Jill Smokler, AKA Scary Mommy
@scarymommy
Latest posts by Jill Smokler, AKA Scary Mommy (see all)
- The Disney Reveal - May 14, 2013
- Met My Match At Disney… - May 13, 2013
- Sunday’s Baltimore Sun - May 11, 2013
I don’t love my kids’ names. There, I said it. The most important decision you make for your children and I botched it before ever leaving the hospital. Go me!
Well, I do love Lily’s. Jeff and I wanted something feminine and timeless and pretty and the moment we found it, we knew. It’s more popular than I realized, but that’s alright. She’s fine.
It’s the boys. I mean, their names are fine. Nice, even. Just so much more boring than I ever imagined I’d have.
I always thought I wanted a Gabriel, but with Ben, we owed Jeff’s family a name and he wanted to honor his grandmother by using the middle initial “A.” An A name would have resulted in the initials GAS, which shattered my dreams of a little Gabe. Also topping my list was Oliver and Asher, but the “er” at the end clashed with the “er” at the end of our last name, so those were out. Every other name I loved didn’t work for some reason or another and I was totally stumped. Boy names are just so hard.
I vividly remember the moment a friend suggested Benjamin as I pushed Lily on the swing in her backyard. It’s not awful, I sighed. There was no reason not to use it. I liked it enough. And, with that, my baby had a name.
Evan was going to be my Gabriel. Or my Aiden or Julian or something less common and more beautiful sounding, while still being masculine and cool. (Kind of an impossible feat, right?) But at the hospital, none of those names seemed to fit.
How about Evan, Jeff suggested as I huffed and puffed my third baby out. Evan. It’s not awful, I sighed.
It was never a name we so much as mentioned during the nine months, but suddenly that’s what our baby was called. I remember being rather incredulous the next day that I agreed to it at all. We each accidentally referred to him as Ethan a few times during the early days since that was actually a name we’d discussed beforehand. Whoops.
So, that’s the story of how we named our boys: The least awful names I could think of. Romantic, huh?
{ 322 comments… read them below or add one }
Ha! Well we had to (well, not HAD to, but you know, as tradition goes…) name our children after our parents, and I was okay with my dad’s name – Dimitry – or my mom’s name – Katerina. I wasn’t in love with my husband’s dad’s name, though. Christos. But it’s grown on me. Although it’s totally said differently in Greek – Xristos. And in English people say Chris-tos. Anyway! And I got my Dimitry. If we were to have a third child, (unlikely) and it was a girl, she’d be named Katherine. If we had another boy, hmm. Alexander, I love.
Alexander was another one long on my list, but the damn “er” thing booted it from the list.
I am a freak and required that we had two names picked out before each child was born. I didn’t want to have to name my child something that I didn’t think they looked like. So with my first, we had Jack and Nicholas picked out. Jack was my pick, and Nicholas my husbands. After 45 hours of labor and a c-section, I won. My oldest was Jack.
With my second pregnancy, we decided on Nicholas, but could not think of another name. We had Cole and Evan in mind, but didn’t “love” them. We decided that if he didn’t look like a Nicholas when born, we would name him something else that we thought of in the hospital. Thank goodness he looked like a Nicholas.
So I have my Jack and Nick.
I love Jack. But, I’m Jill, so that was out. See? I TOLD you this was hard!!!
I love Nicholas! I had it as a choice before I knew if I was having a boy or a girl. But it was a girl and her name is Emma. :) Emma Louise, actually. They were our grandmothers – and I think those names go so nice together.
The weird thing here is… This is my second marriage (well first, because the previous wasn’t on paper, but anwyays), it is a mess because we come from different countries, so my first son’s name sounds really “different” both in Denmark (where hubby is from) and here in the US, where we live now. “José Guilherme” – yeah, try to say *that* again, lol. In english this would be “Joseph William” and boy, does that sound weird in english? But I promise you, in my home country, in our mother language, it’s beautiful. Not so common, even though I know a couple of guys called Jose Guilherme, but it’s strong, and very beautiful.
The worst will be finding a third name to go with Gui’s and Emma’s, if (when) we have another baby! :P
PS: Guilherme goes by “Gui” (as in…guitar) most of the time. It’s his nickname but in the US noone even knows how to say his first name so… He goes by “Gui”; which I love.
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Golf fan?
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No, imagine that!! My brother teased us about it for awhile. Worse than that is Nick’s middle name is Drew. So it was Nicholas Drew…and my brother asked if I had a Lachey complex (Nick and Drew Lachey). We never even though about those things…though we thought about so many others.
naming the kids is hard! especially the boys, so i can totally relate to your story and the not awful part.
Marius is my favorite name, which my eldest boy is called. When we had our 2nd boy – well trouble! (I had a lot of girls name to choose from, but somehow they didn’t work). We had thought of Kalle and Silas (which are both easily pronouced names in Denmark, where I live!), but we couldn’t decide which one, since neither was just perfect. After a couple of weeks my twins (at the time 4 yo) woke me up from my nap telling me that it was decided that the name was Kalle. Well, ok, I thought, we had to make the decision at some point – and I could live with that. Getting down stairs I said to my husband: “so you three decided on Kalle?” He looked surprised and informed me that he had noting to do with that, the twins had decided it all on their own, apparently. So Kalle is his name. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I would have preferred Silas – I don’t think I’ll ever be completely content with the choice.
And by the way, he is named after cameleon – from a kids tv-show!
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Girls are so easy- I have a million (ok, five) names I would love to use. The boys kill me!
I totally agree…I can come up with girl names, no problem. We have Eleanor (although I was a little bummed by all the “Ella” names that cropped up around the same time). Then came…the boy. Felix, Charles, Oliver, Henry, Patrick, back and forth, round and round…then he was born, and he didn’t “look” like any of those names. Six hours later, I muttered, “what about Benjamin?” and it was settled, even though I have an uncle and a brother named Ben, and it was always an instant veto beforehand. Now, I can’t imagine him as anything else!
Me too! I have a ton of girl names. Nothing for boys, so when my son popped out, we were thrown for a loop, and eventually chose a name that we both loved. Unfortunately, it’s a name that made my parents decide to never speak to us again. Meh, their loss. We’d been putting up with their “crazy” for years, and frankly, this was a small price to pay. :)
I love the name we named our daughter, but I wish we could’ve had more daughters because I love all the other girl names we have in the queue. Alas, I don’t think I could handle a 3rd child in the mix. Kudos to you moms who can! :)
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It’s so unfair that they FORCE us to name these little creatures before we leave the hospital. I mean, really, there is probably no time in life when we are LESS qualified to be making important decisions. Hormones roaring, body aching, terror setting in (I have to be ALONE with it?)…my goodness. I think they should allow us 3 months or so to come out of the total TORNADO that is new parenthood before we decide for sure on the baby’s name. Let the kid show some personality first so we can label them properly. I mean, that’s what we did. And now, little Satan and little Jezebel could not be more comfortable in their monikers.
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Awww…. Satan and Jezebel would have a BLAST with my little Demon Seed (he takes after his father).
LOL. Demon Seed. Love it.
Cindy S recently posted..Will the REAL Big Brother- please- stand up
I’m so glad I’m not the only person who refers to my son as a demon! My husband always gets so mad at me… but sometimes it is just the only word that describes him!
I just choked on my tea!
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LOL.
And, exactly!!! Couldn’t we at least let the drugs wear off before faced with the most important decision EVER?!
here in Denmark it’s just the opposite situation -
if everything is fine during birth, you are on you way home after a couple of hours. then you have about 6 months to decide on the name! – maybe somewhere in between for both countries.
Actually i’ve heard somewhere that if you haven’t named your kid after 6 mo, the state will give him the name of the king and queen- but maybe just a rumor though!
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here in Florida you can change the name on the birth certificate for free in the first year…not that I did..but I checked into it before the first one was born..
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Wow in the UK we have 42 days to choose and register babys name. I have a Jacob and Samuel, not unusual and not very popular either in the UK.
My husband and I fell in love with Malcolm for a boy for over a decade before we even started trying – one of those early dating, hypothetical baby names conversations. Fast forward 13 years and boom, a baby boy. Thank goodness, since we didn’t have any girl names at all, as the ones I was always partial to had rocketed up the top 10 list. I’m thrilled for my son to have a classic and not terribly popular name that he can live with as a kid and an adult.
I was lucky, I knew 20 years ago what my daughter would be named if I ever had one. First name anyway, I knew would be Hannah. I have been in love with that name forever. Hubby picked the middle name, which I love too, her middle name is Cheyenne.
If she had been a boy, we picked Chase Neal. But I knew in my heart I would never use the name.
We have a similar story. Always dreamed of a girl named Sydney during our courtship. Funny how NONE of our three girls are named Sydney. We completely effin’ forgot all about it! Ha!
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My daughter is Sydney (Amanda is her middle name after my sister Amanda). When I named her that Melrose Place was really popular and a lot of people thought I got the names from it! But I always liked Sydney too.
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Growing up with the most popular name in the US for 16 years running, I was desperate to find names for our kids that were NOT on the most popular baby names list. But, since my husband is of Italian descent and we have an incredibly long last name, they could not be more than 2 syllables. So, we have Mila and Marco. I still love their names, thankfully.
Hello?! I’m with you on this.
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Third Grade – there were FOUR Jennifers in my class. BESIDES ME. I know you feel my pain!
I think it got worse after I got married and became a Jennifer WILLIAMS. At least my maiden name was unique. Do you have any idea how many Jennifer Williamses there are?
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My SIL’s name is Jennifer Jones. She absolutely hated it growing up. She said that she ALWAYS had someone in the same class with her name, sometimes both first and last name. At her graduation there were 6 Jennifer Jones, lol
I feel ya! Dude, I was one of THREE Lisa H’s in my HOMEROOM. {shakes head} Oh, and now? My friggin’ married name is a character off of Green Acres!
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I did the same thing, I’d come up with a name, then plug it into the social security web site to be sure it was at the very end of all the names. The name we picked was number 910 out of 1000 for 2009, so that’s not too bad. It’s not even ranked prior to 2004 b/c it wasn’t in the top 1000. Her middle name didn’t make the cut at all.
Charlize Makaira.
I never want to saddle my children with a common name. I’ve come to terms with mine, but it sucked growing up! Funny how you almost never hear of girls being named Jennifer now? Probably because we all bitched so much about it :)
We also struggled with names. We went to the hospital with a list of names which we quickly decided were all UNBEARABLE once baby #2 showed up. Then we sat there on check-out day surfing the Internet for ideas because I damn sure wasn’t bringing baby home with no name. Our family is pretty much defined by procrastination and I knew if he was nameless when he got home he would probably stay that way.
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He would have forever been “the other one” or “no. 2″, which would been worse than any possible name ever.
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While my kids were gestating, my husband and I discussed names. He wanted to name them traditional north american aboriginal names, which I was fine with. Until! you look them up. Maybe I just set my standards too high. Aboriginal, easy to say, a nice meaning, not too ethnic. The girls were easy. Talise and Rozene. Nice part is that there won’t be half a dozen Talises or Rozenes in any of their schools. The boy? That was different. Holy, but it was hard! It’s very difficult to hold to my principles. Poor boy went through two weeks of namelessness. People in our small town were having a good laugh, I’m sure, as they resorted to calling him President’s Choice, and No Name. FINALLY we came up with Jolon. Can be shortened to Joe, or Joel, and again, not a plethora of Jolons around. So I though. Ha! Joke’s on me! Since he was born/named, two babies have popped up. Both girls. Jaylin, and Joely. Eff.
“While my kids were gestating” bwahahahaha
President’s Choice and No Name…..hilarious!!! Thanks for the chuckle this morning!! LOL!! :)
I picked 2 names for my boy Thabo(which means happiness) and Jayden, and we ended up using both and so now he’s TJ!
For my current pregnancy I was sure it was a girl and picked Zinhle(beautiful) and Karis, then a few days ago the scan confirmed its a boy so am back to square one! Any suggestions?
Gabriel, obviously. :) My other favs: Oliver, Alexander, Aiden, Jack, Julian, Asher and Theodore.
Devin means “Handsome & Windswept” I happen to find that completely true about my son! ;)
I love Aiden : )
I gave my son my maiden name as his christian name, so he is Lane with middle name Shilo. We have not personally met another Lane but know they are out there. lol
We named our firstborn son Lane as well and I still LOVE it! So strong yet so simple. I was always so close with my Grandpa Lane (Lane the last name) and my husband liked the name Lane from Lane Frost in that bullriding movie “8 Seconds”. If our first was a girl it also probably would have been Lane as it is a unisex name. I am always intrigued when I hear of other Lanes in the world. :)
Hahaha! Well my oldest is named after a character Sean Connery played, my middle one actually IS named Gabriel. And my youngest is named after church elder, and that kid is the oneriest of them all! but get this… My hubby says later after they’re all here, “did you ever notice the boys’ initials? MGD? Yeah, that’s so they’ll have the initials for Miller Genuine Draft.” Yes, thank you, darling, for helping me come up with names that are the acronym for beer. Heck, why didn’t you just spring for KEG since you were feeling creative? I let him live because it IS kind of funny and he’s pretty hot.
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That would have NEVER dawned on me. I’m sure he will think it’s the coolest thing ever once he hits high school.
That sounds like something my husband would do. Ha!
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Growing up with a name no one could pronounce, my children are Nicholas and Lauren – you can go to any store and buy items with their names on them. That was my only rule for names. My FIL was “the baby” for 9 months before his parents could figure out a name for him. Granted, his mom was 45 when he was born, and running a business, farm, and raising 2 sons already. She was probably exhausted.
Hahahaha I love that you “owed” Jeff’s family a name!
DB (read douche bag) and I couldn’t agree on names, at all. I wanted something unique. I really wanted names like mine and my sister’s which are both American and Thai names. Finally the night before my c-section DB was flipping through a Thai name book and came across one that means knowledge and was actually quite beautiful, Tiraya. I should have known better, no one gets it right, no one even comes close to getting it right. LOL.
With number 2 I just picked the name, DB didn’t get a choice. I wanted Lanna for #1 but he hated the name. I told him to shove it because Lanna is a Thai name and an American name. I thought she’d have less trouble then Tira… I was wrong apparently Americans can’t even read names that are in English.
Ohh and if I ever have a boy I’m naming him Jedediah so I can call him Jedi #winning
Awesomesauce #winning
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I love my son’s name. But I don’t like my daughters name. I thought I seriously was the only one, it’s good to know, I’m not alone.
I like those names, I think you could of have choosen really bad names. Those are good.
