All in a Name: Stories Behind How Names Were Chosen

[pinkShark]

Originally Posted by magic_is_might

i don't have some big stories behind my names, Brittani, just because my mom and dad liked it, and my middle names Morgan Dawn are the names of my moms best friends from school.

I love your name, it's dead pretty!

[Kimagine]

Originally Posted by snowytheduhawk

I totally agree! It kind of upsets me that my parents didn't name me after a saint - though there may soon be a St. Carla.

most of my family were named after nurses or their husbands. my mom had ten kids, so she got to know them all pretty well! i am named after the nurse who helped deliver me - Carla Sue Beck.

when i have kids I want them all to have family names, who are also saints, AND who have cool meanings (i know I'm quite picky). but my fiance's name is stephen joseph and i want to use it over. it is a family name, a saint, and the names mean "crown" and "he will add" respectively. so they mean something sentimentally and characteristically. sometimes i believe i think too much about this stuff ...

It is such an important decision, though... it impacts so many things, the choosing of a name. And I think that a name carries with it a sort of history, and that affects how a person carries herself. It certainly impacts things like a resume -- another reason I liked longer traditional names. While each can be shortened, their longer formal version would look good on a resume. I would sit each time looking at the names, all written out, and think, "would I take this person seriously if I based a judgment on the name alone?" Sounds awful, but there it is. No offense to anyone out there, but someone called Bubbles is hardly going to command respect in the workplace...

*feels only slightly ashamed

[Lisa_Turpin]

Originally Posted by Kimagine

It is such an important decision, though... it impacts so many things, the choosing of a name. And I think that a name carries with it a sort of history, and that affects how a person carries herself. It certainly impacts things like a resume -- another reason I liked longer traditional names. While each can be shortened, their longer formal version would look good on a resume. I would sit each time looking at the names, all written out, and think, "would I take this person seriously if I based a judgment on the name alone?" Sounds awful, but there it is. No offense to anyone out there, but someone called Bubbles is hardly going to command respect in the workplace...

*feels only slightly ashamed

This is so true! I totally agree with you. A lot of names recently have been trendified so they look "unique" and "updated", but in my opinion they just look silly. My Spanish teacher is pregnant, and while we were discussing baby names today, one of the guys in my class said his mother named his 5 year old sister "Kamiryn", which is pronounced "Cameron." I find that change completely silly and unnecessary. Can you imagine the awful pain that child is going to go through learning to spell that name and explaining the spelling to everyone else?

[gipro2003]

Originally Posted by Lisa_Turpin

This is so true! I totally agree with you. A lot of names recently have been trendified so they look "unique" and "updated", but in my opinion they just look silly. My Spanish teacher is pregnant, and while we were discussing baby names today, one of the guys in my class said his mother named his 5 year old sister "Kamiryn", which is pronounced "Cameron." I find that change completely silly and unnecessary. Can you imagine the awful pain that child is going to go through learning to spell that name and explaining the spelling to everyone else?

I agree, it is actually somewhat ridiculous what some people will do to make a name look unique. I know my own name "Giulia" is hard enough for people to spell and pronounce and it is actually a name, not just an invented spelling. I do however, love my name and its always a conversation starter. And I think because of this, I want to give my children unique names that they can shorten themselves and choose to spell however they want, but that are actual names. At the moment my top two are Britannia Rhiannon and Jamesen Caleb.

[Kimagine]

Your name is lovely -- is it a family name?

[gipro2003]

Thanks! Actually it was the title of a movie my mom liked.

[beth83]

Originally Posted by Kimagine

It is such an important decision, though... it impacts so many things, the choosing of a name. And I think that a name carries with it a sort of history, and that affects how a person carries herself. It certainly impacts things like a resume -- another reason I liked longer traditional names. While each can be shortened, their longer formal version would look good on a resume. I would sit each time looking at the names, all written out, and think, "would I take this person seriously if I based a judgment on the name alone?" Sounds awful, but there it is. No offense to anyone out there, but someone called Bubbles is hardly going to command respect in the workplace...

*feels only slightly ashamed

I completely agree I too spent hours with our children's names writing them in full, looking at the initials Callum Oliver was dismissed as his initials would have been COW which is probably asking for trouble. I also tried to come up with all the shorten names too, both of them have been shorten but I am a firm believer in children have full names that can be used when they are in trouble!

I fought long and hard against Dylan Thomas. I liked both names but I was hung up about the poet. I was (am) convinced the minute they start studying him in school poor Dil is going to have problems. Just to prove my whole point a cuople of days after his birth I was presented with a Complete Works of Dylan Thomas! My best friend has a wicked sense of humour!

[Sheree]

My mom found all of our names in this big baby name book that she bought before my first sister was born in 1973 (note that there are four of us, and the youngest one was born in 1991. She was still using the same book then).

She really just picked names that she liked, and then she decided to connect all of our names so that we're all tied together by more than just blood (my two older sisters are my half-sisters, so I am not connected to them by last name. Plus, even after we three girls are married, that connection will still be there).

