<p>mollie</p>
<p>I’m just re-reading An Old Fashioned Girl and the fashion of the time, according to LMA, was to “Frechify” the names ending in “y” by ending them in “ie” as in Mary becoming Marie. Congratulations on your upcoming marriage. Or I’ve heard that one should offer congratulations to the man and best wishes to the woman. I wonder why…??</p>
<p>^ LOL, bethievt, it’s because congratulating the woman was traditionally seen to be insulting to her (as in “hey you were able to catch a man”) and should be aimed at the man, as if to say “you lucky guy!”</p>
<p>Forgot my favorite name story - </p>
<p>When my Mom was a child, back around 1940, a natural set of quadruplets was born in their community, a true 9 days wonder, no fertility treatments back then. The 3 girls and one boy were named Faith, Hope, Charity and Franklin - whhhaaattt???!!! :eek:</p>
<p>bethievt, my name was probably part of the y-to-ie fashion of the late 1800s, indeed – I’m named after my great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth, who went by Mollie. She was born sometime in the first decade of the 20th century. :)</p>
<p>Lafalum, I am legally changing my name after the wedding not only because of tradition, but because my fiance’s last name is much easier to spell and pronounce than mine!</p>
<p>Miss Mollie - congrats on figuring out what name to use after the wedding. Many years ago I tried the hypen-maiden name thing, but in those days you had to bubble your name onto computer cards for grad school registration. My first, maiden-new name ran way over the available bubbles, so I dropped to the new name. I still looked over my shoulder for my MIL the first several years when someone addressed me as Mrs. X.</p>
<p>See, I thought it was funny when someone in that other thread said something along the lines of “well, everybody hates the name their parents gave them.” It never really occured to me. I’m fine with my name. It’s relatively classic, pretty common, and it’s not unusual for people to tell me “That’s one of my favorite names” or something along those lines. I was never overly fond of my middle name. It’s a family name–the kind of middle name you’d expect from a man with a suffix at the end of his name (like, So-And-So IV). I’m used to it.</p>
<p>I’m generally a fan of classic names, particularly for boys. I think that there is more freedom in choosing a girl’s name that is not traditionally classic (i.e. Elizabeth) while keeping a classic persona, if that makes sense. I also tend to like names that are multiple syllables (e.g. William). </p>
<p>I also can’t really imagine changing my last name. It’s less of an issue for me, of course, but it’s a strange thing to think about. My mother uses her maiden name for work since she worked there before she was married and my father’s last name for everything else. Both last names are Irish. I don’t think I would ever change my last name to, say, “Smith” even if I were marrying a man with that last name (very unlikely ;)). I would also like my kids to carry on my family name.</p>
<p>dragonmom, like you I find when I hyphenated my own last name and H’s, it was a 6-syllable monster, It sounded like a steamer trunk falling down the steps.</p>
<p>For this reason, and in answer to OP: I’d make a first name that is SO unusual it could stand on its own to dodge this whole “maiden/married name” problem.</p>
<p>Like Cher or Madonna, but not those. I am nothing like them and their wardrobes.</p>
<p>But a standalone first name would be great.</p>
<p>I like my name. My first name is very plain and straightforward. I think it helped me in business. I’m not sure I could have pulled it off with an ultra-feminine name. Sophia Coppola isnt’ bothered and neither is Zaha Hadid. I probably overthougth that possibility.</p>
<p>I have a very unusual, distinctive last name which dates back to 17th C America. There was no question of me changing it to my husband’s last name–which is something on par with ‘Smith’. I couldn’t imagine the dullness of my first name with that surname!! When we lived in NY in the 80s and 90s, there were literally FIVE men with my husband’s exact name-- living on our street!!! We were frequently called by those looking for ‘Mr Dull Name’–the physician–or the writer–you name it.</p>
<p>Since my name heads our firm name, DH has now spent 21 years spelling my surname on a daily basis, mwahhahaha.</p>
<p>We gave our boys distinctive first names to liven up their dull last names. I had a sense they would both be global guys, so we gave them names that had American overtones. The only oddity is that the names sound a bit similar, which wasn’t our intent. One of the names has become slightly popular with the Hollywood set. (No, it’s not Apple or Rocco).</p>
<p>*A bonus point to anyone recognizing the clever literary reference to the silent 3.)
*</p>
<p>you must love the Seattle school district newest internet program
[but will people who don’t check their email use it?](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003812392_schoolwebsite30m.html”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003812392_schoolwebsite30m.html</a>)</p>
<p>My name isn’t bad- at least it is not that common and not as stuck in the suburban 60s as Debbie or Sherrie, but I like short names, like Kate or Cat.
