How did you choose your baby's name?
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| Thu, 02-02-2006 - 7:52am |
Hello,
I was wondering how people went about choosing a name for their babies. My husband and I are expecting our first, and it's a boy. We are trying to decide if we will use my husband's name, his father's name, or my father's name either as a middle name or first name. Is there a tradition with the first child? Should the name come from the husband's side of the family or the wife's or neither? Should you use the name for the first name or middle name or neither? I don't really want to use my father's name or my father-in-law's name for our child's first name. I think it should either be something original that we both like or my husband's name. My only issue is that my husband's brother already used their dad's name as a middle name. I do not want to do the same thing as them so I would prefer not using his father's name or using the first letter of his name and choosing something that starts with that letter. I also suggested just using my husband's name since he is the father or my father's name because my father's name has not been used on my side of the family. My family only has 2 kids in it, and my husband's family has 9. Is there a tradition that you followed when picking a name? I'm curious to hear input from other people. I also want to make sure the name flows regardless of what name we pick. I don't want to pick something just because it's somebody's name if it doesn't go. Any thoughts?

We have the opposite naming "tradition" ourselves -- we try and AVOID naming any of our children after anyone in either of our families. :) Generally for three reasons:
1) Someone always seems to feel slighted (not that this happens in other families, I wouldn't know, but especially since we live near my family and dh's lives rather far away, there always seem to be just a touch of competitive feelings when it comes to the kiddos, if you KWIM). Also, we both have rather large families, so having more than one person with the same or similar names has always been much too confusing (it's happened a few times) ... and forget about having two of the same name in one house! I'd go nuts! LOL
2) It would only add to our already impossible list of "stipulations" about baby naming, and I'm afraid we'd end up going with something we didn't really love just because it was a "family name"
3) Naming our children is a fun (albeit frustrating at times LOL) and special experience, and we actually enjoy giving them each their own name that is uniquely theirs, not shared with someone they will see on a regular basis (again, I can appreciate the bond others may feel with their namesakes, but we still prefer to reserve that honor for deceased loved ones, which - thankfully - hasn't happened in our family).
The only exception for us would be perhaps similar names (for example, we did consider Isla to honor dh's great grandmother Iola without actually using her exact name), or if someone we were truly close to should pass (if my grandmother, God forbid, were to pass away, then I don't think anyone would have a problem with us using her name ... we are very close).
To answer your original question, we chose our first daughter's name - Kaitlyn Abrielle -with no problem, because we just both loved the names. I fell in love with Devanie's name before we even knew she was a girl, and, although we considered one or two others, she was always Devanie to me. Rose was also the mn I just loved with it, but dh vetoed it when I first suggested it. Then a few weeks later he said "you know, Devanie Rose sounds perfect!" ROFL Men! We really only seriously considered two or three first names for this baby (Abigail), but dh loves Abigail so much, I just had to let him have it (even though I realize it's really popular). After all, he didn't argue with what I wanted to name Devanie, so I felt like it was his turn. :)
HTH
~Kelli
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I have 4 chilren (8 names) and 3 of the middle names are after a relative.
With our first, we just went with something we both loved. The first name was kind of after hubby....we met online and his alias was Maxx. *blush*
With our second, his name had to go with his older brother, and I loved the middle name because it was my great-grandfather's name, also had roots on DH's side of the family, and went very well with our last name.
Our oldest daughter's middle name is after my DH's mother, who passed away.
Our youngest daughter's middle name is after my grandmother who is still living, and one of my favorite people in this whole wide world.
Crystal
Mommy to:
Maxwell Zachariah (Maxx)
Jacob Henry (Jake)
Nina Martha &
Lily Francesca
My family didn't have a "tradition" to follow but we liked names that were in our family. Our first son is John Richard (Jack). My dad was John and dh's father is Richard. Both families were taken care of with one name! LOL! I really wanted to honor my dad. He had six daughters, no sons. All of us were going to be named John, he just never got to use it! Plus, when we had our first, my dad was recovering from colon cancer. Jack's name fits him to a tee and he loves that he is named after both of his grandfathers. Our second son is Christopher David. Christopher was a name that both dh and I loved. I also had a good friend Christopher who was killed in a car accident when dh and I were dating. David is after my dh. Our third child is Anna Catherine (Annie). Anna was my aunt and Catherine was my grandmother. I just loved both names, so classic and it "goes" with her brothers.
Good luck with naming your child and remember to have fun!
Mary
Sorry this is VERY LONG!!