I was having a girl. They told me so. And her name was Gracie (by the grace of God I was able to conceive) Michelina (family name) Otis (my dad’s middle name. He had terminal cancer so he had to be remembered) D(last name). I ended up in the hospital at 31.5 weeks. During the ultra sound the nurse asked if I wanted to know the sex. I said I did know, it was a little girl. She said, “No, here’s the turtle. Sweetie you’re having a little boy.” Back to the drawing board we went. My mom went out and bought a name book. My youngest brother (Lincoln Kole) found the name. I liked it and worked with what I had. We now have a Karver (spelled with a “K” for my brother) Otis (my dad) Greyson (by the grace of God) D_ _ _ _ _ _ (last name). THEN!! I got married and hyphenated my name. So, Karver Otis Greyson D-K_ _ _ is on his birth certificate. Every once in awhile he throws his nick name in there as a middle name as well — Lumpy. It gets even better when he starts talking about adding his dad’s (not biological, but the only one he knows) first name (Michael) as an addition to his middle, like his brothers. It’s AWESOME!!
I love my boys names! I wanted biblical, my husband wanted cool.. lol. First was Ezekial (strong one) – called Zeke after a character my husband liked – win/win… second was Isaac (he who laughs), called Ike because Ike’s just a cool name! Then we werent having any more and still had names to use, George Bush#1 was in office with his 2 middle name thing going on, so each boy got 2 middle names – both got Eldon because both of our dads are named Eldon (one spelled EldOn and one spelled EldEn), and then they each got a family name. Lots of names for 2 little boys. Husbands name is Rock so we had to match it all up with Zeke and Ike – they all go together with the “k” sound :) The funny thing is, I cant imagine them with any other names! They fit perfectly. And of course, so very cool :D
At least they are not made up names and you kept the normal spelling.
If we had a boy, we had a beautiful name picked out that we both agreed upon. We had a girl and we couldn’t agree. I always told my wife that I wanted to call our daughter Fabiola. It means bean-grower. My wife refused and I was sort of joking. But I’m glad we didn’t choose that name. It’s such a tough decision.
For the next kid, I’m blindly opening a baby name book and just going with it.
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That’s true. That was never an option, although Lily gets misspelled all the freaking time.
Fabiola is a fine name.
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I have a Lily too.. the misspelling drives me crazy! It’s a common flower.. why does everyone want to add extra l’s everywhere?
Because of Lillian.
We had Cameron and Landon picked out for our little blue bundle and basically waited to see him to make sure one of the names fit. I also practiced scolding “Cameron” and “Landon” because I knew that would be something I’d be doing a lot of in the toddler/pre-school years. Cameron had a much better ring to it, I could almost make a growling noise out of it. :) So, it won!
The only thing I wish is that I didn’t share the names with friends and family before he was born. I still scratch my head at some of the comments. There was “Cameron is a girl’s name” and “what will Landon be landing on”. People are so opinionated and rude!
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Cameron is totally a boy name. People are so annoying.
Cameron is a boy’s name. Kamryn, however…lol.
Your story is exactly how my youngest son got his name. I tried really hard for David, or Matthew, or David Matthew (for those that know the band you know what I was trying for here) but it didn’t fly – and perhaps in hind sight, this was a good thing. My friend was in the hospital room visiting and mentioned ‘Kyle’. It wasn’t horrible and I was feeling a lot of pressure to name the baby before I left the hospital that day. Voila!….the baby was named.
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My oldest child is Regina Frances (we call her Gina). Folks thought I named her after Genie Francis, who was Laura Webber on General Hospital. Not so. She was named after my mother, Regina and my father’s middle name, Francis.
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boys names are hard. I have three boys and it didn’t get easier!
Having never had a personalized pencil due to my parent’s choice of name, I knew that I wanted to do the same for my daughter.
Whenever we “had” the perfect name, we sat there and tried to rhyme it with rude and cruel things like other children would. It came down to Annalise or Alora – so unless she’s a “Whore-ah”, I think we’re good.
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No personalized pencils? That’s all kinds of tragic!!! (But, I love your name.)
Oddly enough, if it exists, my daughter has had it personalized….including pencils. So not fair.
If I was a girl it was Adryon, but if I was a boy I was going to be named Christopher…Christopher Robin (after Winnie the Pooh).
Adryon recently posted..Get Your Hands Out of My Pants I’m Not Dying!
I could never find cool personalized mini license plates or key chains on field trips with my name. Pencils go without saying!
My daughter’s initials are GAS! I liked her name and decided I didn’t care what her initials were. She’s 10 now and thinks it’s quite funny.
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My initials (before getting married) were SAD. I have a bench that my uncle lovingly made for me in shop at the age of 13, with those initial emblazoned on the seat!
I have a niece who’s initials are LSD. And yes, her parents thought about that before hand and thought it was cool. They’re young.
Jeff thought I was crazy for the initial thing. Maybe I was. Or, am.
It’s nice to know we’re not alone when it comes to the baby naming conundrum. With our son we knew it was a boy, picked the name Jeffrey, but when he came out the name just didn’t fit. 6 hours later we changed it (and all the forms) to Jasper Rainn, a name we’d never really discussed prior, but fit perfectly.
With our daughter we didn’t know what she’d be, and when she was born we still couldn’t agree on a name. We spent the day trying on names and 12 hours later named her Amber Sage, because, while it wasn’t a first choice for either of us, it was a name we both liked. :)
twistedxtian recently posted..I love having a daughter
My cousin, who is all Irish American, married an Arab fellow. Their first child, a boy, was to be named Fahid. The boy was born with red hair and fair skin. The name was quickly changed to Brian!
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That disappoints me to read. So what that he was light and red haired. He could still be named Fahid. I didn’t know your skin color determined the cultural status of your name. What a shameful thing. I wish they would have named him Fahid, or Amir or Mahmood or Shakur and Jamal or Shaheem or Nasir and he would have been proud to be half Arabic with red hair. How lovely. Poor boring Brian.
Ugh, boys names are the hardest. With our daughter, it was a piece of cake. With our son, we looked at about 10,000 baby names (you know the book, “10,000 baby names”?). We finally settled on the one name that we could live with and figured we’d never have another boy. We were wrong. A serious contender for baby brother’s name was “electrocuted watermelon” (courtesy of his older brother, holder of the only good name out there).
Well….. My girl is Gwynneth Anne. Gwyn after my grandma who had passed 2 years before her birth… Anne after my husbands mom(her middle name). Had she been a boy, at the time would have been John Micheal, two horribley populars I know.. but now.. I think John Douglas(originally shyed away from because would have been calling him john john by definitions) John after our grandfathers and Doug after my father. We are still hopeing for another.. and I am toying with Kathrine Mary, but it sounds very.. biblical.. which we are not. So I guess, the name game will commence again once we are expecting… LOL
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Ohhhhh, I love that name!!!
Thanks! So do I! Still after 2 years… :)
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You don’t love Benjamin? I do! That’s my son’s name, after my husband’s grandfather Benjamin. I think it’s wonderful when you can pay tribute to the people you’ve loved and lost. Makes naming children even more special.
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I like it, don’t LOVE it. I wanted him to go by Benji, which I think is super cute, but he hates it. So, he’s Ben S. because of the 4 other Ben’s in his grade. So much for original.
I’d had Benjamin picked out for years before I had my son. We call him Benji but he goes back and forth. Some days he refers to himself as Ben and other days he calls himself Benjamin. His middle name is a family name (one I’m not fond of) that starts with S. His initials are BSB… thankfully the Backstreet Boys aren’t all that popular anymore. Though I’m waiting someday for someone to call him BS- Bayron lol.
Holy oh. The name thing. You are a brave mommy to broach it.
We had the first names down–our first is Gabriel Colin (Colin is my brother’s middle name) and our youngest is Hudson Samuel. Hudson was my DH’s pick. Well, he initially wanted Oscar, but I was a Sesame Street child so I couldn’t imagine it without following it with “the grouch.” So Hudson it was.
The surname was our biggie. We finally compromised and used both, but not hyphenated…too much of a mouthful!
If it is any consolation, I like all the names you chose, and think they go together awfully well. Like you said, timeless.
Now if I could just use my girl’s name, I’d be done! Little Annika Jane :) Alas, I think we’re done at 2.
Oh, I adore your names! Mine are fine, not not ever what I would have predicted, you know? But, they could be a million times worse for sure.
My DH didn’t give any input on our kids names, so I went with Ashlee (named after my brother’s middle name, who died when I was a child) and Emily (my grandmother who helped raise me – her middle name is Emma). Both are common, and I’m fine with that ONLY because both names actually mean something to me.
BTW – I work at a school, and we have a little girl named L-shia. No one had a clue – turned out her parents were REALLY trying to be creative, and you pronounce the dash – LaDashia is how it’s pronounced. Poor kid.
I’ve heard of a ‘La-a’ before! Crazy…
Ouch. There is such a thing as too much creativity. Clearly.
Wow. Kids are mean enough why give the amunition? My sister went through middle school as Jennifart. If they can tourture Jennifer the dash is going to doom the kid.
I wouldn’t beat yourself up too much. My first son’s middle name came from a joke. My little brother, 6 at the time, told everyone I was naming my son Max and after 9 months of not being able to pick a middle name, we laughed and said “what about giving everyone their Max?” and voila Maxwell it was. My second son’s middle name is Braxton, as in Braxton Hicks. Enough said…
We had ‘Allison’ picked out before I was even pregnant. It was not over-the top popular, but something that was recognizable. We thought it was perfect. Until we started registering her for things. I had no idea that there were two common ways to spell it and now she will be plagued with the “one ‘l’ or two?” question for the rest of her life. *fail*
We have the “one L or two” thing as well. Who knew?!
We get that with our last name, Douglas. Never even HEARD of spelling Douglas with two s’s at the end. Ugh!
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That’s how I was with my 3rd child, Danielle. I wanted Stephanie Maura. My now ex didn’t like Stephanie and where in the hell did you find Maura? Sigh, it’s Gaelic for Mary. He liked Erin, so I suggested Erin Noelle (she was due Dec 26… and born that day) He thought the names didn’t flow very well. HUH? Say it. It flows beautifully! So we settled on Danielle and used Marie because we couldn’t come up with anything else. Why I didn’t name her Noelle is beyond me. My ex says I didn’t want to…. I don’t remember that. Had she been born a boy it would have been Christopher Martin, and my life would have been infinitely easier! But ya know what? The name Dani really suits her well!
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We found out as early as we could what sex we were having so that we could start picking out names. The now ex-husband is Jewish and per tradition we had to have a name that started with the first letter of the most recent dead relative. So we had to have an A name. I’m Irish so I knew I wanted a celtic name. I knew that whether I was having a boy or a girl, the middle name would be Lee. It was my father’s middle name and he died before I had my son.
We were debating between Aidan, Ashton and Addison. I wanted something that wasn’t too popular. I ruled out Ashton because I thought everyone would think we named him after Ashton Kutcher. I ruled out Addison because I thought everyone would shorten it to Addy, and I hated that. So Aidan it was! Then everyone asked me if we named him after Aidan from Sex and the City. NO! Of course, now Aidan is one of the most popular boy names. Last year he was one of 3 Aidan’s in his class.
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The worst story I heard was of a woman I know, who called her son Aaron. Her reason? She was in labour and it happened to be the first name in the book.
That story makes you look quite good. ;-)
I wanted unusual names for my kids because my name was really popular. I always had a Sarah in my class (and they were always girls I didn’t like, to boot).
The first three children I called Joni-Beth (Joni), Lorellei (Lori), and Aden (A.D.). The girls names are great but Aden just happened to be one of the most popular boys names in Scotland, that year. So we emigrated to Germany, here no-one has his name but they keep calling Joni Yoni! Particularly annoying, because my second-husbands ex is called Yoni.
Then we had a fourth child. That name was really hard to find because it needed to be pronounceable in German and in English, not be popular and not be the name of any of our ex’s.
We came up with an Indian name, Akasha.
If she’d have been a boy, we liked the name Zachary. But I always shorten names and my husband informed in German sac (pronounced zack) means balls. Of the manly kind. Could have been amusing.
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OK, that’s even worse than mine. I feel better now.
I pretty much gave my 2nd girl the wrong name and then changed it at 8 months. I’m lucky my husband is still speaking to me.
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I was trying to remember who did that!! I remember reading that post and totally relating. I love that you did that.
what? seriously? tell that story!
Must. Hear. This. Story. Or read. Do tell!
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You Gals are hilarous! I went traditional: William
I chose a name that will hopefully bring me money as he ages.
I loved William, too. But Will and Jill bothered me. Like anyone else would every care about that.
I have a Will (William) and I love his name to pieces. His twin is Max, a family name, but also nice and short. They have hyphenated last names so I wanted short first names.
His father was leaning towards trendy names: Tyler, Jacob, Devin or Cody. “Soap opera names”. I needed him to have a name that was traditional & hopefully successful. I couldn’t decide until he popped out! As soon as I saw him, it just came to me. William Benton Childers. I love his name & so does he. It’s a family name and made many Grandpas (& G. Grandpas) very happy! His dad was not so happy at the time, but he loves it now!
Soap opera names! Thank you! I could never quite summarize that type of name. I also have a Will. Popular yet classic and never to be mistaken as trendy.
For the last three months I was pregnant with my daughter, she was going to be Taylor, boy or girl, she was going to be Taylor. Two weeks before I had her, I saw the movie Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Nicole’s character’s name was Shannon, and when Tom pronounced it with a very bad Irish accent is sounded like Shennon (the e sounds like e as in ‘everyone’). She is always being called Shannon and at 16 she just gets annoyed and corrects them and rolls her eyes, but the name suits her perfectly. Different, unique and one of a kind.
boys names are hard. my first boy was easy, because his dad wanted to continue to pass on the family name. so my oldest is actually russell the fourth, and even though he’s only seven, he’s already talking about how, when he grows up, he’s going to have a boy and name him russell the fifth. this makes my hubby immensely proud. i had always wanted an alexander, but my hubby was afraid he wouldn’t be able to spell it (?!), so i ended up with a jacob instead, which i am now realizing is ridiculously common. so we’ve taken to calling him “lumpy” instead :)
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My son’s nickname is Lumpy also!! He hit his head ALL the time when he was little. Bumps and bruises everywhere. And it didn’t seem to phase him when he did it! So by the age of 2 we were calling him Lumpy more than by his first name!
and that is exactly why we call our jacob lumpy! :)
Our only requirement for names was that it couldn’t be on the Top 100 list. Lo & behold, our 2nd child’s name is now at like 101, and only trending up. Sigh.
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I am always getting the “one L or two L’s” question with my name!
We picked our son’s name straight out of a baby book – pick book up at bookstore, open book at bookstore, flip straight to boy names, landed on ‘Z’ and hey, Zayn is nice! It’s Arabic (husband’s family is originally from Libya) but sounds ‘universal’ and it’s one syllable. Our criteria was simple, something easy to pronounce and to spell! It’s not too common where we live either :-)
I think we’re going to be in trouble with a second child, because I doubt there are many unusual, but simple names left for us to pick from. It’d probably be another blind stab in the baby book!
By the way Jill, I love the name Evan. So much so, I recently suggested it to a friend who’s expecting her 2nd boy!
Thanks! It’s not a bad name, just not one I ever thought of before.
