<p>orchestragirl has two middle names…H and I had a short list of about 5 middle names we were debating…I was a week past my due date when she was born, I swear if I’d been any further overdue the kid would have wound up with 1 or 2 more middles :)</p>
<p>Doug(las) knows that if he was a girl he would have gotten Betsy’s name.
Betsy (Elizabeth) knows that if she was boy she would have been Tim/Timmy/Timothy.</p>
<p>Both kids have kinda formal, old-fashioned, middle names that go back generations. When people hear us string first-middle-last together for both of them it usually gets some giggles because it sounds so snobby. </p>
<p>I took H’s last name in marriage. My maiden name became my middle name. Completely dropped “Anne” for middle altogether.</p>
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<p>This made me LOL.</p>
<p>What a fun thread!<br>
Ours all follow the boring First, Middle,family last formula. I went with H’s last name after trying to hypenate back in the days of college registration on those bubble-in-the-letter computer cards. My last-his last was about 10 letters longer than the field of bubbles.
When #3 was on the way we invited older D to “help” us with the list of names… She was in kindergarten. We still have the hand-printed list: Barbie, Garfield, Waldo, Ramona, etc.
After the first 2 got family-related names that sounded like the crowned heads of Europe, number 3 had to play along with a name that was a monarch. You can’t have James, Elizabeth and Trent - Edward, Mary and Sierra - Phillip, Caroline and Hazel… If you have a trend going they have to follow suit.</p>
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<p>Well…we gave the boy a boy’s name and we gave the girl a girl’s name:) We only picked out one girl’s name and one boy’s name. DS (firstborn) got the only boy’s name we picked out. DD (second born) got the very same girl’s name we would have used if her older brother had been a girl. AND yes, DS knows that if he had been a girl, he would have had DD’s name. And if DD had been a boy (with first child being a girl) she would have her brother’s name.</p>
<p>We never needed to think of a second boy’s name because we knew second child was going to be a girl.</p>
<p>Both kidlets have a first, middle and last name. Their middle names are “family” names. Their first names are names that we just happen to like.</p>
<p>My sister has friends who could not agree on the last name for their children. The wife had kept her maiden name, and neither she nor her husband wanted to hyphenate the chlidrens’ names. So they decided that their boys would have Dad’s last name, and their girls would have Mom’s last name. Sounds like a lifetime of explanation and paperwork mix-ups to me, but it works for them!</p>
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Yes, this is a fun thread. my D has a gender neutral name which probably would have been the same if she had been born a boy. I was ahead of the Freakanomics curve and did not want my child to be discriminated against on paper or have a what ware they thining moment 20 years later, so I did think long and hard about naming my child. I did not anticipate that she would spend grades 2-5 in class with a little boy who had the same name (different spelling). They started out as ____ the boy and ____ the girl. Between the 2 of them they decided what they wanted to be called (the little boy opted for an abbreviated version of their name). </p>
<p>If I had a son, the middle name would have been David after both of her grandfathers, my brother and my grandfather (but life is never that easy!).</p>
<p>When I found out I had a girl I did not have a middle name. I felt that her grandmother’s names were really old names to give to a young child, so I put all of her aunt’s names in a hat, and my oldest sister, Christine won. She still has a roll eye moment when she tells people that she got her name out of a hat!</p>
<p>My parents had Graham set aside for a boy all along (father’s great uncle), but they got 2 girls first, so it got saved for my younger brother. My mom did tell me that she considered Miranda for me…:? Also, my brother would have been Truman if a girl! In that case, we would have all had presidents’ names: Taylor, Madison, and Truman!</p>
<p>I did get my grandmother’s name for a middle name and my brother got my grandfather’s.</p>
<p>I have a gender-neutral name and it’s kinda weird sometimes; I have had people call my house and they were surprised when a girl answered!</p>
<p>I have two sons. Each has a first,middle and last name. We also had girl names picked out. I don’t think I have ever told them what the girl name would have been…doubt they would be the least bit interested! </p>
<p>Both boys given names are very male names but both go by nicknames that could be male or female (S1’s moreso than S2’s). These would not have been the girls names however. </p>
<p>S1 is a college senior. We have told him to feel free to drop the nickname (won’t hurt our feelings) and go by his full given name when he enters the “real world”. So far he says he’ll stick with the nickname.</p>
<p>Ah - nicknames could be a whole new thread. Our kids, D’s especially, have had many over the years-- usually completely nonsensical, but life’s more interesting that way, I guess.</p>
<p>As for middle names, S2 hates his so much that he says he is going to change it when he hits 18. I don’t think it’s worth the trouble (nor do I think the name is THAT bad), but it’s up to him. I think middle names are easily enough left out and/or ignored.</p>
<p>When I didn’t yet know my daughter’s sex, SO and I chose the name Jack (after my grandfather) Thomas (after SO’s father).</p>
<p>tlesc01-- Truman for a girl? Interesting!