Like everyone else, DH and I spent a great deal of time on selecting our baby's name. DH is named after both of his grandfathers, but the names are not ones that he would ever want to pass down. Quite frankly, his name sounds fine, but it is an old man's name. SO DH didn't want our child to use his name. My next thought was if we had a son we could name the baby after "DH" by naming the baby after both of our fathers "James Frankin" would be a fine name, and James isn't that common anymore. My FIL Franklin is "Franklin Deleno", yes after the president, so that would be somthing else to consider. There is no way that I will ever name any child of mine after FIL. Let's just say he was really mean to me a few years back and the few people who know the story, can't believe that I will allow him in my house.
Next, I have to point out that my father is the youngest of 8, and there are 25 first cousins on that side of the family alone! It's a very close extended family, so there are many names that are automatically off of the list.
Anyway, we decided if we had a son we would name him Evan James, after my father even though we liked the sound of Evan Lewis(after my grandfather) better. My brother has 4 daughters (three are named after SIL's family and one after my grandmother) and my sister a son (named after his dad) and a daughter (named after my mother.)
I have heard that people are starting to use Evan as a girl's name, so I don't know if I would use it now.
For the girl name it was much harder. My mom and maternal grandmother had already been honored by my siblings. I liked Mary Eliza which was my paternal grandmother's name. I would have considered Elizabeth for a mn. DH vetoed it as our last name, while not as common as Smith or Jones, is still quite common. He said that Mary was to plain. :(
So now we had to rule out beautiful names that might be too plain with our plain common
last name... :) Both DH and I have plain names, that are fine names, but we wanted something a bit more unique for our daughter.
Also, my mother, me and my niece are all second born children who were given double initails BLB, KMK, HLH. I decided that I would consider continuing this trend with my second child if it is a girl...
Both DH' mother and grandmother who are both deceased were named Constance. It didn't feel right to us. Their middle names were Ellen and Francis. We eliminated Francis, although I do like Francesca, because it was to close to Franklin! (Ugh, why did he have to be so mean!) We seriously considered Ellen, but we didn't want it as a first name as DH's SIL is named Elly and Ellie would have been the nickname we would use. We then decided that we would use Ellen as a mn.
My Maiden name is Keady and is pronounced "kay dee". I have always been very proud of it and would love to use it for a daughter. It usually sounds like "Katie" when people say it. I thought that Keady Ellen would be a great name. DH said that we could use it if we spelt it Katie (which defeats the whole reason for using the name. He said that he didn't want his father to think that our last name (and FIL's as well) wasn't good enough. ?????
We spent months going through names. Most of the ones we really liked had been used by family and friends. DH really liked Abigail, but one of his best friend's daughters was named Abbey Road. I had two cousins name their daughters Abigail 3 and 6 months after our baby was born!
The name we really liked was Paisley Ellen. Where we live both Payton and Ashley type names are popular, so we thought... maybe... We tried it on a few people who absolutely hated it. Months later these same people said that the name grew on them and they really liked it! UHG! We were too scared tof people's reactions to use it.
DOn't worry an end is coming!!
I had to be induced at 34 weeks due to life threating complications. We had Keady Ellen, Paisley Ellen, Mary Elizabeth and Zara Ellen ( Zara is pronounced "Czar- a" and is a form of Sarah which means princess and it also means Dawn or light in arabic).
We had to rush our decision and we decided that it would be Zara Elizabeth! We did feel bad about not using MIL's name as a mn. But we felt that Zara Elizabeth seemed perfect.
Poor DH called everyone and everyone said the same thing "what was that first name again? How do you spell it?" Some people try to pronounce it "ZAIR a".
People either love it or hate it. Luckily most love it. We really do love it and it fits our daughter perfectly. Her name will not be one of many, it's short and easy to spell, and we think that it sounds beautiful. And if for some strange reason she decides she doesn't like it Elizabeth comes with many potential names she can use (Elizabeth, Eliza, Liz, Beth, Liza, Betsey, Lily...) One other funny note... One of my cousins had her first baby 3 weeks after Zara was born (she was actually due before me. We had not talked about names with each other( didn't want to influence each other) She had a son and named him Martin Patrick, after our grandfather! If DH would have agreed to Mary Eliza (our grandmother's name) it would have been too cute! The four cousins who had babies (within less than 6 months of each other!)lined the babies up in their infant car seats at a family wedding. In age order they were Zara Elizabeth, Martin Patrick, Abigail Victoria and Abigail Anne. If we had gone with Abigail it would have been Martin and "the three Abbies."
Again, sorry that this is so long! Find a name that both you an DH love. If it happens to be after someone, great! If not thats great too. The only thing that matters is if you like it. Also, DH and I fully support the don't tell the relatives and friends any names until the baby has arrived theory. It saved us a lot of grief. We only tried Paisley out on only a few trusted individuals. After that we kept our names to ourselves.
Good luck!