I live in Quebec and am married to a Portuguese man. When we had our daughter, we had to come up with something that was bilingual French and English and pronounceable by someone Portuguese. Right away, I eliminated all girls’ names ending in -a (yeah, most of them, I know). Why? Because in Quebec French, names that end in -a end up sounding horrible, something like -aw. Sarah becomes Sar-aw, sort of (I can’t really reproduce how it sounds, you have to hear it). Anyway, I hate that.
Plus I didn’t want to make up a name, because I think that’s just stupid. I don’t feel the need to saddle my kid with some horrible moniker just to be “original.”
So from the limited pool of names that was left, the only one my husband and I both liked and that fit all our criteria was Emilie. Yeah, I know, one of the most common, but I don’t care. It’s a classic, it’s elegant, and it suits my girl to a T.
I had to name Dom after my husband, Greg, but I COULDN’T bring myself to call him that so we nicknamed our last name as a compromise. But every time Greg tells him of his true name, I shudder. I got bitchin’ names out of the girls as a result. But we fought so much over names, it was a miracle I didn’t miscarry all of them.
(I really do love the name Benjamin though….)
But both names totally fit them now! Ben is especially a Ben. I couldn’t imagine him named anything else. Evan could have done with a more mischevious name, but it works for him!
Ben is a Ben.
I really ought to stop calling Evan “Evvie” now. It’s becoming a bit much.
For the first year of Ben’s life, I called him “Chubbs,” do you remember that? Way to give a kid a complex!
Totally agree – time to move on from the “Evvie.” I forgot about Chubbs. But my mom was called Plumpy when she was little and I am still Woscht (german for plump sausage).
There is a book out there called “Don’t Name Your Baby” by David Narter. SOOOO Funny! In the book my name conjures images of an old well worn vinyl recliner. HA HA HA. He has section on “devils”names and trailer park names. Just way funny and to be read for entertainment. :)
Jill! Those are good, solid names. I agree boys’ names are hard. And . . . normally I wouldn’t discuss names I don’t like but since it’s your blog and not mine I’m going for it. I think a “boring” solid boys name will serve the guys better when they’re adults as opposed to the brigade of Brayden/Jayden/Peyton/Hayden etc which all sound slightly unmasculine to me. And by slightly I mean VERY. I love the name Gabe, too, alas–my niece is Gabriella. Just won’t work.It’s the same name.
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Yes, agreed. I was very concerned with how their names would serve them later in life. People don’t always seem to consider that.
My first was easy. Rather it was a boy or a girl we were going to call her Bailey. Luckily she was a girl so it sounds super cute and girly. The second we decided on Hayden. Too bad Hayden decided to be a girl. So as a last minute change I named her Emma Lynn. My last child was the hardest to convince my husband of. He wanted a Jr., but i refused to call my sweet baby boy Richard Dale!!!! I won by convincing my husband that since he is such a die hard LA Dodgers fan that we should name him Dodger. Now its an amazing name that everyone loves.
Love the name Dodger!
That’s a great story!
My youngest daughter is Emma Lynn.. too funny!
I had my first four children quite young and my ex wouldn’t let me name them anything ‘stupid and outlandish’, by which he meant original or interesting. I ended up with Michael Robert (Michael for a friend that died in a car accident while I was pregnant), Amy Elizabeth, Daniel Terence (Terence for my Dad who I found out was terminally ill just weeks before I gave birth) and Joshua Zachary.
I ‘inherited’ twins when I married my lovely husband (we have custody). He’d named them when, after weeks of them being called Baby A and Baby B, his ex had still refused to come up with anything. So I got a Lillian Siobhan and Beulah Delenn (Delenn being a character from his beloved ‘Babylon 5′).
We then went on to have a son and were completely stumped for names. The whole time I was pregnant he was called Fred. We finally agreed that we loved the name Caleb, but what about a middle name? The kids decided that it was only fair that they had an input, you wouldn’t believe some of their suggestions, most of which were from the U.S. tv show ‘Charmed’. We ended up with Wyatt (Piper and Leo’s son, for those of you that watch ‘Charmed’). Caleb Wyatt it was….and it really suits him.
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Um, Charmed is my favorite show ever. I once named a puppy Wyatt after Piper and Leo’s baby, so that was out. I did consider P names as a tribute to the P3. Jeff didn’t go for it.
We had Zoe picked out for the Girl Child but made a game day decision and she turned to be Emma Ruby. Then the Boy. Well, the husband decided it was his choice, and since I flatly denied his ultimate choice of Akira Dean Jeffrey Price (based on his favorite graphic novel), the boy is Dean Jeffrey – Dean for Dean Moriarty from On the Road, and Jeffrey for his dad, tradition in his family. Someday that kid will thank me.
My husband enjoyed picking out names I would vito- like
Alexander Keith (beer)
Samuel Adams (beer)
Abigail Leanne (say it fast – sounds like abigalien)
Our pick for a boy kept coming back to Zeke (Ezekiel for a full name) and Abigail Lynn for a girl
We now have a Zeke :)
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Great story. When it came to naming my kids I wanted to pick unique names because when I was growing up I had 4 other Jenny’s in my class. I named my daughter Jade and named my son Cobain.
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This is so funny! It took us 12 years to conceive so we had years to work on the names. We only have one boy and it was hard but we finally did it. We wanted one Bible name, one original/hot rod name, and one cowboy name. Yeah, go figure. So we have a Caleb Blaze Colter then our last name. Although I don’t like the order. I had it Blaze Caleb Colter in the hospital but second guessed myself over the order when everyone kept saying Blaze was weird and he would be made fun of and blah freakin blah. I still want to switch it because I cannot stand common names and every time we go somewhere they call his name Caleb and I cringe because there is probably going to be 4 others in there with the same name. I always say, I am sorry he goes by Blaze. I am seriously thinking of still switching it. I wonder how much that costs.
Doesn’t cost too much to change a name. A couple hundred dollars at the most.
Oh, and Blaze totally suits him. He never stops and everyone loves it. Go figure, even the old people think it is neat. *sigh* I can never win. We do have a girl’s name picked out also but it may never happen and the name I LOVE is becoming over used.
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That is SUCH a cool name.
Thanks! We like it!
Shana Putnam recently posted..Letters of Intent
Blaze IS a wickedly awesome name, man.
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Our name choices where severly limited by my husbands last name, it is flemish slang for ‘testicles’ . One of the many reasons I stick to my maiden name…
I wanted to name the first Lilly, but my husband objected and so she became Anne
You are HILARIOUS! I love the name Lily (was going to use that for a female Golden but we got a male and went with Bowie…a far less attractive name), and Benjamin is my nephew’s name, so you were right to feel on the track with those. Evan is…more interesting. But I get your point. Boys’ names are harder than girls’; when we were at it my husband and I came up with loads of poetic girls’ names but where I went with boy poetry, my husband was convinced was too soft. We joked about Cosmo but ultimately went with Dillon, a common name with an uncommon spelling; the best we could do given our creative differences. So I hear ya, sister. It ain’t an easy gig, baby naming, and I think you did just fine, especially with 3!
i know, huh?
my sons name was decided exactly the way it should have been but my daughters was a rush decision. she was born at 28wks, 1lb 12oz, and we didn’t really think that we had much time to decide. but with that being said, she fits her name but it was not one that i had “planned. ;)
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I had a hard time naming my daughter. I wanted Hannah but her dad’s uncle had a dog named Hannah. I wanted Isabelle, but my mom swore she would call her Izzy – blech. So she is Ahna. And I love her name.
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I. Hear. You.
My first born… Lilly. We knew long before ever getting pregnant that she would be Lilly. We debated a little on the spelling, but even that was a relatively easy decision.
Then… got pregnant with a boy.
Boys are hard.
When people ask how we chose HER name, we have a beautiful story combining family names and parental instinct and love. For HIS name… literally all I can say is, “yeah, you know, we didn’t hate it.”
He’s Zackary. Zac for short. ALL I could do to make myself love it is eff with the spellings. You know, just to really piss of his teachers.
Oooh gotta love the name game! With my first I wanted to name him something classic, old Irish like Callum pronounced Cal-um. The hubbs wanted a cool new name, Dash (damn you incredibles!). Once our boy came “running” out of my virginia, we knew he would forever be Dash. Not a nickname, that is his actual given name, Dash Camron (after the hubbs). Now pregnant with my daughter I KNEW I wanted to name her something….timeless. Stella undecided middle name is what we are going with now.
I LOVE the name Dash, seriously, how awesome is that. You really rock!
I know and the name fits him perfectly. My son doesn’t know how to walk-only run! I wish I would’ve named him, gotobedearlyandsleepin or something more productive… haha!
Thank you for that laugh! Perhaps that should have been Charli’s name as well!
I seriously wasn’t thinking when I named my 2nd daughter Jordan. Not only is it a unisex name but there are 5 Jordan’s living less than 1/8th of a mile from us and all go to the same school. Out of the 5 only 1 is a boy. My 1st daughter’s name is hyphenated (like Tiffany-Amber) but everyone drops the second name and only calls her by the 1st which drives her and me crazy.
With my son, Devin, it was the only name I’d ever loved, easy peasy.. With my daughter, it was impossible. My name is a masculine name spelled in a feminine way, and my husband insisted we do that with our little girl. I wanted to name her after my father who died while I was pregnant, but I absolutely hated the name Billie because I had worked with a girl who was a drug addict with that name (who names their kid something that will always remind them of something that horrible, but who DOESN’T name their kid after their own father who had just passed). I liked Danni (Or Danica) and my husband liked Charli.. After months of throwing the three around, I gave up, I just could not decide. I told my husband and son to name her. She’s Charli. I love it, but still feel a bit guilty for not naming her Billie.
Lily is in the top of my baby names for a girl right now. I ADORE it. I also love the boys names, and am having a hard time coming up with names to love for our baby-to-be. Maybe it’s a girl and it won’t be so stressful! xo
Jill, as always, you make me laugh till my sides hurt. We had a similar dilemma after finding out I was “KNOCKED UP” :O) when our only son was 11! OY! We had never thought we would ever have to come up with any names. And, since we didn’t know, or WANT to know, if the newest addition was a boy or girl, we had a lot of thinking to do. The hardest was that, unfortunately, we had 4 important people to name the baby for (as you know, in the Jewish tradition, you honor people by naming your kids for them). Sadly, my dad, my mother-in-law, my grandmother and my dear Great aunt all had passed away. So, the discussion began almost as soon as I stopped peeing on the stick. My mother-in-law’s name, like mine, was Phyllis, and we knew the baby’s 1st name would be for her. I loved the name Phoebe, but, with Friends, and Lisa Kudrow’s brilliant portrayal, I couldn’t, in good conscience, name my daughter Phoebe without assuming she’d be nuts! (Turns out, I SHOULD have named her Phoebe!) Then we talked about Faith, which we didn’t LOVE and finally, gratefully, wound up with Paige. It was simple, sounded nice with our last name, wasn’t too babyish or trendy, was original enough without someone having to ask her “WHAT KIND OF NAME IS THAT?!” every time she told them her name and, more important, since I still, after 43 years, have to spell my friggin’ name EVERY time, didn’t want something hard to spell. OY! That being said, we then had to pick a middle name…..that was easy. Then, the more we talked about it, we couldn’t come up with a decent boy name……Which was a good thing!
I almost named my named my youngest daughter Lily but we decided to go with something slightly different instead. When I was pregnant we tried to come up with boys names but couldn’t find anything good – thankfully both my kids were girls.
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Names are soo hard.. boys names are even worse. I have all my girl names picked out, but boy names – we have a few picked but I’m not sure I “love” any of them.
I love hte name Lily though.. And Ben and Evan are nice boy names – :) Really.. And, I’m sure the kids don’t care – no one really thinks about their name – it’s just a name they’ve always had. :)
I have to disagree…I used to HATE HATE HATE my name when I was growing up!!! Both Amanda and Mandy. Now, of course everyone who is familiar with me still calls me Mandy, which I don’t care for as much, but I do actually like Amanda.
My husband and his parents/brothers have names that all start with the name ‘K’, and I wanted to follow that so it really helped in narrowing down the selection. I was stuck on “Kameron” even for a few weeks after my son was born, but my husband thought that was too common and chose Kole – middle name Alexander. I also loved the name Julian, and Matthias (as a middle name maybe), and I saw a movie once where this man’s name was Jourdain (French), which I thought was beautiful but still masculine. I seemed to have forgotten all about it while pregnant!, but it wouldn’t go well with Kole, anyway. Keira or Kamryn were in my brain if it was a girl… and I love Olivia, but our last name begins with a W – so her initials would be KOW. Not as bad as GAS I guess, but still high potential for taunts!
We didn’t have a name for our son until he was four days old. My mother was mortified that everyone kept asking her what his name was and we didn’t have one. It’s traumatic to think, “THIS is his identity for the REST OF HIS LIFE.” Pressure.
We finally settled on Finnegan James and four years ago it was really uncommon until Glee went and fucked that up.
We’re now desperately trying to come up with a name that doesn’t suck for our baby girl who is due in a couple months.
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Apparently, when I was busy being gestated (um, my mom was preggo with me) she had picked the name Joie or Joey out for me. I guess people thought that sounded too “boyish” and it should be my nickname. So literally on her way to the hospital, THAT song came on. Dolly Parton. Jolene. So that is my “real” name, but no one calls me that. Some people don’t even know it.
I think for my kids when I have them someday I like the names Alexander, Grayson (girl or boy), Dale or Dayle (girl or boy) and I really like Harlow. But who knows…!
For the record, picking boy names is insanely hard. I couldn’t agree more with that plight. When we were picking out names for our first, my husband went crazy.
Dax.
Espen (get it? ESPN?).
Devon (actually nothing wrong with this one, only…it’s not my fave).
I remember going through 12 hours of active labor and having him keep trying for the Espen (this was after he asked me to compare labor to an ear ache). After going back and forth, we put our top 5 in a hat and just drew a name that way. I think my son was just meant to be a Jackson the moment I saw him, so that worked out well!
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Oh I love your kid’s names. I bet they are quite perfect for them. Perfect. xoxo
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Trevor William, James Terryn, and Samuel Grant (all middle names are family names). I tried to get us to call my second JT, but it hasn’t stuck. “My name is James!” Dangit. But Sam – he has nicknames out the wazoo. Samboni, Secret Agent Sam, Samalander, Hot Sam & Cheese, Sir Sam-a-lot, Sambuca, Moons over my Sammy, etc. The list goes on and on. :)
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First pregnancy we had three names picked out – Caitlyn Elizabeth or Morgan Jean for a girl and Connor Laird for a boy. We had a Scottish last name , so I wanted Irish,Scottish or Gaelic first names with them.
The girl names came quickly, the first names are unique to the family with the middle names being the names of our mothers. I wasn’t crazy about Morgan Jean though. The boys name took months of talking. I wanted Pierce or Hunter or Luke(yes I am a star wars fan). We could only agree on the one boys name Connor and a middle name was even harder. Finally I used the Scottish term for Lord – Laird. I wanted to spell it Llaird but got outvoted. My ex didn’t want a junior, I would have as my brother is a junior and I like that tradition. We had such a long list of boys name we couldn’t use as either they had been used in the family too many times – David, John, Gerald, Tom etc.