My mother had a hometown Ohio (female) friend named Lloyd, and Obama’s mother’s first name was Stanley.
For right or wrong, I tend to think of most either-sex names as female (Robin, Jamie, Frances, Taylor etc),</p>
<p>Son was several weeks premature so we hadn’t received our list of Indian names from a relative to help, nor did we have time before his birth to have any chosen. Choosing names seems to be something to do near the end, not the beginning, of a pregnancy. I completely rejected “Nigel”, as well as “number one son”- told H we were in the US, not Britain, for the first choice. I also informed H that the mother had the rights to the name on the birth certificate (after all, she could easily prove parenthood without further testing…). We picked a masculine, not gender neutral name, and a common one since son would be dealing with an uncommon nationality foreign last name- enough of a potential handicap without making it harder for him. Besides, I’m American born and wanted that reflected in his name (it turned out that the name we chose was also my Scandinavian GF’s). His first plus middle name can be combined to closely approximate an Indian name (also is part of generations of H’s ancestor’s first names), something his Indian grandparents appreciated and called him when he was little (interesting how an Old Testament name is close to a term of Hindu religious reference- all in how the words sound, especially given the three entirely differing alphabets). Being vague so as not to ID son, it makes more sense if I used actual names. Was willing, but H chose to not use his first name for son’s middle name as customary in his local culture (even girls and wives get that as their middle name; I didn’t even change my last name- for professional reasons). His initials turned out poorly, but fortunately he was never teased for that. Also dislike hyphenating names- I tell people 20 letters plus a hyphen is too long when explaining that I have a different name than H (a way of making them also consider that when they would presume every married woman has her H’s last name).</p>
<p>My brother was lucky to get our F and a GF’s middle names instead of their first names. We used an Indian name for our dog- unusual here but one commonly used for dogs there (and here when translated). Warned Indian inlaws in US that most Americans have middle names when they were going to just drop the customary father’s name as middle name. An Indian friend wishes she had known me when she was naming her children, they have no middle names. With unusual- foreign sounding last names, or long, many syllabled ones it is nice to have a shorter, more common first name. I felt sorry for the boy named Leslie in HS- he was small.</p>
<p>I have noticed a big shift in naming since I was a kid- now people seem more willing to stay with ethnic identifiers instead of “Americanizing” names. Unfortunately for some kids this also means names chosen by American born parents that would be best as nicknames, not formal ones. The worst burden for a name was given by an inner city teenage mother I saw in medical school- it was the whole first line of a hymn (wish I remembered it, I presume the child went by a nickname).</p>
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<p>Can naming a child something awful be considered child abuse?</p>
<p>[1069</a>, Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, and other names so weird that judges forbade them. - By Eugene Volokh - Slate Magazine](<a href=“1069, Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, and other names so weird that judges forbade them.”>1069, Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii, and other names so weird that judges forbade them.)</p>
<p>Tulula Does the Hula from Hawaii…that’s a no-go in New Zealand.</p>
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I’m going to assume GF is for grandfather and not girlfriend. ;)</p>
<p>Both of our children have the typical first, middle, last names. D’s first name is more gender neutral, but is also sometimes a last name. (It was MIL’s last name) H picked those out for the most part. H then used one of the top contender boy’s names for his business a year later. D does know that bit of family history. S’s name is gender specific. It’s also a variation of a fairly common name. The common name was shared by my GF on my mother’s side and GGF on father’s side. S also has my father’s first name as his middle. It’s a pretty uncommon name these days. I think I came up with the combination. I’m sure I’ve mentioned what his “girl” name was at some point. Whether he remembers or cares is another question. My mother did at some point tell me she was glad S was a boy because she didn’t like the girl’s name I picked out for him. :(</p>
<p>We just had names picked out during the first pregnacy. Son is grandfather’s name and my first name. Daughter (the bear) name is completely unique with mother’s first name as her middle name.</p>