Our last name is Scandinavian, although I am quite amused that there now appears to be a rapper from Chicago using it as his stage name ;).</p>
<p>
Cueareste?</p>
<p>My first name reflects the honor my parents paid to my greatgrandmothers- coupled with my mother’s aspirations that I be a ‘girly girl.’ Well, I gave myself a very casual and non-girly nickname by the time I was 18 months old and no one uses my real name now except officially. When I was younger, I was regularly told “you are not what I expected” when people saw my name before they met me! I would never change my name now, but I have always loved the name Jordana (since I read Exodus I guess!).</p>
<p>My kids have regular, non-trendy names. They have friends with names like Felix and Oscar, Agnes and Georgina who are Danish, Swedish and Australian. The only Brittany’s they know are American…however.</p>
<p>Capability</p>
<p>– as in Capability Brown, the famous English gardener (whose real first name was actually Lancelot)</p>
<p>My name is o.k., although it was a popular 60’s name and dates me from that era. </p>
<p>I wish I could have done my 2nd daughter’s name differently though. My husband liked the name Jennifer/Jenny, which I thought was way too popular. I am descended out of particular presidential family that names their daughters Virginia, including my grandmother, so I suggested Virginia called “Ginny” within my mother’s hearing. She promptly called my grandmother & told her we were naming the baby after her. Argh! So that was that. My DD is proud of her name though - she likes the heritage of it. And she is the only Virginia I know under the age of 60, lol.</p>
<p>I had no trouble deciding to use H’s last name when married. I’d had a job (as a nurse) with an unpleasant co-worker who only ever called me by my last name (no honorific) and I learned to dislike the sound of my own last name. My H’s last name sounds classy to me, although it is often mispronounced, and we even give a different, similar-sounding, name to restaurants when we go out to eat! </p>
<p>Choosing first names for our kids was very difficult, because my H likes classic, traditional names, and I like names with spunk. All our kids’ names were compromises, but we all are very happy with them. My eldest has my dad’s first name, and although it was not my “favorite” name at the time, it was worth everything to me to get my dad’s reaction when we announced my S’s name. And my S has loved being named for him.</p>
<p>Both of our surnames had a very noticeable dipthong in the middle–hyphenated, the name sounded extremely silly, kind of like a really annoying bell tolling. I opted for simplicity and took on my H’s more common name; mine is very rare and never pronounced correctly (including by us, according to natives from the country it comes from.)</p>
<p>My H & I love collecting butcherings of spellings/mispronouncings of our surname, and are now getting additions to the list from our two D’s. I’ll let them do whatever they want when they marry, but since we did not have any S’s and the 38 year old brother-in-law is STILL living with his parents, I don’t think the family name will survive to the next generation…</p>
<p>To answer the OP’s question I would have loved to be a Maeve…I would have loved for the second D to be that or Naomi, but H didn’t agree</p>
<p>I love the name topic! When I was expecting I spent endless hours on babynames.com!</p>
<p>Camila–my middle name is Agnes. I was made fun of over that in elementary/middle school (& it was just a middle name). I can feel your pain, although I’m also of Scandanavian background so it’s likely tradition-oriented! </p>
<p>I like my screen name! (yours too, Camila). Melodious, to my ear. Although, we named my daughter a traditional, classic biblical (even pre-biblicial) name. I was big on not having something trendy, although some people don’t mind that at all. (my hub wanted “Brandi”…!).</p>
<p>My husband calls me ‘lovey’ too, UMdad. You can call your wife that! (you don’t need to be Thurston Howell!!!) :-)</p>
<p>“I’d had a job (as a nurse) with an unpleasant co-worker who only ever called me by my last name (no honorific) and I learned to dislike the sound of my own last name.”</p>
<p>One of my middle school teachers called me by last name, no honorific. I really felt like he didn’t like me because of it - - he called other kids by their first names. Over the course of the year, I got used to it but I never understood it. </p>
<p>I have a few online pseudonyms, so that uses up a lot of my energy for trying new names.</p>
<p>Maybe, some day, I will really change my name. My given name doesn’t reflect my personality.</p>
<p>I like names that are classic, not too trendy but in current usage. Although S’s name has been a most popular one for many years, it’s also classic. Both kids have names that don’t readily date them to a particular decade - something my own name does do. At this point I would not change my name - I think a name becomes the person for the most part, anyway, but if I had to choose a name all over again, I’d pick one from my own generation but that stood the test of time better than my own!</p>
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<p>That’s my younger daughter’s name - I picked it out years before she was conceived. </p>
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<p>I have a 38 year old friend named Virginia - we call her Ginger.</p>