When DD was born I held her and said there’s my Caitlyn, since I really didn’t like Morgan Jean LOL. Her initials are the same as her paternal grandfather’s, her middle name is from my family and Caitlyn is spelled with lyn instead of lin as my middle name is evelyn and I thought lyn looked more feminine.
If I had another child – not possible but I am lobbying for a grandchild to be named this when the time comes – I would name a girl Emma-Sophia.
My daughter is Caitlyn Elizabeth. I love it but hate how common it is now. I never heard Caitlyn, even went to a baby book that was 5 years old so she wouldn’t have a common name like I did. There are at least 6 Caitlyn’s in her grade. However they always spell her’s wrong because of the C and the lyn. Most are spelled with a K and the C’s end in lin. She wishes she had a less common name.
Funny .. one of my boys has a middle name of Gabriel and the other has the middle name of Julian. Good taste, Jill! Sorry those didn’t work out for you. Middle names is as close as I got. Unfortunately, my EX-husband got to choose their first names. Then I got remarried and my new husband got to name our daughter after his favorite baseball team. No, her name isn’t “Cubs”, but her first name is Addison and last name Clark — the intersection of Wrigley Field. I had to have a fourth baby in order to name one all by myself. :-)
i have a zoe. my mom said if college doesn’t work out she can always be a stripper.
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I had three girls and I have to say I think boys names are far easier. I had a boy named picked out from the get go. Sawyer (yes after the hot dude on LOST.)
My husband loved 80′s girls names….Laura, Angela, Carrie. I love old tradiional names. So we settled on Caitlin, Julia and Rylie. Rylie was only thought of after we basically closed our eyes and pointed to a name on the 100 top name list five hours after birth. I mean we had just had two girls I was burnt out of girls names!
But I got to name their middle names which I LOVE…Emerson, Brynn and Claire.
And they all hate their names……wish they were something else.
I agree, I had a much easier time with boy’s names. We each made a list of about 20 names and picked the ones that matched and there ya have it. We never ended up using the boy’s name we picked, but whatever.
We fought for a long time over girls names, so much so that when it can time for our 4th daughter’s name battle I totally just let him go for it. In the delivery room when they were filling out her paperwork, they asked her name and I said “I don’t know, go ask Dad”, lol! In fairness, I did just spend the last 15 hours in a pitocin induced labor with no pain meds and I was STARVING because I hadn’t eaten in nearly 24 hours. He picked Rylee McKenna Jade. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it. I fought hard for Brynn or Brynnlee, but no luck. At least if she tells me later on that she hates it I can blame her Dad. :)
Ohh, Sawyer is such a GREAT name, hot dude from LOST or not!
Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting recently posted..Partner-in-Grime™ Wanted
Boys names are tough, and like you, I probably have a list of a few dozen girl names I like. We chose Soren for the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard–I remember reading him in college and liking the name (I’d be damned if I could remember much of what he wrote now–I’m so shallow). Unfortunately the name’s meaning perfectly describes my son–”severe”.
I’m due in July with my next child, whom we think is a boy (the ultrasound wasn’t entirely revealing, feet covering the important parts), but I’m still stumped about names. I like Jude, but am not in love with any names really. I was really hoping to have an Ingrid instead. Who knows, maybe I still will!
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Oh gosh, Soren is a BEAUTIFUL name, K!!
Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting recently posted..Partner-in-Grime™ Wanted
I could type on forever when it comes to names – I’ll try to keep it brief. I think girls names are ‘easy’ – boys names? NOT so much. We have a Lilliana – after my great grandmother + great aunt both of which I was super close to Lillian + Julia = Lilliana.Just it’s just adding an a for Julia, but that’s how I got there. I had NO idea Lily / Lilly/ etc was going to be so freaking popular. How we spell it just ‘came about’ and it’s a giant pain in the ass – especially with the addition of the fact that we have a ridiculous last name. I call her L, but I’m alone in that. And no, of course I didn’t expect her to spell her first name with a letter… we aren’t rock stars, I was thinking Elle? I don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway the nickname never really took – it’s just me and one-two loyal friends. Now we’re on baby two and my husband is giving more share to the voting process. The problem is, I have so many other rules around names, my husband is pretty much scared of me.
EX: I LOVE the name Luella – but I HATE the sound of “Lilli & LuLu” It’s like we’re allergic to using more than 2 letters in a name.
I have a few more months to figure it out – but I’m with you – this whole naming responsibility is a lot to handle.
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Oh it’s like you are reading my mind. With our first we had a name picked right away, something outside the box, but not so weird that he would be made fun of. Edison it is…perfect!
Then came number two and I had my heart set on a girl and had the PERFECT girl name picked out – Larkin Grace – ahhhh beautiful. Then we saw a penis on the ultrasound and that ended that. It took us FOREVER to find our second son’s name. I wanted the Archer or Asher or Vaughan kind of thing…just something different, but not CRAZY. We were watching HGTV and the husband’s name who was doing the yard makeover, was Grant and that was it. My second son was named Grant after some random guy…of course now I’ve known at least a dozen people who have named their son Grant and even had the misfortune of having me and another mom respond when “Grant” was called at the doctor’s office. Uh-oh this could pose a problem for school. :-(
BTW – Grant’s middle name is Benjamin after his grandpa … Ben is a VERY nice name indeed :-)
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We have 3 kids, daughter is Emily MichelleI wanted to name her Hannah or Gracie but hubby didnt like those names. Every year there are 4 or 5 emilys on the same softbal team so she is stuck with Emily A. Our oldest son is Coy Eli, I love his name there is only one other boy in the school with the same name. The youngest is Samuel Cole, Sam for short, but every one calls him Sam am I or Sam the ham and it drives him and me crazy. I wanted to name him Cole or Jake but we never could agree on a middle name.
I do have a Gabriel. And its a good thing I decided to only have one child because I love love love the name and it was the only name I ever thought about using. Funny thing is that I don’t know why I originally liked it so much or where I even heard it to begin with. I just always knew he was going to be Gabriel.
My first is Ben (Benjamin) and it’s just SO him. I couldn’t possibly think of another name for him. But K’s name? I like it but I’m not IN LOVE with it. But my husband was and I did choose her middle name and it’s my mom’s middle name so… I guess you could say we compromised.
All this to say, I kinda understand. ;)
Would you choose different names for your boys now? If so, what would they be? Just curious…
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I don’t know that I would, that’s the problem! I can’t think of them as anything other than their names now, you know?
Boy names are waaaay harder than girl names. It’s ok if a girl name is cutesy, but boy names must be masculine and tough, but sophisticated as well. You don’t want him to be a Bubba who gets in bar brawls, but you don’t want him to be a wuss who is afraid to get dirty. I fell in love with the name Rowan, and basically told my husband that his name will be Rowan, unless he can come up with something better. He hasn’t yet – so his name will be Rowan (due June 15!). But gosh, it’s hard!
Names! Names! never was there so much emotion and contraversy as naming a child.
We kept it a secret until my little guy was born. everyone knew he was a boy and they guessed for 9 long months.
Ryan Killian –
Ryan=husbands/dads middle name
Killian=means little Kelly, husbands first name.
but I was not in love with the name Killian, I said I would absolutly kill anyone who knicknamed him killer. I would take legal action and change his name.
now I dreamed about if he had been a girl. I would have named her Lilyanna Rose. Lilyanna, not Lily, not ana, not Lily Anna. but Lilyanna. and Rose for my beloved grandmother who raised me. Roselyn.
I always wanted a boy named Zachary…then my SIL took that name!
I tried to keep the Z and thought maybe Zoe for a girl…but hubs had Maggie in mind…not that he was thinking of his grandmother, or my grandmother (both named Margaret) but the SIMPSONS Maggie!!!
We ended up with Maggie, but told him he could never tell that it was because of the cartoon…but a loving tribute to family….that’s our story and we are stickin’ to it! ;)
BTW-I like the names you chose-they fit well.
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Naming boys IS hard. I finally decided on Hunter (family name) and was worried it sounded too fancy. However, one of my besties advised that if i wanted to name my son after the most famous gay porn star in history, then so be it. My bff told me it sounded white-trashy. And, here i was worried it was too haughty-sounding.
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Just had this exact discussion on twitter this week. Was talking about how I didn’t like boys names and that they seemed harder to pick. I was completely trolled out and was told that I insulted her kids with this. Um. actually I didn’t. Soooo, I have two boys. Braden and Tegan. For Tegan, I still look at him and think he should have been a Grant. And I mostly call Braden and Tegan “B and T.” I really should have saved my effort and just shot for the Alphabet.
We ended up with William as our oldest, because we were stuck with “Vincent” as a family middle name (gag, I hate Vincent, but it’s only the middle name). Not much goes with it – hence William. I like it well enough, and he goes by Will.
If I ever had another boy, I was dead set on Douglas James (with James being my father’s name). Yet, when I was actually pregnant with #2, I kept dreaming about the name Colin. However, I worked with a Colin, so didn’t think about it too closely, since that would be creepy. My co-worker ended up switching offices, so I allowed myself to think about it. At about 8mos, I still can’t get DH to discuss first names (he did agree to James for the middle), and mention Douglas and Colin. He says he hates them both, but can’t come up with anything better. At 38wks, finally get him to flip through a baby name book, and he STILL can’t find anything he likes.
3 days later I’m in for an emergency c-section, and he STILL doesn’t have any names he likes, so asks me what my choices were again. Then, for the next two days, he starts polling all the nurses on if they like Douglas or Colin better. Nothing like having strangers decide the fate of your child. (For the record, the older nurses liked Douglas and the younger ones liked Colin.) He finally decided he liked Colin better (I concurred), and then he proceeded to call the baby “Connor” for a few weeks. Oy.
my husband said I could name our son whatever I wanted for a first name, but we had to use LeRoy (french for the king, pronounced leRoy not Lee Roy)for the middle name like every other boy in the family.
then he vetoed all the first names I came up with.
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Initials can definitely be a problem with baby names. My mother wanted to name my brother after her father by giving him the middle name Samuel. If you think GAS would’ve been bad, my brother would’ve been ASS! Needless to say, his middle name is not Samuel or any name starting with S.
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My husbands last name is 13 letters and VERY German~ we had to be careful& considerate of our children w/ that long name (& their birth certificates are actually hyphenated w/ my last name as well but I don’t torture them(yet)) I also had a grand idea that I wanted NO names that could/would be shortened (ie:nicknames are not my thing if your name is Eleanor I will not be calling you Ellie anytime in your life). I adore my sons name still. . .I adore my little one’s name (took us one day after she was born to name her). Funny enough SHE does not like her name& tells me to call her by her middle name all the time(my grandmothers name which I like but do not love). My daughter’s name I struggled w/ until she was 5 – we changed thespelling of her name legally& I’m happier- but she definitely was not a” ___” right off but more~grew into it? So yes, names are hard!
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Lol I remember through my whole pregnancy thinking of a name for my son… I thought of many and finally decided that his name was going to be Aaron but after and enless difficult labor my son came to this world and I was ask what the baby’s name was going to be and out of no where came Daniel Anthony… the name Aaron was totally forgotten, but what is strange is tha I keep calling my son Kevin and he is 16!
Cole Joshua is boy #1- means victory of the people. Needed a 1st name to go with the 2nd name Michael for #2 (husbands dad’s name) so went for the 2 archangels. His name is Gabriel Michael. Funny thing is his godmother has 2 boys named Gabriel & Michael & he’s born on his godfather’s birthday! Just meant to be.
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I adore my girls names. I picked them. The first months before and the second, the day after she was born not a boy like they had told me.
With my son though? I let my ex-husband honor both his grandfathers. Which is fine. It’s a good, solid boys name. It fits him. But I still look at him sometimes and think…man the name I wanted would have fit him too.
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I like our kids’ names, but dang have they become popular. And, poor Isabelle always gets called Isabella! Drives me crazy.
Our last name has one syllable, so it ruled out so many names because they didn’t go. Or sounded like a monument.
Names are hard. Boy names are even harder!
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I feel your pain………I have 2 girls and with my first there was no question about what to name her, Skyla Jade, but the problem is I named her both my favs at the same time never thinking about what if I have another. With my second, my husband and I of course couldn’t agree on any names and for the whole nine months it seemed she would be nameless. See, I would have named her Jade and that was one thing we did agree on….bummer!!! So about a week before her arrival we were tossing around the name Alexa but I still wasn’t sold. My favs were Jasmine or Mia and then of course you have all that outside influence with all their 2 cents. MAN! IT’S CONFUSING ENOUGH THANKS BUT NO THANKS!!! Anyway, her name is Alexa Rayne and I’m in love with her but not her name. I totally agree with someone’s comment that they should give us at least 3 months before we choose, so we don’t feel pressured into picking just anything. She’s 7 months old now and I thought well maybe it’ll grow on me and maybe she is a little Alexa but I have to say she just isn’t.
When I was pregnant with my first I was convinced she was a boy and had her name picked out from the very beginning, James David (after my dad and my husband). Whenever anyone would bring up girl names I would just say, “Oh it doesn’t matter. Emily I guess. But we aren’t having a girl.” Cut to the ultrasound. It’s a girl! {gasp}
We were sitting at lunch when I busted out crying (thank you pregnancy hormones) and sobbed, “her name isn’t Emily….” Of course my husband consoled me the best he could and assured me we could pick out another name. Which was basically impossible. Finally my mother suggested Cady (rhymes with lady and is my MIL’s maiden name). I fell in love. I really like names that I feel have meaning and honor family members so she was named after my MIL and my grandmother, Cady Frances.
Three years later I got my little James David. Through the whole pregnancy my daughter called him Baby James. Guess what? It stuck. Now ALL of the kids at the daycare call him Baby James and I fear it will stick with him for quite some time.
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Our first son was named after my husband’s father. I did not like it at first – could not imagine calling a little baby “Carl” which to me is such an old man name. First year I called him everything but his name. I mostly called him “Peanut” or “Weenut”. Now since he is older (age 9), he has more than grown into his name (although I still call him Wee or Nut). Our second born was named after my dad, William but for his middle name we chose Jacks (when he was in my tummy, Carl kept refering to him as baby Jacks and it kinda stuck). He is called by his middle name, Jacks, which I know will be confusing later in life when he is called William by teachers. Some folks have called him Jackson thinking Jacks was short for that. Or they have called him Jack, leaving off the “s”. But the name suits the child, Jacks is a fun name and this child is fun to the max! :)
I *love* the names Benjamin and Lily. I’m sort of neutral on Evan, but it sounds like you are, too (the name, of course, not the bearer of it).
We have a perfect boy’s name picked out, should we someday have a son, but I feel we already blew our wad on our daughter’s name – which we adore – if we have a second girl. We, too, may wind up in the “eh” pile on that one.
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My cousin’s first two were both named with B’s, Brenden and Breanna. When she had her third they still hadn’t decided on names, finally after 24 hrs the hospital told her either she comes up with a name or they send him home with the name Male. When I explained to her that they were going to actually put that on his birth certificate she quickly decided that Juan Manuel was going to be his name. It’s amazing how quickly you can come up with a name under pressure, lol.
