too, hate weird spellings or made-up names. The parents probably think they’re being clever, but they’re just saddling their kids with lifelong annoyances.</p>
<p>DH and I started off with a number of restrictions:
Our last name starts with “S” so no first names could start or end with the “S” sound (as mine does and is horrible to say when introducing myself).
Whatever name we were going to call our child would be the name on the birth certificate. For DD1, many think her “real” name is a more formal name and have a hard time believing that her shortened name is the real one.
No sharing of the name with anyone until the baby was born, not even our families.</p>
<p>DH ended up picking our DD1’s name as we read through a baby name book. She and I share the same middle name. For DD2, I had a favorite female character from a soap opera and DH was not opposed to that for a first name. Fortunately we had daughters because we almost always had trouble coming up with agreeable boy names!</p>
</p>