So, mom came up with:
Toni Cheree
Bambi Nicola
Nikki Sheree (*me*)
Nicolas Paul (my mom's name is Pauline)

[Lucybird]

I'm named after my sister's favourite book when she was 3/4 'Lucy and Tom's day', so I would have been Tom if I was a boy. And my middle name, Clare, is the same as my Grandma's first name (which is a tradition in the family, my older sister has the middle name Marie (pronounced Marie) after my Nanna, and Mum's middle name is Marion after her Nanna). I want to carry on that when I have kids, but if it's with the current boyfriend he wouldn't be happy cause he's named after his Dad and hates it, would mean Grandad would be Brian, husbands middle name would be Brian and kid's middle name would be Brian.

I usually like names out of books Charlotte- Lottie for short (from a book I liked as a kid), Juliet (from Romeo and Juliet) but I don't like Julie, Imogen (except it's my sisters middle name), Faith. For boys I like Joshua (actually originally after Joshua Jackson...shhh), David and Paul (after my best friend in primary school).

[Sile]

Well until about 3 weeks before I was born I was going to be called Sarah-Jane. Then my dad's little sister Julie was killed. I came along 3 weeks later and my mum and dad named me after her. My brother is named after my Dad David and his second name is the male version of my mums Eugene. My little sister is named Carlin which is my dad's mum's maiden name and then Bernadene which is a mixture of my two granny's names Bernadette and Geraldine.

I would like to name my children with traditional Irish names I quite like Diarmuid or Declan for a boy and Fionnuala or Meave for a girl

[Kimagine]

I used to go to school with a girl named Fionnuala -- she was not a very nice girl, actually..

I love the idea of giving children traditional names -- yours is really a wonderful story!!!

[lilyrose]

Originally Posted by beth83

I fought long and hard against Dylan Thomas. I liked both names but I was hung up about the poet. I was (am) convinced the minute they start studying him in school poor Dil is going to have problems. Just to prove my whole point a cuople of days after his birth I was presented with a Complete Works of Dylan Thomas! My best friend has a wicked sense of humour!

I like the name Dylan Thomas...Dylan sounds really nice and btw i admire your best friends sense of humourlol...

[arithmancer]

My first name is not actually a name in the language my parents speak. It is a noun, denoting the phenomenon of red/orange light appearing on the horizon as the sun rises or sets. Apparently my parents had narrowed it down to that, or another z-word which means "glowing ember". What their fixation was with Z-names I could not say...the rest, I htink, I will chalk up to the 60s.

Though I like my name meaning, the way it sounds in both English and my native language, and being last on lists a lot.

For my own kids, though, I decided to go vanilla. I went through names lists and picked some 20 names each that I liked, that reflected in some way their fathers' Jewish heritage, and that would sound good to me in English (we live in the US) and the respective native languages of all four grandparents. From that list, their father and i settled on Joshua and Nathan.

[BigTiggaPwnz]

I asked my mom what she was thinking when she named me Travis, I love the name, but I don't know what would make someone think of it. She said, "No one was using it and blah." I've actually only met about 5-10 Travis's in my life, but I probably have met about 50 John's and Matt's.

I've been thinking about what would I name a baby, if it ever happened, and I came to say Minerva or Joycelyn for a girl and Orion for a boy. Greek and Egyptian mythology can give you pretty cool names.

Minerva = Goddess of Wisdom, aka Athena
Joycelyn = Grandmother, aka Joy
Orion = A God I can't remember. Probably Egyptian.

<3, Tigga.

[LoonyMagic]

My name is Abby Marie. I got Abby because my mum and grandparents were trying to think of names that wouldn't get shortened down because they really don't like it when people are given nicknames (well I get called Abs which defeats their point ). I got Marie passed down from my mum, and I think I'll pass it down to one of my daughters.

As for names I'd like to choose Scarlett and/or Eva for a girl. And Issac and/or Reuben for a boy. I'd like to give my children names that aren't as commonly given, because my name is seen everywhere and I hate it.

[Pox Voldius]

Originally Posted by BigTiggaPwnz

Orion = A God I can't remember. Probably Egyptian.

Orion the Hunter -- Greek Mythology, also a constellation

[BigTiggaPwnz]

Originally Posted by Pox Voldius

Orion the Hunter -- Greek Mythology, also a constellation

Thanks. I probably should've remembered that, but now I know.

<3, Tigga.

[crookshanks1177]

My name was a toss up between Tiffany Rose and Stephany Lynn...

Thankfully they stuck with Stephany Lynn. Lynn has been passed down through a few generations of my family. My grandfather's middle name was Lynn (Donald Lynn), my mother's name was Suzanne Lynn, and my name Stephany Lynn, I plan to carry on the tradition.

My parents spelled my name Stephan(y) rather than Stephan(ie) because my great grandmother on my mother's side liked names that had tails hense the "y"

[AchelRay]

I'm named after my grandmother (who was named after her grandmother, who was named after her great-aunt, who was named after her grandmother). It's been in my family for a while. My parents were debating with Lucy and Molly as well as my name. I think I'd pick Lucy over Molly if I had the choice.

Names I'm thinking of for future children would probably be Annelise (or whatever spelling is most common), Holly, or Becca. For boys I'm still rather clueless but I like Sean, Eliot, and Elijah.

Annalise because it's what my mom wanted to name my sister, but my dad didn't like it so she ended up with another "isa" sound. Holly for one of my best friends I've ever had (and she was named after her mom's friend too). Finally, Becca because I like the name Rebecca, but Daphne du Maurier ruined that name for me.

[samedi]

My name is Connor. I believe they chose it because they couldn't think of anything else, actually.