I have an Ethan and an Evan. And an Owen. And the husband is Aaron. It’s confusing around here.
Aaron wanted to name one of the girls Benjamin Gabriel if they’d been a boy- but I vetoed it. Both names are fine- but together you’ve got Ben Gay.
And one of my girls is a Lili, which for us is short for Olivia.
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Ben Gay LOL!!!
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I very much believe I was whispered my first birns and I love it…. Until we were told (after naming) he shared a name with my parents dogs best friend, but Angus or Gus he remains. Second son was far more difficult, a girl was desired (ooh the guilt) but my mum suggested a name that we had banded around. It was only after declaring his name I realised Joshua was named after my parents dog – yes the one with the best friend called Angus! Finally third son was Barney and his named was agreed before birth… Only for my dad to turn up to say, yes you guessed it, he knew a dog named Barney! Love all the names though!
My mothers parents couldn’t decide while they were in the hospital so “baby” was her name on her birth certificate. She was named Nancy a couple months later but they didn’t take care of the official records, so when she got married she had to change not only her maiden name but also her first name, baby.
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Nobody puts Baby in the corner.
We did a two-namer: John Landon. I think it actually fits the masculine and beautiful at thr same time criteria. I love it.
I have Avery Charlotte and Isabel Rose and I adore their names and they suit them so well. Isabel is after my great grandmother, of course we keep getting things with the name Isabelle or Isabella on them…
I am now 9 weeks with #3 and for a boy I’ve decided on Rhys Collin! My husband wants Elise for a girl, after The Cure song, and I’m very meh about it… He also wanted Ronald Chandler III for a boy… NO!!
I’m really hoping its a boy because I love the name I have picked and I have no ideas for another girls name. I have a list for middle names: Saoirse, Siobhan, Tiernan, Niamh… I like Gaelic names but for a first name I want something easier to pronounce. People rarely can pronounce my first name and it got very annoying in school.
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My son’s name is Savalas. My mother in law named my husband Telly Savalas, after Kojak, but he didn’t want a junior, so his middle name is my son’s first name. I wanted to name him Horatio :)
My husband picked our daughters name: Amelia, after his dad’s step-mom, whom he adored. I picked the middle name, which is my last name.
Our choice for a boy’s name was Matthew Wallace; Matthew is my husband’s middle name, Wallace was his grandfather’s name. He passed before our daughter was born and we wanted to honor him.
Side note: My mom, her siblings and her parents all had the same initials: JP… good times….
Caryl
Hi! I just started reading. I’m new to your blog.
If my family gave me problems about owing them a family name I would tell them where to stick their opinions. I believe that no one should have a say in naming a baby except the woman who squeezes it out of her vagina. I’m pregnant now with my first and my husband doesn’t like the names I’ve picked, but I told him he’ll get used to it after a while. My mom hates my baby names the most. She thinks I’m crazy.
But I think that Ben and Evan are great names! Evan is really nice I think. I don’t know of any Evans personally. I do know some Bens though. I think that kids grow into names, and maybe those are the names they were meant to have to fit their personality. I was supposed to be a boy and my mom was going to name me Jordan for a boy, and when I turned out being a girl she couldn’t think of a J name that she liked so she ended up saying, “What the hell, we’ll just call her Jordan anyway.” And now everyone says they can’t imagine me with a different name. I’m definitely a Jordan.
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lol G.A.S.
love your honesty woman.
you are the best’est
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Well, I work in a high school and during my pregnancy my husband would bring up names and I would be like “oh, he’s a bad kid”, “no way, he’s a pain in the ass” etc. We decided on Colin because of a tv show and also the Colin’s I knew from school weren’t too bad.
But we also had to pick a back up name…actually I had to have the back up name because what if he didn’t look like a Colin. All of my pets names had evolved into other names growing up too so I thought I was doomed: chiquita to kitty to caracas, snowball to fluff to fatty, quasar to nuts…totally appropriate btw for my giant balled hamster.
My back up was Caleb…for a very artistically talented student of mine that year… but I’m so glad we stuck with Colin. It so fits him and I wouldn’t have it any other way now.
Being a preschool teacher, I can totally relate. With my firstborn, my husband had no real say in her name. I had decided when we first got married that if we ever had a girl, her name would be Madeline (pronounced as Lynn) Ruth. The middle name was my grandmother’s. We debated lots of boy names but didn’t need them. When I was pregnant a second time, all bets were off. We agreed on a boy’s name (Vincent Xavier) but could not come up with another girl’s name. Every name my husband suggested I immediately vetoed because of a child I had taught. When she was born, we finally agreed on Sophie Grace (as it turns out, that is her only grace.) After struggling to get her to write her name, I think I should have named her Olivia; such easy letter formation with no long squiggly snakes in place of an S.
Oh we are going to have the same issue – both my husband and I are high school teachers. We are “putting off” having our first for another year, but are already throwing around names. It is freakin’ HARD when you are around so many kids all the time. We had a few names that we both love and I have started to back off on both of them. He keeps telling me that our kids won’t be like the ones we know from work, but every time I see one of the girls I can’t help but think ‘my child better not be like you!’ Awful, I know. I’m also trying to convince myself that calling them by a shortened name and not their full name will help out too. :)
My parents barely caught the initials on my sister… KKK. They changed that pretty quick.
we had the hardest time with girl names because my husband was so difficult. Everything was too sexy or trashy…and our last name is Waligora which is so fumbly sounding I felt like all of our kids needed simple clean cut names…
the girls are Hope and Brooke, the boys are Blake and Jack…
and sometimes I do wonder if I named them right
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Well, I love the name Evan! But I agree that it’s funny to look back and go where did that name come from, because I did the same thing with my first daughter Courtney. She was supposed to be Christina. I practiced calling her both Courtney and Christina while I was pregnant and Christina just didn’t click. Now I know why. It just wouldn’t have gone with her personality – tomboy, athletic, etc. She IS a Courtney. I think somehow our kids are named FOR us and we just think we named them. Who knows?
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Naming our kids was easy:
Moe, Larry, Curly and Shirley.
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Interesting…I knew as soon as I knew for sure I was prego the name of my son’s. Both of them (although, to be honest – the second was to be named “the family name” grrr…he is the IV..when does the madness end?)
I even had a girl name – just in case, but really – I knew from DAY ONE with both that they would be boys – and man – i threw some wild girl names out to my conservative in-laws. Sunshine? Sunday? Summer? They were a bit scared..
Thanks for sharing this one. I started reading and I thought, yep. Same thing here. I had a name picked for a girl. And a middle name. And I wanted it so bad I agreed my husband was to name our child, should we have a son. I never thought he would pick what he did. I tried so hard to change his mind, he would not budge. And I had nothing up my sleeve. My grandpa said name your son so he can one day become president. In the end I kept my promise. Could not have chosen a better name, fits him perfect. And then I read you wanted to name yours Julian. So there you go!
Then Husband had such profoundly awful ideas for names that we compromised: I chose the first, he chose the middle name. With our youngest child, his first pick was Athelstane, a “the coolest old English king.” I told him to go for the second-coolest monarch. Hence, Micah Eldred.
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My boys are 22, 21, 16……the 21 year old has a name that also has a female version. Little did we know that we apparently chose the female spelling. This fact has been pointed out to him ALL OF HIS LIFE. Hey, I was whacked out on major drugs after an emergency c-section, I blame my husband for not getting it right.
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Oh, Jill! You have no idea how much I needed this post right now! I’m 4 months pregnant w #1 and we’re so SCREWED on boys’ names. Girl names were easy. I said “how bout we name her after my grandma’s and call her Alicyn Catherine?” And he said “I love it!” But boy names are another story. Our last name is a first name and I like Parker, but we’re afraid that he’d constantly have his name reversed. I also like Xavier, Cole, Damien and Jaxson, but hubby wants more traditional names like Peter, James or Scott. I find out girl or boy next month, so I hope that its a girl so I can put off finding a boys name!
We all struggle so to choose the right names for children: a name that suits the itsy-bitsy baby that arrives, a name that a parent can call out loud in the playground, a name that will fit our children as they move into adulthood. Cross section all of that with competing traditions of family names, names that are popular at the time of their birth, the idea of originality in naming – and no wonder it’s a Rubik’s Cube of a problem! We named our eldest after my father, John, who died at 33, our daughter so that she could be a strong, professional woman (Carlin = little warrior!), and our youngest, Alexander, because we liked it. All that work, and then we called them by special nicknames for years: Little Man, Smunchie, Ax! Go figure.
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You want to know something funny? And quite sad? Benjamin was my boy dream name. It’s the one I always knew I would use. And then I married a Franklin and I knew that I could NOT use the name Benjamin. I had a horrible time naming my boys as well, but was happy with our choices in the end. My last son was named in the hospital while the nurses were cleaning him up. It was really that hard.
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Aww Lolli! LOL
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Naming your kids is so hard! We had issues when we found out we were having a boy. My husband was set on a few names and it was so hard arguing why Gaelyn would be an awful name for a baby. We settled on another name, which I like, but now his initals are SAW and has my husband convinced that the next one should have initials WOW or RAW. Sigh.
Naming our first was relatively easy – I knew that I wanted a Gracie and we wanted to name her after our Grandmothers so we settled on Helen Grace (it sounded better than the reverse) and we call her Gracie.
My son was a problem because my husband had all these crazy Irish names picked out and I was not going for that. So in the end he was born with no name and my husband was so panicked that he let me go with my first choice boy’s name (Owen Daniel) – the name he swore that he hated. We both love it now.
My third was tricky. While pregnant with my 1st we dediced that if we ever had another girl we would name her Alana Joy and call her A.J. The problem was that once I was pregnant and knew I was having a girl I decided that I didn’t like Alana anymore, but still really wanted the AJ part so we embarked on a 6 month battle of the A names. My husband even polled the people I work with because we were in such a bitter disagreement. My poor baby wasn’t named for 2 days because we continued to argue (as only 3rd time parents can) until finally he came back to see me in the hospital and I told him “fine we will go with your name”. And so we have our Ainsley Joy (AJ) which I now love. My pick was Addison – which is now everywhere and I would have been extremely annoyed!
I love the name Evan – totally would use that if I had another boy.
And I agree you have to think of every angle when picking names because I you know the kids they play with will!
So I refused to name my child till he was born, my husbands family has a tradition of J names and he was calling him James for months before he was born but in the end after he was born I settled on Lucas and the next day informed everyone (including my husband) of his name. To be fair though it was a name that had floted by in our quest for a name so he liked it as well it wasn’t a surprise name. I as well hadn’t realized how popular it was till after I named my son.
My husband is Ray — —- the Fourth, and so of course he was dead set on having a Ray the Fifth. ( I was and still am dead set against it.) After we found out I was pregnant, we frequently “discussed” this disagreement. One day in the midst of the normal arguing, a hormonal moment of smartassness caused me to asked if a baby girl would be worthy of inheriting any part of the family name or if she would be too inferior. He asked what I would recommend, and as the song “Umbrella” by Rhianna was on the radio, I replied “Ella Rae.” (If you don’t follow, just listen to the song.)
We now have a beautiful baby Ella Rae and a bs story we tell about how we both just liked the name Ella and wanted to carry on the family tradition in our own unique way.
We named my son Patrick Christopher Harvey Junior and decided to nickname him PJ. The deal was that if it was a girl I’d get to name her, if it was a boy, he did. Worst.Mistake.Ever. He named our son after himself but hasn’t been apart of our lives since my son was 6 months old. Every time someone asks what PJ stands for I blush because I can see the pity in their faces. I’m thinking a name change to “Patrick Joseph Christopher Harvey” is in order once I get the custody lawsuit over with. Fun times =)
Oh and Jill, the initial thing would have been a deal breaker for me too! Kids will find any way to tease each other in junior high and high school.
Love your kids’ names, Jill. These days, “boring” is the new interesting. Ben and Evan? Never boring. Always classic.
And my problem w/ baby names? Is getting my husband to agree to anything. And so by the time we’re done, I’m on my last option but done talking about it and so there it is.
I think this name thing should be God’s job…But guess even He would have some trouble at this department and we all be named after His saints…
My mother wanted for me a cartoon name. Fiona. Speaking of saints, St. Andrew’s day was close to my birth so I ended up Andreea.
The only thing I ll take into consideration before naming my baby will be a non-bullyind name. That’s it.
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We went through this too. The girl name was easy. Finding a boy name we both liked and that went with our last name, and was easy to yell across the playground was HARD – with both kids who turned out to be boys. I wanted names the kids would be able to easily find on personalized stuff in stores, because there’s nothing worse (at least in the 80′s) than not being able to get one of those cool license plates for your bike with your name on it. Initials couldn’t spell anything odd either. Mine did before I got married, and it was annoying growing up. The thing I am most glad we did was choose names that are easy to yell. My kids are constantly doing stupid crap and putting me in situations where I have to use all 3 names to get their attention. I swear everyone in the tristate area knows their names.
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Baby names will be the end of me. We’re expecting twin boys!!!!!!
All three of my kids are named after family members. I am happy with their names, but my poor boys have to go through life with Queen as their last name!
I never wanted my boys name, either. In fact I HATED it. I have always know that my first boy, should I have one, would be named Alexander Nicoli. My ex whined and complained, so now my Boy is Ian, the name of a booger-picking bully from fifth grade. Ah, well.
At any rate, we have an award for you! Thank you for always having that little extra!
I should have named mine “Thing 1″ and Thing 2″
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That -er really fucked you up! My best friend just had a baby 2 weeks ago and named him Asher! You can live vicariously through her! I LOVED the name Sadie for my whole life and always knew I wanted to use it. It was my grandmother’s name. My sister-in-law used it for her daughter’s middle name 3 years before we ever had kids. I was annoyed but when I got pregnant and out she came, I named her Sadie. It was my name to use after all damn it!!
Rachel {at} Mommy Needs a Vacation recently posted..Happy Birthday to my 1st Baby!
Names are hard. My name is Sarah. Growing up there were 5 Sarah’s in my class. We were numbered because three of us had the same last inital. So as I was daydreaming as a single girl about what I wanted to name my future children, I always LOVED the name Benjamin. Well then I married my husband whose last name is Franklin. I couldn’t have Ben Franklin. So because we were discussing names during March Maddness my husband got the idea that we would do a names bracket and send it out to our family and friends. I got final veto and choice of course. We went through 10,000 baby names and picked the top 16 that were our favorites and sent out the first bracket. Asked people to fill out their brackets and send them back. Each week we also accepted arguements for or aginst certain names. For instance my husband’s Aunt reminded 10 times that my husbands cousin (who I have never met) has a son named Samuel. Or a friend worried that someone would call my child ” Cooper the Pooper”. Kyle and I would make our choices and fill out our next round and email it out. It was a great way to let everyone air their opinion and get some great feedback that I wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.
