<p>On the royalty names, my siblings and I are Edward, Mary, Elizabeth and not Victoria. </p>
<p>My D’s named is a name H liked. My first choice girl’s name was voted down for being too Catholic sounding. If she had been a boy her name would have been Zane Phineas. </p>
<p>My creative spelling story. I worked at a school and called out the child’s name according to how it was spelled. The mother was upset I was so “ignorant.” The spelling was Gordin, the pronunciation for the little girl, Jordan. What were they thinking?</p>
<p>When D, started pre school, there were 5 Michaela’s in the class, each spelled differently. And all those poor Tylers, their parents probably thought they had a unique name only to find their kid would be Tyler B. or Tyler M. all through school.</p>
<p>My favorite are the clash of ethnic names, such as Sean Patrick Martinez or Hiroto Schmidt. You usually know the mom’s nationality as well as the dad’s by the kid’s name</p>
<p>I am one of 10. 7 are named for relatives, and the last 2 for the doctor who delivered all 10. I am named for a religious day because my parents had determined that the first girl born on that day would get that name. </p>
<p>In some Catholic cultures it is/was common for all girls in the family to have Mary/Mar</p>
<p>My oldest sister named my younger sister (there is a 20 year gap between them and she is the youngest girl). She grew up hating the name. All of out family and friends call her an nickname of her middle name. She only uses her first name professionally. </p>
<p>When my eldest niece was born my younger sister used to accuse her of saving the “good name” for her own kid. As I stated in my previous post, my brother named his first daughter (first and middle name) after my youngest sister and his second daughter after my niece with the “good name.”</p>
<p>gloworm, My Catholic boss’s name has Marie for a middle and third name …Donna Marie Marie Last Name. Her three daughters all have Marie for their middle name.</p>
I’m guilty of this, I’m afraid. My background is Irish and I married a Spaniard. S1’s first and middle names are the first names of the two grandfathers. If I had it to do over again, I think I’d do it differently because it does sound a little strange to the ear. </p>
<p>S2 got an Irish-sounding first name and my maiden name (also Irish) as a middle name. They go together better, but the Spanish surname at the end still sounds a little incongruous.</p>
<p>My whole life I have been called by my first and middle names together. This was never a problem growing up but as I got older it became more complicated. I am constantly explaining it for some reason. Maybe it’s a generational thing, I’m not sure. But just going by my first name does not feel right so I keep gently correcting. I am asked from time to time if I am from the South, so maybe I will just move there. :)</p>
<p>Hubby’s grandfather has an old-fashioned and somewhat ugly first name that he wanted passed on to the next generation. So poor DS has it as a first name. In order to find a name that complimented it, we searched other family names. So DS has the first name that is never used, his second name (which is how he is identified) another family name that is a dead branch of my family tree and his last name. We almost hyphenated, but it already takes up so much space. He hated his name when younger but realizes that the name allows for built-in telephone screening. If someone asks for the first name, he knows it is either a telemarketer, bill collector or official, so he can take messages.</p>
<p>I must get my adversion to nick names from my mom…All three of her boys had 1 syllable names ending in a double consonant…hard to get nick names from that. lol</p>
<p>I guessed it must have rubbed off on me. I just don’t get the Robert>Rob>Robby>Robbie, Bob>Bobby or Richard>Rich>Richy>Rick>Ricky thing…Your name is your name, shouldn’t have a zillion variations, IMHO.</p>
<p>We tried to name our kids names that would be easy to spell, understand, and did not have an obvious nickname (i.e. calling the kid Bob automatically just because his name is Robert). Still many people mispronounce my D’s name, mistaking it for another similar but completely different name. Pretend her name is Joan and people ask, do you pronounce it “Joan” or “Joanne”? Or they just call her Joanne. WTH?</p>
<p>My SIL chose names that did not pass the Secretary of State rule and I just bite my tongue. SHe liked names for girls that ended in “ie” because they sound so cute but instead of naming the D “Samantha” and calling her “Sammie” she just named her “Sammie.” (again, not the real name)</p>
<p>I met a woman who had identical twins and the boys were named John Michael Smith and Michael John Smith. Can’t you be a little more creative?</p>
<p>And another one with identical twin boys - one was a “Junior” and the other wasn’t. That struck me as very odd.</p>
<p>Another pet peeve of mine, when we were thinking of girls names, and I was concerned about how some of them flowed with our last name, one of H’s relatives said, “well, that doesn’t really matter because she’ll change it in her 20s when she gets married” </p>
<p>Really? That is such an offensive comment on so many levels!!</p>
My late brother’s name was Robin. He was named after a male friend of the family, but the name is now more commonly associated with girls. He used Rob as an adult to help avoid confusion. Using his middle name wasn’t an option, since it is even more associated with being a girl’s name.</p>
<p>I was always known by my first and middle names until I got a new job and the person hiring me lopped off the middle name. Glad he did because the original combo became part of a very famous riff from a horror movie.</p>
<p>My girls always curse me for giving them my husbands horrible last name and not my own respectable one. They are always judging dates by their last names. Neither of my girls will keep her own name.</p>
<p>gloworm, My Catholic boss’s name has Marie for a middle and third name …Donna Marie Marie Last Name. Her three daughters all have Marie for their middle name.
*</p>
<p>Wow…one Marie wasn’t enough. lol. </p>
<p>My middle name is Marie…like many Catholic girls. My sisters should have had Marie as their middle names, but Fr. Lawrence, the priest at the local Catholic hospital was known to say a Mass every day for all of his namesakes, so once my mom knew that, the rest of her kids had some form of Lawrence in their names. We used to laugh when we’d meet other Orange County Catholic kids whose middle names were Lawrence, Laura, Loreen, etc…because we knew why they were given that name.</p>
<p>My aunt first selected John Fitzgerald for her son’s name (after JFK’s election), but quickly added Lawrence in there as well. lol</p>
<p>My girls always curse me for giving them my husbands horrible last name and not my own respectable one. They are always judging dates by their last names. Neither of my girls will keep her own name.</p>
<p>I never liked my maiden name…Italian, difficult to pronounce and spell. I like my married last name.</p>
<p>My husband got to pick names for the girls - I was going to pick names for boys. Our youngest is named for a song performed by a local rock group out of Philadelphia…maybe I should have named the girls! She likes her name, though, so all’s good.</p>
<p>Good thing my parents had three girls before my brother, because they had every intention of naming their first son after their fathers: Elmer and Ermil (and to make it worse, my maiden name begins with an E). Thought better of it before he came along, so he ended up David.</p>
<p>A couple in my extended family named their twin sons this way. Unfortunately, the babies were born prematurely. Even more unfortunately, one of them died – the one who was “Junior.”</p>
<p>It was not uncommon for people to say to each other, out of the parents’ hearing, “What a shame that it wasn’t the other one who died.” And even those who didn’t say it were thinking it.</p>
<p>Love this thread. Don’t like alternative spellings or made up names. This year I have three students with the first name Dejah/De’ja/De’jah. Last year I had Anfernee.</p>
<p>Over 36+years, though, I have to say the two worst I had were Le’toint (yes, I know) and Devoid.</p>
<p>Like patsmom, I am of Irish descent married to a Spaniard, but his surname (well, one of many) is Italian (came to Spain in the days of Amadeus). Our children were given names that are the same in Spanish and Italian, so people always assumed they were Italian.</p>
<p>My son and his Spanish wife just had their first child and her name is the same in English, Spanish and Italian.</p>