<p>I have two rather odd (and utterly meaningless, but idle chatter is nice) questions for parents. Over the Thanksgiving break, my mom revealed to me that my name, had I been born a girl, would have been Catherine Ann Z. My actual name has a first name, two middle names, and a last name, the second middle name being my mom’s maiden name. (My brother is named similarly: he has my paternal grandmother’s maiden name.) When I asked my mom why she would have given a girl only 3 names, she replied that, in case the female me got married and took her husband’s name, she wouldn’t have the extraordinarily absurd situation of having 5 different names.</p>
<p>So, parents: did you name your children differently based on gender? And did you tell your children what you would’ve named them had they been born the other gender?</p>
<p>(My mom having told me this has motivated me to name my first daughter Catherine Ann. All I have to do is get the hypothetical wife to sign on.)</p>
<p>I didn’t change my name when I married. Neither did my sister and several of my friends. Your mom could have done what she wanted with out worrying.</p>
<p>Yes we told the girls what we would have named them. I’m telling you, picking names is so hard.</p>
<p>Well I only have boys (2 of them), but I definitely chose their names based on gender, ie their names are generally considered to be boy’s names. I guess you could make Justin a girl’s name by adding an “e”… and, no I never told my boys what their names would have been had they been born girls, mainly because I don’t know what girl names we would have picked. We didn’t spend much time contemplating girl names because in both cases we knew we were having boys… (although in Hong Kong they weren’t going to tell us due to local custom: They fear parents will end the pregnancy if they are told the baby is female) I obviously don’t understand the question! lol</p>
<p>I was given two middle names when I was born, as was my younger brother; our older brother had just one. (Clearly Mom favored her first-born!)</p>
<p>I didn’t use my middle names; I used just first and last. When I got married the first time, I still used my maiden name professionally, and just added my then-husband’s last name after mine socially.</p>
<p>So there was no using five names. Heck, using four struck me as silly; two was plenty for a good long part of my life.</p>
<p>Now that I’m on my second marriage, I have dropped my maiden name, even at work (which has been great fun for the confusion it’s caused!!), and use my first name, exhusband’s last name (which is the same as our son’s), and H’s last name. Someday, I’ll have all important documents changed over to this… </p>
<p>I’m sure my exH and I would have named our son something different had he been a girl , but as we knew from testing that we were having a boy, we considered only boy’s names. I have told S some of the other names that were considered (or proposed by my exH in moments of … sleep deprivation or insanity or some other not-thinking-straight mental state, when I thought we’d already agreed on a perfectly fine name, and for future reference, it’s not a good idea to try to start over on the picking-the-name process when driving wife whose water has broken to the hospital, nor even 12 hours after she’s squeezed 9 pounds of month-early baby out of her body, especially if the new names being proposed are hideous!).</p>
<p>We loved the name Rebecca Catherine but never had the opportunity to use it. Mary Elise was another name I liked. We had not really committed to a name for any of our kids as we wanted to see the baby and fit the name to him, but we did have a list of favorites. My boys all have 4 names, with two middle names.</p>
<p>My wife and I could not agree on our unborn child’s name She was so firmly set on a girls name (one that I could not agree to) so we reached a comprise. If a girl she names. If a boy, I name. </p>
<p>After the first boy she bet again. And that’s how I got to name both our sons.</p>
<p>My kids (boy + girl) each have 3 names – first, middle, last. Their last name is their father’s name, which is different than mine, as I did not change my name when we got married and I am not a fan of hyphenated names. I probably have told my son what his name would have been if he had been born female, as I had a name all picked out for either result – but my daughter is very lucky she is a girl, because we never did come up with a good boy’s name… at it probably would have been a drag to go through life named “Baby Boy XXXX”. (Then again, my son was so dead set on a baby sister I would have feared for the safety of a second son – he had one point suggested that if I had a boy, we could put a sign up on a bulletin board at the hospital offering to trade for a girl).</p>