I think the only reason that I haven’t had any “buyer’s remorse” over baby names is that we used family names. I sometimes regret not going with Eloise – but I’ve loved Eleanor since I was a teenager and deemed it, “the only decent family name” among the Olives and Hazels. I wanted Sebastian for George but Chris hated it. Then I wanted William. And because we didn’t know Eleanor was going to be a girl until a later sonogram, I looked for second boy name that would sound good with William. I e-mailed Chris, “what do you think of William and George?” And he responded, “I don’t like William, but I love George!” And – ta-da! – son #2 was named. We found out it was a family name later – but how could that be a surprise since EVERYONE has an ancestor named George… Although my father informed me that my great great grandparents were named George and Eleanor (weird).
Did any of that relate to your post? I’m not sure – I’m tired. But I do think that names are kind of a momentary thing. Like I would have picked a different wedding dress style if I got married this year. Or if I had a baby at age 15, I would have named it Jade. It all depends on “when” it happens. You choose a name for your baby, but then they grow up and make the name their own.
Kate Coveny Hood recently posted..On Farting and Aging
Joseph Daniel was named for my husband. We really call Daniel. I am so glad I loved the name.
JDaniel4′s Mom recently posted..Blissfully Domestic Helped My Community Shine
Completely miffed that she was entirely left out of the naming of our first daughter, my MIL started early in the pregnancy of my second with suggestions. They were all blended versions of her name (Clara Jean) and my Husband’s name (Marty). The top runners were Marta (I pointed out that is the name of the Atlanta subway system), Martean (WTF?), Mara (another WTF am I giving birth to a pony?) and Mean (as if kids are not cruel enough let’s start them out with amunition). There were a few more I have since lost track of but I remember telling my husband at least she will have her stripper name. We finally settled on Cassidy which was my maiden name. There were two screaming matches about that before I even left the hospital, she even hated the middle name.
Hahaha! Sorry, that was too funny! :P
I relate to you though, because my MIL WANTED HER MIDDLE NAME on MY BABY. What the..? SO, she would have her first name (a double name, as we chose), then my last name, then MY MIL’s and then my husbands? REALLY??? She bugged us (him, mostly) until the end. She started with me, asking “so what’s the name?”
I said “Emma Louise”,
She went “have you decide what the last name will be?”
I go “not yet, either mine las + his last, or only his last, so it doesn’t get too big and in my italian family, the tradition says the babies get only the dad’s last name, so it’s not like it’s smth out of this world to me”
She goes “you DONT WANT YOUR LAST NAME???”
I go “of course I’d like it, but I’m not sure if I want another baby with a long name”
(pause: my 1st son, of 1st marriage, got a double first name, my last name and his dad’s DOUBLE LAST NAME a swell!)
SO she goes “what about “XXX”? (HER maiden NAME)
I go “….no(???)… That one is out, we won’t go with it”
She freaks “BUT IT’S NY NAME!!!!”
I say “…yes… it’s YOUR name. The baby is having MY LAST NAME AND THE DAD’S LAST NAME. Because THAT is OUR FAMILY name”
She still freaks “But HE HAS THAT name as well!!!!!”
I say “…as a MIDDLE name… I can’t put YOUR name on my baby, it will be too long AND do you think I can leaved My MOM’S name out if I out yours? OR should I put everyon’es names on the baby? IMPOSSIBLE!”
Then she shut up……..Until the day she wrote my husband an e-mail, ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, AND BOLD, saying “DONT YOU THINK THE BABY SHOUDL HAVE MY NAME, YOU’RE MY ONLY SON AND I CANT PASS THE NAME ALONG AFTER YOU, IT HAS TO BE THROUGH YOUR BABIES, SHE DOESNT NEED TO USE THE NAME, JUST REGISTER IT, PLEASE??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?”
Need not to say, she never got a reply.
And the baby does NOT have her name!
(people go nuts!)
:)
Bruna recently posted..Qik – Tic Tacs are FUNNY! by Bruna Cirelli Aanestad
UGH; typos, sorry!
Bruna recently posted..Qik – Tic Tacs are FUNNY! by Bruna Cirelli Aanestad
I can so relate to this blog. Thank you! I think I’m a pretty great mom but this whole naming part–my word! It’s the hardest part!
When I was pregnant with my first, we came up with a very cool boy name (Josiah Quinn) but could not come up with a girl’s name. I had chosen not to find out what we were having so throughout labor I was in tears….partly over the pain (homebirth, all natural)….but mostly b/c I didn’t have a name for her! Hmph. But we had a boy so it was okay ;).
A few month’s later I observed my best friend’s homebirth and her baby was born not breathing! A terrifying moment but she said, “Elijah! You cry!” and he did. I thought, “Wow…that’s magic. Mom’s voice + child’s name=save a life”.
Strangely, I became pregnant with my second child on the same day (?!) as this same best friend became pregnant with her third because we went in to labor the same day. She had a name for her girl (Elizabeth) but I did not! But, it’s okay…b/c I had my baby 8 hours before her…and, so, when she came out not breathing…I called her by name….Unfortunately, it was not a name WE picked….no, it was the name my friend picked. How the HELL did I end up with a child named Elizabeth??? THE most popular girl’s name of all time?? Not only that, but I wasn’t a very popular friend when I called my friend to tell her I had stolen her child’s name….when she was still in labor….
Fortunately, I had the insight to tack “Anya” with Elizabeth and when “Beth” turned eight years old she announced she would now be called “Anya”. Thank God.
I had my boy names all figured out Grayson or Creighton. Guess that is why I ended up having two girls. :) My 1st born is Josephyne I loved the name it was different old blah blah blah. My husband called me from work about a week after we had her to see how it was going. I told him I thinking about going to the court house to change our daughter’s name we made a mistake she should have been a Grace. He said you are crazy and you aren’t changing her name. I guess for once he was right, because almost 5yrs later she rocks her name!
I have a Nick and a Bryce, both names of which I love. Tradition states that I should have named one of my kids Jack, which I also love, but with my last name being “Russell” I couldn’t be that cruel!
When I went into the hospital I didn’t know if I was having a boy or a girl. We never found out. Had no reason to. I had two names picked out – perfectly beautiful names. One for a boy and one for a girl. Two weeks before my due date I decided I hated the boy name {it was Octavio to represent the baby daddy’s Mexican heritage}. I went into the hospital with my baby name books. Good thing we had a girl…Lorelli Yasmin!! I love the name. Her dad hates that she has a double L and that I used a Y instead of a J, but whatever…I carried her for nine months…I pushed her out with no pain meds because both our heart rates kept dropping….and I was the one who was choosing how to spell her name!!!
Charisse recently posted..Love is
Ha! I love this post. I love that you accidentally called your son Ethan. So. Totally. How. It. Is. I had a hard time with boy names, too…although, in the end, I like the ones I picked.
But for every one boy name I could tolerate, I had about 100 perfect girl names. (But no girl.)
Thanks for the funny post.
I never had any doubt what I would name my daughter. I had liked the name forever and when I mentioned it to my husband, he liked it too. End of discussion. It was quirky without being weird. Which felt very… me. But as soon as my husband announced the name in the delivery room, I thought — WAIT, I’m not sure… But it was done. I agonized over it for months. Literally, had panic attacks thinking we’d made a mistake. And then finally, I realized it’s her name. And now I can’t wait for the next kid to prove to everyone that I’m actually normal.
Mommy Shorts recently posted..Diaper Jeans- Reader Research & Analysis
I had a list of girl’s names as long as my arm for baby #1: Dora, Ruby, Quinn, Charlotte… Had a boy. Who was unnamed for a week in the hospital and ended up being Liam. Plus two middle names in honor of various family members. Then miscarriage, so all those delicious girl’s names (including Lily at this point – LOVE that!) again went back into the hopper. Then baby #2, and yep, girl’s names and…boy. Tried Jasper & Husband said it sounded like a dog. Tried Quinn & Husband said “girl’s name.” So he’s Caleb. Which in fact I love, but still…there’s a little tug for my RubyDorCharLil. Because the baby store is closed, closed, closed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for granddaughters (in like 30 years).
deborah l quinn recently posted..Calamity Songs with thanks to the Decemberists
I must be so wierd…I had no trouble at all with boy’s names. I hated trying to think of girls. With my first, I had no doubt it was a boy, and chose Zavier. With my second, we picked a boy and girl name before we knew the sex. The boy name way easy, Tristen. The girl name took us for ever. We eventually ended up with Ameara Rayne, after lots of googleing, and lots of “that sounds horrid”. lol
We had such a hard time with Miles’ name too! Is it the boy names that cause so much trouble all the time? Funny though – Miles’ hebrew name – Gideon Asher. I adore it! Do people actually use those because it rocks!
Brittany {Mommy Words} recently posted..Mommy Words- What’s Your Word
Hahaha I love the honesty behind this post. It’s awesome.
We named all of our children after family members. We alternated first and middle names for each side. So my son’s first name is my maiden name, Grant, and his middle name is Franklin from my hubby’s side. My eldest daughter’s first name is Nina after my husband’s grandmother. Her middle name is Elizabeth, after my mother. My youngest daughter is Theo, after my sister, and her middle name is Joanna, after my mother-in-law, Joan, and her grandmother, Anna. We didn’t really think it out that way before they arrived, it was jsut a happy coincidence. And they love that they are named after family members. For the girls, they get to be “Little Nina” and “Little Theo” to their big counterparts, which is funny because “Big Nina” is 4’10″ on a good day. Your children’s name are beautiful. :)
My oldest daughter’s dad & I fought right up until the day after she was born about her name. He finally gave up and said “name her whatever you want”..win! She ended up being Michaela (after my dad) Giovanna (his grandmother). My ex- husband and I had an easier time of it. My middle daughter is Lily (we both loved it) June (his grandmother). We had a harder time with our 3rd girl but she ended up Emma (another we both loved it, plus I have a secret love for Jane Austen) Lynn (my mother, his mother’s middle). Her twin brother ended up being Alexander (believe or not..after a video game character) Liam (as a short for William, a family name on his side). We call him Xander for short.
The twins initials… ALF (remember that show?) and ELF (kinda fits her actually)… oops!
My name was a source of much amusement to class mates when I was growing up, so I wanted names that wouldn’t be easy to make fun of. I also very seriously considered how their names would look on those PhD’s & business cards ;)
Here in Greece, you can name your kids at anytime. I ended up giving my kids 4 names each cause I could not make up my mind.
i named my boy after a character on friends………………….. there i said it out loud at last!! i feel like it should be a confession lol!! luckily he looks like a Ross we all like it and he the only one in his school out of 250 kids so all good!! The other one is Beth named after the character in Little Women yep the one that died……… have never heard that one before …… sighs!!
Boys names are the worst!!! We ended up with Mason. We breezed through the girls names in my first pregnancy and decided upon Presley. But Boys’ names?!?! We have a short one syllable last name so alot of names were ruled out immediately. I am moderatly happy with the name Mason…but turns out the family has created the nickname “Macy”….cute as a baby – irritating as a 6 year old.
If it makes you feel any better, my son was named (by hubby of course) after a CARTOON CHARACTER – Brak from space ghost.. Couldn’t handle Brak, so we went with Brock.. It fits him, so I’m ok. Plus, I named the girls, so guess I can give him one of the three :)
Haha. Quirky, I was supposed to be a Gabriel (ended up being a Gabrielle) but I despise it because my mom didn’t go with GAA-brielle, but with GAY-brielle and I just don’t like it AT ALL. When people ask for my full first name, I give them the long-a sound instead.
Evan, ironically, was our first pick and what I had my heart SET on for the current belly-dweller. But you and @Crissy both had Evan’s, and my sister-in-law told me I “wasn’t allowed” to use it, so I changed it up and went with Ethan instead. I know two Ethan’s from school, one was a bit geeky, our valedictorian, and is now in med-school and the other was a gorgeous stud with a crotch-rocket and now plays minor league baseball. I figure I couldn’t lose either way. ;)
When Hubby and I were discussing names for our first, we had decided on Izabelle for a girl (that name came to me while I was writing in my journal, before I knew we were pregnant with my baby girl. Creepy right?), and I had wanted Paxton for a boys name, that was until my sister said, “sounds like Tampax”. Boys names are incredibly difficult to pick….
I love reading all the interesting names in the comments.
We have 2 girls so it was easy: Layla Hattie and Vivian Faye. Thinking of a boy name was a complete headache. We liked Bryson for a middle name because that is my mother-in-laws maiden name. For first names we thought about Cain (except, hello? Didn’t he murder his brother?), Cade, and MacArthur (Mac for short).
Thank goodness we never had a boy…I didn’t LOVE any of those names!
My husband wanted to name our son Jacobi, which I nixed right off the bat with, ” You will not name my child after ambulance chasers(jacobi and Myers” or after Joe Jacobi. I don’t care how much of a Redskins fan you are!” My approach was that our children had to have names that were suitable for a Supreme Court judge. My youngest, Theo (just Theo), is pushing it, but she is named after my sister. Her middle name is Joanna, so I think judgeship is still on the table. She says she wants to be a rock star, so “Theo” by itself works too. Though we have to continually explain that it is not short for Theodora.
We didn’t know if we were having a boy or girl so we went with a naming convention. First name=something we had a connection too or really liked Second name=favorite aunt or uncle. So going in we knew if it was a girl she would be Ella (after Fitzgerald) Tea (after my aunt whose initials were T.E.A).
If it was a boy he would be ? Francis (after my husband’s uncle). We had Emmit initially but then I wasn’t sold on it. The night before my son’s birth we came up with Wylie. In the OR as soon as he was placed in my arms we asked him. Are you an Emmet? he did nothing. Are you a Wylie? he turned his head. He chose his name.
If he hates me later in life I can blame it on him. :)
Ahhh both Ella and Francis are SO CUTE! ;)
Bruna recently posted..Qik – Tic Tacs are FUNNY! by Bruna Cirelli Aanestad
My oldest son got his name from a billboard #truestory. Two are named after Power Ranger characters, and our last was decided via text messaging during a cross-country move. Ah, good times.
Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting recently posted..Partner-in-Grime™ Wanted
Lisa, I’m reading all your coments – you are hilarious! :D
Cheers from Texas.
Bruna recently posted..Qik – Tic Tacs are FUNNY! by Bruna Cirelli Aanestad
Thanks Bruna! I appreciate it! But seriously, this post? Comedy friggin’ gold, man. I can’t stop. Never in the history of ever have I commented so much. Ha!
Lisa @ Crazy Adventures in Parenting recently posted..Partner-in-Grime™ Wanted
Where’s the “Like” button? :)
Bruna recently posted..Qik – Tic Tacs are FUNNY! by Bruna Cirelli Aanestad
Whenever I tell anyone my 3 daughter’s full names they look at me like I am crazy. The oldest Emily Nicole, then Grace Elizabeth and then Elizabeth Nicole. I blame this on the drugs and exhaustion also. I could not think of a third girl’s name I liked other than Elizabeth. So we made the decision to name our youngest daughter Elizabeth, now we needed a middle name? Somehow I thought that if the baby had my second daughter’s middle name that my oldest daughter would feel left out, so she ended with both her sister’s middles names. Where was my creativity?
