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HelpParents: How did you choose a name for your kid?
I was curious how you picked names for kids. Was there a name you had always liked?
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My parents, siblings and I have one or more names that start with a "C" or "E" so each of my daughters has at least one of these initials. One daughter has the same initials as my mother. I know it sounds silly, but I would have considered it bad luck to not use names with those initials.
My husband and I have different last names, so first we decided which one we'd use for the baby; neither of us liked our names hyphenated. We agreed on an honoring middle name and a first name all his own. Then I bought a huge baby name book (I hadn't found this website yet) and started making an enormous list (I like knowing all my options). We decided which of our fathers we were going to honor (only one middle name for us). Eventually, we narrowed it down to two first names; my husband liked them both equally, so he let me choose.
We never knew any of the semester prior to birth.
For our first there was a boy name I had loved ever since first seeing it in the Bible. About the 3rd time I mentioned it my husband agreed. It has a great name meaning and I love the sound of it. The girl name we chose was Chloe also in the Bible less common from what we knew although in hindsight it was really popular on girls. We made a list of family names for middle names and picked what we thought went well with the first name. Glad we had a boy because I had a friend who had a Chloe with basically the same middle name a month before our son. We probably wouldn't have changed our girl name at the time but I'm glad our name isn't super popular.
For another kid we quickly agreed on our boy name Elijah which again is super popular recently. I had read a girl name recently that had the same meaning Elya. We weren't sold on the sound of it but that was a contender until birth. As we struggled to settle on a girl name I suggested we do Eliza as it sounded very similar to Elijah I figured we would like it and we did. We both thought we would have a boy and not need to worry about it. I of course told him if we used Eliza Elijah would be out for a future boy. He really like Elijah so we kind of threw out names until deliver. My baby came real quick and once we knew she was a she ultimately we just went with Eliza because we liked the sound better than Elya and figured either name we probably wouldn't do an Elijah. Again doing family names that we thought went well with the first names
For another baby we decided to stick with our Biblical first name and family name second name. I don't like the typical Mary Martha Ruth Naomi names so for girls we tended to look at ones that were less direct like Michaela, Danielle, Danette, Gabrielle, etc and pick a family name that went well with it. Our boy name again was pretty easy to agree on. We liked the meaning. Biblical. We had some family with the name but not direct family. I really liked a middle name for it and wasn't set on it because I didn't know it was a family name. My holdup was strictly liking that name more than family names. Then my husband told me it was his dad's middle name and I laughed because of course that's what it would be then.
For our first there was a boy name I had loved ever since first seeing it in the Bible. About the 3rd time I mentioned it my husband agreed. It has a great name meaning and I love the sound of it. The girl name we chose was Chloe also in the Bible less common from what we knew although in hindsight it was really popular on girls. We made a list of family names for middle names and picked what we thought went well with the first name. Glad we had a boy because I had a friend who had a Chloe with basically the same middle name a month before our son. We probably wouldn't have changed our girl name at the time but I'm glad our name isn't super popular.
For another kid we quickly agreed on our boy name Elijah which again is super popular recently. I had read a girl name recently that had the same meaning Elya. We weren't sold on the sound of it but that was a contender until birth. As we struggled to settle on a girl name I suggested we do Eliza as it sounded very similar to Elijah I figured we would like it and we did. We both thought we would have a boy and not need to worry about it. I of course told him if we used Eliza Elijah would be out for a future boy. He really like Elijah so we kind of threw out names until deliver. My baby came real quick and once we knew she was a she ultimately we just went with Eliza because we liked the sound better than Elya and figured either name we probably wouldn't do an Elijah. Again doing family names that we thought went well with the first names
For another baby we decided to stick with our Biblical first name and family name second name. I don't like the typical Mary Martha Ruth Naomi names so for girls we tended to look at ones that were less direct like Michaela, Danielle, Danette, Gabrielle, etc and pick a family name that went well with it. Our boy name again was pretty easy to agree on. We liked the meaning. Biblical. We had some family with the name but not direct family. I really liked a middle name for it and wasn't set on it because I didn't know it was a family name. My holdup was strictly liking that name more than family names. Then my husband told me it was his dad's middle name and I laughed because of course that's what it would be then.
I'm not sure why gender corrected to semester above
I’m not a parent, but I was named after a character in a TV show.
I named my first daughter Caroline; I'd planned to name her Lucy but it didn't suit her so I read the lists in a baby name book, and Caroline was the first one that looked right.
My son: Peter, for a friend; David, for my birth surname; Alastair, for two good friends and to get the initials DA.