<p>I always liked having 2 middle names: it makes my full name 26 letters long, the exact length of the alphabet. I feel sort of bad for people with no middle name; I have an alias built into my name if I ever decided that I didn’t like my name. I can also legally go by my mom’s maiden name if I ever find myself in an industry in which being Irish is a plus.</p>
<p>And toblin, that’s how my parents arranged it. My dad had terrible suggestions for boys’ names (he wanted my brother to be Hubert and me to be Stuart!), so my mom told him he could name any girls. (Catherine Ann, though, was her idea; my dad couldn’t come up with very good girls’ names either.)</p>
<p>I’m glad I’m not the only kid with four names! Besides my brother, I’ve never met anyone else with more than 3 names (except my mom, whose first name is two words), so it’s comforting to know my family isn’t just strange.</p>
<p>All of the kids in my family have three names (first, middle, and last) regardless of sex. We all take our father’s last name, our middle names are various family names (i.e. my sister’s middle name is my mother’s maiden name; my middle name is my father’s middle name, which before that was a last name in our family tree), and our first names are just names our parents like, though my first name is also a family name. I have a traditionally male middle name, even though I am female, so it would have also been my middle name had I been a boy. All of us have asked our parents at various points in time what other names they had thought about for us, and they’ve told us some of the boys’ and girls’ names that they had considered.</p>
<p>I named my daughter the way you were named (four names, the second middle name being mom’s last name) and would’ve named son the same way. </p>
<p>In D’s case, I figured by the time she marries, if she does, she can do what she likes and has tons of choices. She can keep some or all of her names. Maybe she’ll take her husbands, or maybe not (I didn’t- I like to have the name I’ve always published in). She might hyphenate. She might drop a name or two. Or keep them all and just use some. Who knows but I’m sure she’ll manage just fine. We’ll like whatever she likes. </p>
<p>It is weird to hear the names you could have been given, doesn’t it? We found our name list for her awhile back and my D found it quite amusing (and a relief we missed some on that list!).</p>
<p>My first son, we had no name for a girl. Although, I probably would have named her after my mother. Both my brothers left my mother’s name for me to use – a moot point since I only have boys!</p>
<p>Both sons have three names (first, middle, last) with their last name being the same as H’s (my last name is hyphenated). They both know what their names would’ve been had they been girls. In fact, for S2 we had a girl’s name picked out right after S1 was born. When we found out we were having a boy, we set a deadline a month before his due date for having a name for him (S1 was born 2 weeks early so we had to be prepared).</p>
<p>I knew a woman many years ago who, when she was pregnant with her second child, was SO sure she was having a girl. She wouldn’t even listen to the OB who said it sounded like a boy’s hearbeat.
She was totally enamored with the movie “Somewhere in Time” with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. She wanted <em>very much</em> to name her daughter Elise McKenna, after Seymour’s character. For months, she insisted she was having a girl, and wouldn’t even think of a boy’s name, just in case she was wrong.</p>
<p>Imagine her surprise when she indeed had a boy. At least she didn’t name him Elise McKenna!! :)</p>
<p>when my oldest was born, I didn’t have a girls name picked out ( although early in the pregnancy- I thought I was having a girl, I changed my mind when I was given hormones to sustain the pregnancy that have a greater affect on females- she was also 10 weeks early)</p>
<p>I gave her the feminine form of the boys name I had picked out on the operating table because I wasn’t sure she would survive and I didn’t want her to go without a name. She does have a middle name, however, it was misspelled on her birth certificate and she uses the misspelling.</p>
, but as we knew from testing that we were having a boy, we considered only boy’s names. I have told S some of the other names that were considered (or proposed by my exH in moments of … sleep deprivation or insanity or some other not-thinking-straight mental state, when I thought we’d already agreed on a perfectly fine name, and for future reference, it’s not a good idea to try to start over on the picking-the-name process when driving wife whose water has broken to the hospital, nor even 12 hours after she’s squeezed 9 pounds of month-early baby out of her body, especially if the new names being proposed are hideous!).</p>
(Then again, my son was so dead set on a baby sister I would have feared for the safety of a second son – he had one point suggested that if I had a boy, we could put a sign up on a bulletin board at the hospital offering to trade for a girl).</p>