Haha. My mom is Roselene. One of her sisters is ROSE MARRIE.
My mom usually goes by “Rose” and my aunt goes by a totally different nickname she has since she was a baby, but outside the family, she is also “Rose”. It’s ridiculous when they are together somewhere and BOTH are called the same thing. Like… Really, grandma?! :)
No, seriously. REALLY? :P Lol.
Bruna recently posted..Qik – Tic Tacs are FUNNY! by Bruna Cirelli Aanestad
I soooo get this. I like my first two boys’ names, but hell, by the time number 3 was born? I was over it.
So Matthew it was.
More specific, it’s Matthew V. because wouldn’t you know there are always AT LEAST 3 Matthews in his class.
I suck.
(I totally wish I had named him Cooper.)
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I can completely relate. My daughter was easy to name – Skyler. My boys…not so much. I knew I was having a boy with my second child and I finally settled on Broderick, although we call him Brodie. I wanted him to have a grown up name to use if he wanted once he was older. I didn’t know the sex of my 3rd child and I had a list of girls names and only 1 for a boy. Anyway, I have a boy named Jack. Just Jack.
I love talking baby names! We are 95% sure we are done with 2, so I am glad I used the names we did.
Sweet Peanut is named Marleah (mar-lee-ah) Josephine after my maternal grandma and Hubs maternal grandpa Joseph and she goes by Marly Jo.
Our Little Man is named Harlan Chase after Hubs paternal grandpa and my maiden name.
We really didn’t struggle for names because we knew we wanted to use family names. If we have more kids we might be a little harder pressed for family names we like, although Logan, Mason, and Mabel would be contenders.
The Lungos recently posted..Wordless Wednesday 12-52
Boy names are so hard! I knew we’d have a boy because because we had a wonderful (to us) girl’s named picked before we even wanted a kid (Evangeline) and we could have named 10 girls easily. Finding a boys name we could agree on was awful – I was really into Old Testament names that my husband deemed too Amish and he wanted anything weird, preferably hard to spell and pronounce. He came up with one horrible German one I still can’t pronounce that he liked because it meant something like “strong warrior.” We finally decided on Raylan, which we heard on the show “Justified” because it sounded Southern enough for me and was unusual enough for him. I decided if Raylan asks we’ll tell him it came to us in a dream.
“I decided if Raylan asks we’ll tell him it came to us in a dream.”
- Haha! I love the way we come up with excuses to justify this or that to our kids. Sweet.
Bruna recently posted..Qik – Tic Tacs are FUNNY! by Bruna Cirelli Aanestad
Names are definitely a big part of being a parent. We feel that if we fail at naming our child then they could hate us for it. The way I feel though is that no matter what you name your child (with the exception of naming them after a car or a beverage) will grow into their name and never stop to question it. I thought so long and hard about the names for my two boys and then even when it came time I was nervous to commit to them. Thing is that the names fit perfectly and I think no matter what I picked they would grow to be that name. My boys Ezeriah and De’Sean are so fitting of their names. Different? Yes. Names that destine them to failure? No.
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i don’t even remember naming my son. i think my husband was just so happy it was a boy that when they asked for a name he shouted his own. the middle name is actually ethan. we had actually discussed that one. it turned out so different than i’d hoped. but it’s still good! you’re not alone! :)
Cam – Bibs & Baubles recently posted..Husbands Intuition
Girl names were easy breezy!
Kaysen Inez or Savannah Rose
But I didn’t have any girls, so those will forever be on my list.
I did have two boys. Named the first after the character name from the “reality” show Joe Millionaire. We were looking for not too common (like my name, Sarah) but not way out there either. The “Joe Millionaire” from the show was named Evan. I liked it; with a twist. We really did our little boy a “favor” when my husband let me make his name an acronym.
Evan
Victor
Andrew
Naj… (last name)
Could we do it again? Boy #2 was coming right up. Everybody said to do Ian so the acronym could be used still, but Evan & Ian both translate to John and in my hormonal state I wasn’t doing it. My mom suggested Owen, but I couldn’t find any W names I liked enough. So we settled on Malakai. Or so I thought.
We told the family and immediately started receiving so much ridicule for the name from my sister in law that the name did nothing but leave a bad taste in my mouth and the lingering feeling of ridicule. The new name was a secret until birth.
Our baby was named Levi Abraham. Nothing fancy, but not overly common (until Matthew McConaughey named his kid Levi).
I love my boys, Evan & Levi. I can’t imagine them being named anything else. But I do wish I was able to use one of the girl names that came so easy.
my sons names are: schuyler, keenan, and cullen
my grandson’s names are: deleno and decklin
obviously i luv them lol
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I can relate to your baby-naming troubles for sure! My two year old son’s name is Rocco and my father pretty much begged me to name him ANYTHING else. In fact, my dad refused to even refer to my son by his now legal name for several weeks after birth and would pick various different names he had chosen for him, such as “benedict” or “wolfgang…” all overly-dramatic names, if you ask me. I also get the occasional call from my great aunt in Germany who will spend no less than two hours on the phone explaining the ins and outs of why my son’s name is stupid. In the end, even though I am not even a little bit Italian and I have no idea who Chef Rocco So-and-so is, I fully stand behind his name and it fits him to a T! P.S. I think the name Benjamin is very distinguished. Evan is a lot softer than Ben, but I still think it’s beautiful and not boring at all! :-)
That is so funny! Baby names are like a big geeky hobby of mine. I’ve kept a book of favorite names since I was 16. Totally weird huh? Every time I read a book with a fascinating character I’d jot down the name. When it came time to name my first son I busted out the book and almost died laughing. Couldn’t imagine this collection of literary names fitting my son. So I did what any good mother does, I named him after a character in a movie about the mafia.
Mommyfriend recently posted..Toddler Discipline from a Mom Who Knows
Haha wow.. I will never just “settle” for a name when I name my children. It’s going to be a very special and life-changing moment, so why not make it a very special and unique name?
I will research and research years ahead until I’ve seen every name possible until I just “settle” for something common and mediocre.
We had such a hard time naming our kids too, we couldn’t agree on anything it seemed like! Our first daughter started out as Kearstyn Skye, which I did not love and was later changed to Jordyn Nicole. Long story! Our next baby was a boy. He was going to be Aaron Wesley till I figured out I didn’t like that either. So he’s Hunter Wesley. Our youngest, another girl, was Ashlyn Ann till I was about 8 months when my Grandmother suggested Holly Ann. I loved it! So now I love all my kid’s names. I always wanted a Logan, but it’s just not meant to be. :)
Names are rough. I named my daughter Eva. It seemed short, feminine, but classic enough so that she’d always get taken seriously. The result? My mother informed me it was ” a Nazi name” (??!!!). Everyone gets confused and calls her “Ava.” And, she hates her name and wishes I’d named her just about anything else. Whatever. You can’t win.
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Mine was going to be Elle. Elle Evelyn. With a double L name and the parents of double Ls, everyone expected me to name my child something with an L. Well, I was sure going to fool them. Then God fooled me, making me infertile. Then the 21 year old girl (I can’t call her a woman, sorry) who was having her fourth child fooled me. Changed her mind 19 days before her due date after we had gone through five months of a pregnancy. So I had to let Elle go. That baby was Elle. The next one became an LL, though. Lora Leigh Evelyn…. I really wanted Loralei, but husband didn’t like that. I figured she can pronounce it however she wants.
I hope this doesn’t post twice… But it might…
I was supposed to have an Elle. Being a double L myself, and the daughter of double L’s, everyone expected me to name my child something with an L. So I was going to fool them! But I got fooled. Infertile. Then I got fooled again when the girl who was going to let us adopt her baby decided to parent 19 days before her due date. That was Elle. So the next one became a double L — Lora Leigh. I wanted Lorelei, but hubby didn’t like that. (He just hadn’t met the mermaid yet!). A boy would have been Will, even though I dated a pretty famous Will at one time.
Lori recently posted..And so it begins
Yep. Posted twice. Sorry.
Lori recently posted..And so it begins
I love my son’s name. Everyone always asks if he was named after Owen Wilson – my son’s name is Owen (obviously). It honestly wasn’t nor am I really Scottish, I just like the way it sounded and it wasn’t all too common.
Memoirs of a Single Dad recently posted..The Dating Game – It’s Not Me- It’s You
My Middle-Monkey is Owen. I adore this name. I am a HS teacher and have only met a few Owen’s along the way but I have loved them all….
Our Owen was named on the PA Turnpike after we passed an “Owens Corning” truck.
Our Mini-Monkey girl is named Avery – - – after the office supply company
Our Monster-Monkey is named Riley – - – after and Irish pub
Classy:)
my girls names are Elizabeth and danica. I picked Elizabeth when i was single. that was always my favorite name so when she was born it wasn’t up for discussion. Danica was named after her daddy, his first name is Dan, so Daniella didn’t make sense to me. too bad most people hear her name and ask me if she races cars.
Reading this blog makes me think that I am the only insane mother out there! I think now more than ever, i have screwed up both my children for life lol! My first, Marsayus Callisto and my second son Adonus Lazarro….They are really going to have to live up to the names we’ve chosen! Marsayus comes from ‘Marcellous’ (we changed it) which means ‘worrior’ along with ‘Callisto’ that means ‘beautiful’. And ‘Adonus’ is a greek god and ‘Lazarro’ meand ressurection….all of which we chose to me spelt differently!! Poor kids ;) lol
I have a David and a Joshua. Although I knew both were pretty popular I thought they were strong. I was shocked one day when I called my son David in a public place and a stranger looked at me and said, “David”….you don’t hear THAT names any more. Really? Come on now. People are strange. LOL
3 girls! Trinity Fathom, Violet Orene and Rain Elizabeth. We are trying again later in the year. Crossing our fingers for a boy. Wouldn’t know where to start with a name though
When we found out we were having a girl, we wanted something different. My fiance’s name is Joe… he has the MOST common last name — Johnson. Yep! Joe Johnson! Not Joseph. Just Joe. One night we were watching an episode of Bones and heard “I’m Temperance Brennen.” We looked at each other and said at the same time, “I like Temperance.” There… done. On the first name, anyway. I told him that just in case she didn’t like her last name, she should have a more normal middle name. We decided on Olivia. Then, minutes after I gave birth to her the nurse asked how her middle name was going to be spelled and he said, “Alyvia.” I said, “Wait. When did we decide that?!” Granted, I love spelling it Alyvia. I just wish I had known a couple months before hand. My friend had a blanket made for her with her name on it… “Temperance Olivia” Oh well… It’s her favorite blanket, anyway! :)
I wanted to name my daughter Brennan after watching that show! My husband wouldn’t go for it, though. Glad you’ve got a more open-minded one ;)
You like my names! My older son is Julian, named for his great-great grandpa. I really wanted to name my second son Asher, but my husband vetoed big time and we went with a less cool but still respectable name instead.
I named my oldest girl Natalia. My first daughter, she just had to be something special. She really is, too. My twin daughters are Libertie and Victorie (Libbie and Vixie). They were monoamniotic twins and it was such a horror pregnancy but it turned out good and they were alive and healthy and their names had to be awesome. But my boys, I always felt boys had to sound classic and normal just to make it through a playground (and maybe be a judge or president one day), so my sons are Joseph (after my husband), Thomas, John, and Lincoln.
Funny thing is, I didn’t name them normally. Joseph (Joey) was only named after his dad because when he was born his toes could touch his own leg (lol!) with these giant feet like my husband. When Joey was tiny (and I was pregs with Thomas) the only way we could quiet him down was to turn on Grand Theft Auto Vice City on PS2. Tommy Vercetti was the hero/bad guy of the game driving around shooting things, and when we were surprised with a little boy instead of the little girl we were expecting, we just kinda shrugged and said, “Well, Joey would like Tommy.”
Next was John-John. I would love to say I was inspired by some Kennedy Camelot thing people always ask about, but no…as I sat in the hospital for 6 WEEKS bleeding from placenta previa, the only thing I could tolerate was the Johnny Test Cartoon on Cartoon Network. So the night my son was born it was on the TV again, and as I suddenly was bleeding everywhere and being prepped for emergency surgery, all I heard was “Johnny”. And it was perfect. I hadn’t even known he was going to be a boy.
And finally, I knew my seventh would be my last, just from all the terror my other pregnancies had given (these are not full stories, by any means), so I had all these lofty names I really wanted to give. But after I delivered my son by C-section, we waited in recovery, and my husband’s cell phone went off…to the tune of the Legend of Zelda theme music. The nurse said, “You should name him something like that.” And as Link in the games had always been my hero, my little furry newborn was my little hero. But 2 days later I wasn’t sure about how the name Link would fit into society, and there was the lady with the birth certificate papers, telling me to sign something…on the TV was a giant Lincoln head penny, and it came to me. My little Link can be Lincoln to everyone else. And that felt complete, I am happy with every one of my kid’s names.
Why does everyone say “I have to give my boys strong names in case they want to be a judge or the president someday” but they never say “I have to give my daughters strong names in case they want to be president one day”
Ugh, society.
You’ll love this — we named our son Evan, our daughter Clara (I wanted to name her Lillian… but then she would have been “Lily,” and while I LOVE that name… obviously it’s special to you too, our last name is “Biery,” and my husband refused to have a daughter with a sing-songy name like “LilyBiery.” So no little Lillian for me!) And my husband’s name is Ethan. I just had to laugh as I saw bits of my life being mentioned one after another in your post! I am a happy new follower, and I’d love if you’d stop by my blog sometime and check it out! I write a humorous look at the joys, trials, and tribulations of motherhood at http://www.misadventuresinmotherhood.com. It’s usually good for a chuckle or two!
Smiles, Jenn :-)
Misadventures in Motherhood recently posted..Ants in our Pants!!
I have had my boy names picked out since I was 16. When my husband and I started dating I told him that if I ever had a son his name would be Jack Martin. Jack after my great grandfather and Martin is my maiden name. So I have a 5yo named Jack Martin. MIL name is Jackie, so everyone thinks he is named after her. She will correct people and say that he isn’t. When I got pregnant with baby #2 I was really hoping for a girl. My husband hated every name I came up with, ex. Emma(too popular), Lily(too old), MacKenzie(yuck!), Amelia(again too old). I finally got him to agree to either Chole or Zoe. Then we found out we were having another boy. Problem solved his name would be Sam after another great Grandfather that came to the US from Ireland. the middle name was a harder decision for baby #2. First it was going to be Wade(my dad’s middle name), then it was going to be Charles(husband’s grandfather). Then one day I said I didn’t like Charles and as a joke we should make Sam’s middle Seamus(Irish form of James). My husband loved the idea. So now we have a Sam Seamus. If there is ever a baby #3, I will be in serious trouble trying to think of a name for a boy. But for a girl no idea for first name, but her middle name would be Diane after my Mom, who passed away 6 weeks before Sam was born.
I love that we are discussing names here.
