I didn’t know that about Chinese customs for naming. I was aware of the great importance placed on a first born son, which exists in Judaism as well. We had a friend, who sadly passed away too young, who had a Chinese restaurant and offered to cater our first born son’s bris. Oy, I about burst into tears when I looked into the back yard and saw a huge roast suckling pig on the buffet table! Son’s g-dfather, who is Italian, ran out and put a yarmulke on it and I about died! Fortunately, the rabbi couldn’t stay for lunch, as he had to circumcise triplets later that day. The pig was the hit of the party and now, 25+ years later, we laugh about it whenever we remember our friend.
I am Jewish (Ashkenazi) and it’s considered a bad thing to name a child after someone who died very young. Sephardic Jews are like Christians and name after the living. I also find Jr and Sr odd. H recounts that his mom would yell “John (not his actual name)” and both he and his dad would ignore her.
We went out to dinner with Husbands co-worker when I was first pregnant. His name was Trip as in being a " Third" He said to hubby " I bet you want a Jr". Hubby explained that Ashkenazi Jews don’t name after the living. The guy could not wrap his head around this. At all.
When we were expecting our first born my H had just started his first teaching job. There was a name I have always loved (“Erin Nicole”) and I’m sure if we had been expecting a year prior he would have agreed to it. However, in his class a student with that first name (let’s just say she was less than a model student). So he didn’t want to name our kid that name. (On the flip side, he’s now been a teacher so long, that I think that it would have been fine now since he’s had so many students no single name would have a specific connotation to him.)
His other requirement: no juniors. He had no desire to have our kid named after him.
For me, I wanted a name that didn’t have a nickname…I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to name a girl Kathrine and be called Kathy or a boy Michael and be called Mike. My husband was fine with this limitation, and in fact he and the kids all have names without nicknames. Ironically, I do have a nickname (and not nearly as common or obvious as my examples), and I’m perfectly fine with it, so I’m not sure where my desire came from.
Beyond that we simply looked at baby naming books and started throwing out suggestions to each other. We didn’t really have any other disagreements beyond “Erin”.
Both of my kids ended up with very traditional names and both go by nicknames. But they still have the “formal” names.
The key to nicknames is that you choose. If you want Katherine to be called “Kat” rather than Katie or Kathy, you start out calling her that. If you prefer she be called Katherine then make a point of calling her that.
Funny story, when my sister had a kid she insisted on the formal name. Over and over again. But eventually she gave up and started calling him by his nickname (long before I ever did).
Two of my kids have names that are conducive to shortening but the two most commonly used have been rejected by my kids. For instance, assume their names are Robert and Michael. Both insist on being called Robert and Michael, not Bob/Rob or Mike/Mickey. The others are just called by family as the first syllable of their names (e.g., Char for Charlotte or Kev for Kevin). My third son has a totally unrelated nickname that was given to him by his Scoutmaster years ago. It’s after a famous comedian type person from the 40’s and 50’s. It suits him so well that everyone calls him that. He is even listed by that name in our cell phones.
My SIL insisted for years that she wanted to be Aunt “nickname she had never used before.” Oldest son began to speak and called her “CeCe” and that is what she has been for 25 years.
I dislike jr, III, etc and strongly dislike H middle name. I wanted to use 2 names that appeared in both families with his as middle, but first name was also his brother and he thought that would be confusing (regardless, people always ask which brother I’m married to and who’s the dad for my girls). We ended up with no boys, so not an issue. H is a junior and I think kids deserve their own name. We had some bad boys’ names in our families so not many names to choose from if we wanted to use family names.
Each D had a family name and a name we just liked. I swore I’d never name child and purposefully call them by middle name…and then did it. Started off as maybe double name, but just didn’t fit her. Love her name though and there is one in every generation with that name. Pain in school.
While my husband and I loved my daughter’s name, neither of us cared for the typical nickname that when with her name. From early on, we made it clear to family and friends that she was not to be called by the shortened form. It never crossed our minds in the early years that she might like the nickname, but luckily for us, she didn’t!
Daughter must have been 5 or 6 years old when she came home from Sunday School upset. Seems her teacher started calling her the short form of her name, as there were two girls with the same name. We told our daughter it was ok to tell the teacher that was not her name, and she would like the teacher to address her with her giving name; all was well after that. She does have a nickname that only family uses at times; a name her older brother called her when she was very little.
OMG, my H also has a cousin named Kathy who changed her name to Kathryn…naw, it couldn’t be!