My daughter: Caroline; Beatrice, for my mother; Mary, for my husband's mother (whose names were Bertha Maria)
My second daughter: Beatrice, for my mother and so that she would share a name with her late sister; Elizabeth, for my husband's stepmother; Anne, my mn because it was my paternal grandmother's mn.
The point is, we've also got friends and relations whose names we just don't like, or not enough to use. No Ernest, Edna, Muriel, Percy ... there were plenty of names that we liked and that had special meanings for us.
My son: Peter, for a friend; David, for my birth surname; Alastair, for two good friends and to get the initials DA.
My daughter: Caroline; Beatrice, for my mother; Mary, for my husband's mother (whose names were Bertha Maria)
My second daughter: Beatrice, for my mother and so that she would share a name with her late sister; Elizabeth, for my husband's stepmother; Anne, my mn because it was my paternal grandmother's mn.
The point is, we've also got friends and relations whose names we just don't like, or not enough to use. No Ernest, Edna, Muriel, Percy ... there were plenty of names that we liked and that had special meanings for us.
There was a name I always liked (it was Charlotte). I had that on my list for my daughter when she was born, and a trendy-ish name with an alt spelling, that had struck me while I was pregnant. I picked the trendy-ish one right after she was born, when I could see her little face. Charlotte just felt kind of too cold and uppity to give to that baby? I dunno. I have no regrets. I would not have really been sorry if I'd used Charlotte. But my daughter is not wistful, she would not rather have been Charlotte.
For my son, my husband didn't like any of my top names that I'd liked for a long time. We talked about it for a week before deciding among a handful of names we both thought were decent. Again, no regrets, and any of them would have been fine.
For my son, my husband didn't like any of my top names that I'd liked for a long time. We talked about it for a week before deciding among a handful of names we both thought were decent. Again, no regrets, and any of them would have been fine.
I'm not a parent, but here's how I was named: my mother chose "Grace" because she had always liked it and wanted to use it for her daughter since she was about High school-aged. She named me after Princess Grace for my first name and Princess Diana for my middle name, inspired by their charity work, beauty, and elegance. I assume she hoped I'd be princess-like in nature. (Jokes on her I guess!)
My father named my older sister after Christine, the car from his favorite Stephen King movie he saw in college—the one that ran over and killed people. He saw that horribly scary movie and walked out of the theater thinking to himself "yes, I would like to name a child after that demented car someday 😄" (men.... 🫠).
When my younger sister was born, they didn’t expect to have a third child. She was an "oops" baby due to preoccupying themselves during a power outage in the midst of a massive storm (thanks for keeping track of your three and five-year-olds so closely during a bad storm, Mom and Dad!). She was named "Anna," fairly arbitrarily because it has family history on both sides. It's funny because Anna actually means grace, though they didn’t know this at the time. (She has a double-barrel first name, but I usually don’t mention the second part because together it makes her fairly easily identifiable online.)
If I ever have a daughter, I would want to name her Evangeline Violet, which I've planned for a long, long time. "Evangeline" means "good news," reflecting that she would be the best news I ever received. "Violet" was chosen because violets symbolize eternal love that transcends a lifetime, meaning that my love for her would be unchanging and not circumstantial. After a very difficult early life in which my love from my parents and later step parent was very much circumstantial in nature, that would mean a lot to me and my journey in her naming as a resolve to not repeat generational trauma. I admit I'm biased, but I think it's a beautiful name and hope and pray I get to use it someday on a baby girl.
My father named my older sister after Christine, the car from his favorite Stephen King movie he saw in college—the one that ran over and killed people. He saw that horribly scary movie and walked out of the theater thinking to himself "yes, I would like to name a child after that demented car someday 😄" (men.... 🫠).
When my younger sister was born, they didn’t expect to have a third child. She was an "oops" baby due to preoccupying themselves during a power outage in the midst of a massive storm (thanks for keeping track of your three and five-year-olds so closely during a bad storm, Mom and Dad!). She was named "Anna," fairly arbitrarily because it has family history on both sides. It's funny because Anna actually means grace, though they didn’t know this at the time. (She has a double-barrel first name, but I usually don’t mention the second part because together it makes her fairly easily identifiable online.)
If I ever have a daughter, I would want to name her Evangeline Violet, which I've planned for a long, long time. "Evangeline" means "good news," reflecting that she would be the best news I ever received. "Violet" was chosen because violets symbolize eternal love that transcends a lifetime, meaning that my love for her would be unchanging and not circumstantial. After a very difficult early life in which my love from my parents and later step parent was very much circumstantial in nature, that would mean a lot to me and my journey in her naming as a resolve to not repeat generational trauma. I admit I'm biased, but I think it's a beautiful name and hope and pray I get to use it someday on a baby girl.
This message was edited 8/4/2024, 2:13 PM