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Hello, parents and parents to be! I need your help!
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AMDowley
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My name is Andy, and i am a novelist from London, England.
I have a small favour to ask, and i am hoping some of you may be kind enough to oblige. I am looking to find out some of the reasons why you named your child what you did, or if you are thinking of naming a child, how you came to such conclusions. Was there something in your past that influenced you in child naming? What warmed your heart to certain names? Were your kids named after someone? What other influences are there? Finally, does anyone have, or know of, any stories about the naming of children? I hope i hear from some of you guys, I figured that there would be no better place to come. Peace and Love. |
Anonymous
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Why are you posting this here, and not on a forum in the UK? I know they exist.
We chose not to name our children Jack or Emma. They were born in Oxford, and we didn't want them to have common English names. |
AMDowley
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I have also posted a very similar thread in the UK, however, in my experience Americans are fantastically helpful. I that figured the more people i reach, the more likely i am to recieve an interesting response 
Thankyou for replying! |
Anonymous
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You might want to look at this thread:
http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/10563.page |
Anonymous
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Nothing very exciting here -- I like biblical/classical names. My husband loved the name Sarah and we agreed on that one.
In the Jewish religion we don't name after living people and the middle name is often after a deceased relative. My daughter's middle name is for my deceased mother in law. Some names I do like have been so trendy, I just didn't want to go near them: Ava, Olivia, Emma. I don't like trendy or made up names. There are threads here about naming stories, OP if you do a little searching...some of them are urban legend type things like babies named Vagina and that sort of thing. |
AMDowley
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Fantastic, thankyou kindly. |
AMDowley
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Fantastic. So obviously there is a religious effect, and your personal take is to avoid the trend. For the record, i adore the name Sarah (If i didn't my wife would kill me as she is lucky enough to have the name!) |
Anonymous
| Sounding paranoid here but why are you asking? What will you use the info for? |
AMDowley
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Its not a case of using info, rather a case of finding out the thought pattern or process in naming a child. I was interested to see also if anyone had named the child in an unusual way, or had a story as to why they named their child that way. |
Anonymous
Like Zuma Nesta Rock? |
AMDowley
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Like Zuma Nesta Rock? Yes, exactly like that. Many people use place names (Zuma bay i believe?). Why did she like that place so much she wanted to remember it always and have her child have it as a significant thing in its life without knowing what it is... Personally, i don't understand the place name baby name fad. I'd never get a tattoo of Rome, but i really like the place.. |
Anonymous
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I named my daughter after my best friend in fourth grade. Seriously. I liked the name of course and so did my husband. Her middle name is after my grandmother.
Our son's name was just something we liked--no particular reason--just something solid and traditional. We just went through a baby name book and wrote down all the names we liked and that was the one we both had highest on our list that we had in common. We did eliminate a lot of names because they had negative connotations, as in "eww, I went to school with a Duncan and he was horrible" or whatever. I also had to eliminate obviously ethnic names that would not go with our child. I am Asian American so I thought it would be weird, for example, to have a child named "Pierre" or "Jorge" or "Sven" or whatever. |
Anonymous
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I have three kids, all adopted. All came with names. For my two older kids, I kept the name they went by. Although both are genuinely fine names, I would not have chosen them. And, I didn't keep them because their family named them or because it was a way to keep their identity. I actually don't know who selected the names, which in turn gave me no reason to try to perserve them. But, these were their names when I met them and the names that I used for the first days that we knew each other and the names I used for them when I fell in love with them. I just could never think of calling them anything else.
For my first child's middle name, I used a family name that I love and which happens to belong to many special relatives, including two brothers and a very special uncle who was a happy and hard working man. The thing I remember most about that uncle was that he always laughed. For my second child, I named him after a boy that I took care of in an institution for the mentally retarded. While he had a lot of limitations, that child was the happiest boy I had ever met and I always hoped that if I had a child he would have even a fraction of the optimism and joy that the boy I cared for had. Turns out he does, so he lives up to the name. For my third child, I kept her middle name but gave her a new first name. I didn't meet her before the adoption, so I never knew her by any other name and didn't feel compelled to use her pre-me name. Her middle name is a family name for my in laws, ironically. For her first name, I used a family name from my family. I choose the nickname of the relative for whom I was named. |
Anonymous
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During my pregnancy, my husband and I kept a running list of names we liked. We first each compiled a list off the top of our heads, and then looked them up on the Social Security website for popularity the previous year. We didn't want anything really popular. We both have names that for our ages were the most popular names in America, and our last name is extremely common. So we were looking for something not too popular, but not too off the wall. After we looked up the popularity of the names we liked, we crossed a bunch of them off the list. I was surprised because the names I put on my list I had no idea were being used so much these days (Audrey, Isabel and Sophie).
We kept going back and forth with different favorites of the week. One week I loved one name, and then I'd decide it was too unusual, not unusual enough, or I just got tired of the name. About 2 months before the baby's birth, we narrowed it down to 2 names. One was the name of a character in a book we both like. And the other was the name of a character from a movie I loved as a child. We thought both names were "different" but not "weird." I'd never met anyone with either of these names. Then we took a tour of a daycare and saw one of the names on a child's cubby. Then I saw the other name in a childrens boutique advertisement, AND it was announced on a radio show as the name given to a baby just born to one of the show's producers. We started to worry that maybe our "uncommon" names were going to be that year's favorites. But we just really liked the names so much, we decided it was definitely between those 2 names. We would say the names out loud a lot, and eventually one of those names felt right. I love the name we picked and I wouldn't change it. But I do wonder if I accidentally picked a name that I'm going to find out was suddenly really popular last year. After all, my mom gave me my name because it was so "unusual," but it ended up being the most common girl name in America for like 20 years after I was born. You can probably guess what it is. I suppose my baby's name must not be too common yet because people keep asking me how I picked the name, and they say never heard the name before. Is it Swedish? Is it Spanish? Is it German? Is that a family name? None of the above. It's just a name I remember from some old movie I used to like. And no, I'm not telling you the name. Good luck with your book. Sounds fun. |
Anonymous
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My husband and I wanted our children's names to have more than one meaning -- (in other words, not just named after a family member, or just a name we liked, but a more complex combination of all of these things). We picked a few that we liked and, at about halfway through our pregnancy, are still not down to a finalist. i think we might wait to meet the child. Like the others, we wanted a name that is not too popular. We also found it surprising that the classics we liked are making such a comeback. We didn't realize how "trendy" we were until we saw the popularity of all of the names we liked. So we are down to a short list of some that are not unheard of, nor are they made up names, but instead are classics that haven't quite come back yet. We like that the names are multi-dimensional, as well.
As it happens, a few of the names we like could be interpreted as a nod to the Beatles, who of course are mutually admired by both my husband and I, but they are also names we really like. We like the lack of nicknames associated with them, we like the way they sound with our last name. One of our girl names (probably the finalist -- it's down to name A and one other name that my husband does not like quite as much) happens to be the name of a famous female pioneer in my industry but we certainly are not trying to name our child after my profession, we just happen to love the name. As far as a middle name for the girl, we may go with Ruth, both because I like bible names (though I'm not religious) and as a nod to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a hero who as you know is recovering from cancer surgery. All of the children will be saddled with my maiden name as their second middle name (yes, we're loading them up with 4 names). To make matters worse, my former surname is synonymous with baloney or b.s. in Ireland. |