When I was pregnant with S, I knew his sex and H did not. (His preference.) Perhaps luckily, H was not into discussing names. I love discussing names. Both of our fathers had the same first name, and he was the first male grandchild on either side, so that seemed inevitable after tossing around a few alternatives. (Also, we both liked the name. Our fathers were called by the same common nickname, but there was another that I preferred, so he could also have his “own” name, whether it be the full thing or a nickname.) I put forth my grandmother’s name for a girl, and he agreed to that.
We have a nick name for D2 that only her family can use. Since she was a little kid, if anyone called her by her nickname, because they heard us using it, she would promptly correct them.
We knew we were having a boy, and we knew we would follow DH’s family tradition of using the father’s first name as the son’s middle name, so we stuck with choices that went well with DH’s name. We didn’t do lists or books as we’d always said, “If we ever have a girl, her name will be X, and if we ever have a boy, his name will be Y.” We just never thought the day would come. The funny part is that, now in the Internet age, our son’s name (first+last) is not Google-able because both are common, everyday words. A thousand pages of nothing meaningful comes up. It’s pretty funny.
S17’s name googles out with thousands of matches. I have a photo on my phone of my Caucasian son posing with the brother of a friend of mine, who has the same name and is African American. My friend’s maiden name is the same as my H’s last name, so we joke that we are cousins. Third son’s name googles out to primarily females! Second son has the same name as a convicted murderer, so his google is interesting!
My husband insisted on naming our daughters and filled out the birth certificates while I was sleeping. Fortunately both like their names because I don’t.
That’s awful! H and I argued about the names, but the ones we ultimately selected (all 21, if you count Hebrew, English and middle) were acceptable to both of us. I am sensitive because I despise my middle name - my kids don’t even know it, and H is sensitive because he has the same first name as his dad. I would have filed for new birth certificates!
H was born and raised in a different country & English is not his first language. We wanted names both families would be able to pronounce, relatively accurately, without too much difficulty.
We settled on a girls name for D1 rather quickly. It’s not spelled the way I would have preferred, but so far I’ve survived 21 years of other people mis-pronouncing it (enter my “I told you so”). We gave her my mom’s first name as her middle name. Since my mom had passed, no one gave us any grief about that.
For Kid2, we struggled and struggled with a boys name. Although we had boys names we both liked, for each one, there was some person IRL who had the same name that created a deal breaker. Weird how that can work, isn’t it?
But Kid2 turned out to be D2, and we again quickly settled on a girls name. What surprised me was the “concerned phone call” from my brother, who said he and my sister were very concerned about D2’s middle name, rather, her initials.
I was all “Uh…what?!” No, he was dead serious. “That poor kid is going to be teased in school. Don’t ruin her life by giving her those initials”. I said, “It’s not like it spells out an obsene three letter word. Ruin her life?! Come on.”
No, I got the full court press, but I did not budge. I still laugh about it. I don’t want post the actual initials, but it’s as harmless as “CAT”. Well, in my opinion.
I have a childhood nickname. If I hear someone call it out in a crowd, I know it’s someone from my childhood. I like it.
My mother admitted she worried about that. Eg, if the maiden surname started with “S” she wouldn’t want a first name starting with “A” on the off chance the gal marries someone whose surname started with S. Imagine the towels monogrammed “ASS.” Or Frances Allen marries Thompson and the initials are FAT.
There’s an article somewhere on the web this morning about parents being sorry their children had the same name as infamous and deadly hurricanes. I knew a woman whose daughter was sorry her name was Katrina. I doubt “Harvey” was very popular to begin with,
We always have called S1 by his full first name, but that didn’t stop him from going by the nickname, a name I don’t particularly like. At least he appeases us by using his full first name when he signs cards and emails to us. It is strange for me when we’re around other people, like his wife, ILs and friends, who use the nickname. It almost seems like they’re talking about a stranger.
We chose to not find out our children’s sex before they were born. D1 was “Agent Cooper” before birth; I don’t think we had a nickname for D2 while she was in utero. We had lists of possible names but looked forward to not having to use one set after the birth(s), once we knew the sex. Both girls had their names by the time we left the hospital, when they were two days old.
A good friend of mine wanted to name her baby girl “Claire.” She thought it was classic and cool; husband was totally against it, saying it was an old lady name like Mildred. They squabbled about it for months, until my friend went into premature labor, the baby and her were both in trouble, it looked very bad, close to death for both of them. When the danger passed my friend said “After all this, you better let me name her Claire.”