Growing up I knew exactly what I would name my kids. Kenneth Moore and Gloria Elaine would be beautiful, intelligent, sweet kids. Then I married a guy with the last name Wascher. Pronounced Washer. Problem? I am sure you probably have a Kenmore washer or a GE washer in your laundry.
K, not a great idea.
So, after the two pink lines surfaced I realized we were in trouble. Then the ultrasound showed 2 kids that needed names. Bert and Ernie was joked about by my loving FIL, but no. We decided to figure out a girl name, which we had agreed her middle name would be Pauline after my grandmother who had passed shortly before our wedding. But finding a name that went with Pauline and Wascher was difficult. Then I found Laura. Hated Lori as it brought up memories of 6th grade bullies, but discovered Laurena. SOLD! We figured to have 1 boys name and 1 girls name in line. So next was the boys name. 5 weeks of baby book searching later I had fallen in love with Markel or Andre. Just loved the names. And having a fairly common name growing up it would be great. Both were a no-go with hubby. He liked John and Mike. NOPE! Finally I started considering masculine forms of girls I knew and liked. Chris? Too common. Courtney? Court? No. Kiley, KYLE! Liked it. I had secretly been holding out on 3 middle names to pick from and Kyle Edward had a name.
Gender ultrasound happened and guess what! 2 boys. But this time I was armed. I had been carrying these babies around for awhile and I was getting an idea of these little widgets personalities. One seemed calm, laid back, other was a go-getter. I knew Kyle was the go-getter. After all, his full name meant Handsome wealthy guardian! (Ya, I know….AWESOME) And I realized that the little brother was alot like a friend of mine. I pitched Erin. Was shot down on spelling. I didn’t want Aaron. So, after a happy coincidence we heard the christian band Aaron Jeffrey’s. Hubby’s name was Jeff, I conceded on the spelling with Jeffrey as a middle name and my twins had their names!
Now, I got my Laurena Pauline, she is never called Lori, and instantly corrects those that pronounce it Lora. It’s Lara. Like Tomb Raider?
After 6 years of happy raising my kids, done with babies life….God laughed. I adore my baby. But she was definately a surprise. And I didn’t have a clue what to name her! Everything I tried sounded to weird….too common…..too ..no. Liked Arwen, Bridget, Natalia, Talia. See what I mean? Also, I had divorced and her father was native american so some wouldn’t fit. Her name came from a mix of a dream and my daughter. Took a look at the meanings and heck ya! Ashlynn Elizabeth Rose was born. Meaning is Renowned dream of God’s promise.
And I am thrilled to never have to do the baby names again. Although I still wonder if maybe my girls should have been Emily and Angela????????
We didn’t find out what we were having and so had a list of about 15 names for either sex, because I didn’t want to pick the name until after I’d seen the baby. So our guy didn’t have his name, Miles, until awhile after he was born. I figured that it didn’t rhyme with anything, and you couldn’t shorten it, so he’d always be just Miles. Then when my grandma met him, she said, “Oh, and there’s little Miley!” I told her that she can’t call him that because it’s an actual girls name.
Oh, and in the first few days after he was born, I kept calling him Henry, which is my cat’s name. I actually thought that he would’ve made a good Henry, but then everyone would think I named him after the cat, and that I was a total nut job.
Leah – I named my daughter after a female cat I had, Charlie, and I myself was named after a goat my mom had when she was little. I love that we have a “different” kind of tradition.
Oh, and my dad had a cat he named Henry after his father’s middle name to guilt him into letting our grandmother get a new cat after their last one died.
:)
Leah, I’m right there with you– I had wanted a Samantha, to be called Sam or Sammie b/c I love tomboyish nicknames. But my cat is already named Sammy (wasn’t planning ahead, I guess!) and I didn’t want to deal with the “you named her after your cat!” jokes.
I did not even pick my last daughters name my niece did. She wanted to call her CC, like CC Bloom from Beaches. I wanted an Irish name so I went on the net and searched Irish names that start with C. We have Ciara, who we call CC and believe it or not if you have seen the movie Beaches and know who CC Bloom is, my daughter CC has bright curly red hair! When I had my first daughter I had to have two names and I had a Molly with dark curly hair and an Erin with blonde hair. She came out with coal black hair so she was def a Molly. She has been a blonde since she was 1. My middle daughter first name didnt matter as long as it with the middle name of Jean and with Molly. So we decided on Amanda and call her Mandy, which we have never called her she has always been Manda. Crazy how it works down the road!
It was important to me that my children have good “grown up” names and they not be common.
I have a Wyatt Edwin, Jackson William, and Tatum Grace. Edwin is family name of the ex’s that was forced upon me, but it goes well. Jackson’s name came down to Jackson or Harrison (neither of which was as popular 9 years ago, as they are now). Jackson won out because I’d rather have a Jack than a Harry. William was my grandfathers name. Tatum has just always been my favorite girls name since my first pregnancy. I wanted Tatum Bronwyn. The ex didn’t like either. I compromised with Grace as her middle name just to get Tatum. I have NEVER regretted or been unhappy with their names. Love them still. Now I want an Owen =)
When we found out we were pregnant, we immediately picked out boys and girls names. My younger sister was about 6 months ahead of me in her pregnancy and always in competition with me (thus her pregnancy…she knew we were trying!) When she found out the name we were going with she used that for my nephew!!! So we went with one of our other choices and I am so glad it worked out that way!!! Austin became so popular that I really didn’t like it at all, and Evan was perfect! To this day, we love it!
When my sister got pregnant with her daughter in between my pregnancies, my entire family told her our girl’s name was off limits. So she had a Mackenzie. Turns out I had another son. I wanted to name him Eli after my favorite uncle, but my husband just couldn’t do it. We thought about Ian Blade for something a little edgy, but ended up with Ian Alexander…another perfect fit! We considered trying again, hoping for a girl. This time I really wanted Ava Isabella, named after his grandma Eva and his cousin’s baby who passed away at 8 wks, but…I now have a step-niece named Ava, and with 2 perfect, healthy boys (the oldest now 9), I think I’m done!!!
I have an odd name. It’s not like the traditional Tara, it’s Tah-ruh.
There are a lot of names I could come up with immediately, but my main question is why people would like to give a baby a name that 10-20other babies born in the same day, week or even month were named, like Isabella. Ok, I get it, Twilight was huge, but seriously, all little girls do not fit the name you just gave them and you may regret it later.
As for us, I have Adrian. He was named after his father’s cousin because no one helped me more during my pregnancy than he did.
We’re planning on having more! A girl will be Evangeline Judea and the boy will be Raziel Erelim. He’s an Atheist, I’m a Jew, and I’m sure they’ll end up believing like their father so this is my way of sealing my faith in them.
I had issues with names too, but when I was six I got to name my baby sister. When I had my daughter the first name that came to mind when I saw her ultrasound was Samara, I got this from the movie “The Ring,” sounds creepy to do that but it is a beautiful name and it is a city in Russia. Which is fitting because so many people thought I was Russian.
As far as my son Seth I do not really remember where I got his name from but I think it is because I have always loved the name.
We went round and round for our daughter’s name. We had her middle name picked out early on, but no first name we could agree on. I finally suggested using the middle name as her first, but husband declared, “It sounds like a stripper name!” So, not sure how that makes it okay to use as a middle name. Finally we agreed on a first name to go with that middle stripper name. I didn’t get much of a choice on our son’s name. Husband had it picked out for years…after a singer who died of a heroine OD, no less. Granted, I did put my foot down on using the guy’s last name as our son’s middle name, but that’s about it. Ah well.
We didn’t have names for our daughters until they were born. Our first is Sydney Mikayla. I’m a huge Alias fan and the main character’s name is Sydney. My dad died before Sydney was born so I chose Mikayla for her middle name. His name was Michael so I thought that was a good way to honor his memory. When I counted back from her due to her conception date, he died that day. I like to think that when he died, her life began.
Our second is Brooke Makenzie. While I was pregnant, we each made a list of names that began with each letter of the alphabet. We crossed off all names that weren’t on both lists. Since we had chosen to honor my family with our first, we asked his parents if there was a name they wanted us to consider. They didn’t have any so I chose Makenzie. Growing up I had always loved that name.
I don’t know what we would have named them if they had been boys.
i know this is old but i just cracked up.
I wanted a Landon. i was set on my first being a boy, and he would be Landon. and then, when i found out it was a girl, she would be Landyn. My last name is McCracken. my cousin nearly died when itold her my name choice. i didnt get it. and shes like um. say it slowly. “Landon McCracken.” i was so mad. So i fell in love with Jayden for my daughter. Jayden Rose (god has heard of your beauty), and then brittney spears had a freaking lttle boy named jayden. and so.
with my twins, i was again faced with the awful last name. they came two months early. i had changed their names 399 times. when they were delivered, morphine and two street names combined resulted in Breyson. and poor Gabriel was “baby a” for almost two weeks until i decided he needed strength.
naming babies is my favorite.
I loved this blog. I also had baby name dilemmas. You see, I go by my middle name. While I love my middle name, it is a royal pain in the patootie at all government facilities, medical offices, etc. So I knew that whatever I wanted to call my child HAD to be his/her first name. Also, my initials spell “MAW” which was thrilling as a teenager in the 80s when everyone was having their initials put on EVERYTHING…I settled for “AMW” instead. I then went on to marry another “W” last name…so I’m “MAW” for the rest of my life. And there lies my criteria for baby names. To add to the mess, my husband’s criteria. His name is Daniel, not Dan, not Danny….Daniel. So he wanted names that, if possible, couldn’t be shortened/nicknamed OR if they were shortened could be “gently” corrected publicly without me being embarrassed. ha Then comes baby #1. We decided on Rachel for a girl and Joshua(not Josh) for a boy. The middle name choices became easy…Danielle or Daniel respectively(cause I really do like the name Daniel). All criteria met…including the initials spelling absolutely nothing. Our first became Rachel Danielle. Baby # 2 became Joshua Daniel…and we were done…right? Nope. Bonus baby time! And there we were…me, 7 months pregnant with bonus baby…a boy. What in the world were we going to name him? We weren’t expecting to be expecting and had tossed around names for quite a while…so here we were near the end and all we had was the possible middle name of Andrew. Hubby liked Jacob, but Joshua and Jacob was just too cute for me. I liked Nathan, but the horror of someone possibly calling him “Nate” hung over my husband… apparently he doesn’t like the name “Nate.” So what to do? Well, one day I was in the bathroom….as pregnant women often are…and we heard something on the news about Nolan Ryan. “What do you think about Ryan?” I asked. Hubby paused and nodded, “I like it.” “Ryan Andrew,” I tried out loud…it worked! So we now have us a Rachel Danielle(Rach), Joshua Daniel(Josh), and Ryan Andrew(Rhino)….or as my husband likes to call them K1G1(kid one, girl one), K2B1(I think you can figure it out), and K3B2….wait…I thought he didn’t like nicknames….
your husband sounds incredibly nerdy, in a super-awesome way. ;)
I have to put my son’s name in, ’cause I’m secretly really, really proud of it: We named him Paxson, after a teeny-tiny little town in Alaska that my husband and I worked in, and also because if you translate from Latin it would mean “son of peace”. I haven’t ever seen it in any baby name lists, and yes, I smugly congratulated us on being so original.
Then I found out that Sarah Palin’s youngest son’s middle name is Paxson.
Shit.
my husbands name is jed… and he constantly jokes about the beverly hillbillies… ive decide that im going to beat everyone to the punch on the ellie may thing if we ever have a girl, She is going to be Alice May or Allie May … if shes lucky she will never realize what everyone is saying
I fucking hate twilight… I wanted a Jacob and Isabella(Isa) but now its just ridiculous GRRR
Ah, baby names… I could think about them all day! My favorite boy’s name has always been James. My BF’s brother is named James, and they call him Jim, which I think is sweet. But I’m not sure we can name our future child after his brother, because it would leave the other two brothers out!
My current favorite name is Calvin… I think it can be casual (Cal) or distinguished (Calvin) if he ever becomes a professor! For girls… there are too many!
Naming my two boys was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I had a completely opinionated and annoyingly stubborn husband at the time. It was exhausting.
Our first son was to be Xavier. The day I found out it was a boy, I told my mom and she made such a cruel comment that we changed our mind. In the end, I love my son’s name, Ean.
My second son’s name came when I saw a credit scroll by for a tv show. It wasn’t popular so I thought we were good with it. Then I found out it was popular. He’s had one year of preschool & already had to be Gavin C. :( Poor guy!
I do want to go back and give my kids middle names. They don’t have them, just a single letter (no period after them either). My oldest son’s teacher w/back and forth with him: “what’s your middle name?” “It’s ‘H’ ” “Ok but what does it stand for?” “Nothing, it’s just a letter.” “No it has to stand for something.” “no it doesn’t!” He couldn’t convince her that it didn’t stand for anything. I’m cruel like that.
Oh my, I know a guy who’s first name is a letter!
Ok yea, that’s worse than what I did.
I have screwed up my youngest. I would change his middle name to James if I ever decided to fork over the time and money to do it. So when he’s in trouble, he gets called “Gavin James” yea except his name is actually “Gavin S” Poor guy.
One of my top choices for girls was always going to be Emily, my husband liked it, but, we agreed on Emma along with every other couple that had a girl four years ago, as one of the top 3 babies names. Who knew??? Krysta is our little KRazy Star…. So we didnt make the same mistake, We didn’t pick a popular name, we picked one that no one will ever spell correctly on the first try, or the second. What on earth were we thinking!!!
We had a name picked out for our daughter since before we knew she was a girl, and then for some reason or another I was some how talked into (guilt tripped)changing her name 5 days before she was born and to make myself feel better about the name change we picked some cutesy spelling and now I cant even remember how to spell her damn middle name….
My husband loved the name Cody. I liked it ok, but never loved it. When I was close to delivery, I asked my hubby if maybe we should consider other names, and he looked so upset I dropped it. When our son was a year or so old, my husband said to me, Do you ever think we should have considered other names? I wanted to smack him.
I just wrote a post called, “What’s In A Name?” With apologies to William Shakespeare.
You might take a peek. It was a sad day for me when my mom sprung it on me that she never liked my name and didn’t put much thought into choosing it. I hope your boys don’t feel that way when they find out or they might spend the rest of their lives changing their names. Blessings, Tia/Lori/Mitzi/Grace
(For clearification I am a very upbeat but sarcastically humorous writer, so don’t consider my musings to be completely non fiction.)
how do I get to your blog? I’d love to check out the name post, however when I click it’s a available domain. help! I’m name obsessed!
We wanted to name our son after my husband and our fathers. Ironically, both of our fathers have the name “Lester.” It’s a less than beautiful name but we couldn’t ignore the coincidence, right? So “Lester” would be the middle name. My husband wanted our son to have the same initials as my husband and his grandfather.. MLB. I had to draw the line when I realized my son’s name would be M.Lester
His name is Jake.
Not short for anything.. just Jake Lester. :)
My husband told me what our first child’s gender and name were going to be…much to my chagrin he was in fact right and so Jacob Miley was born. Jacob was my husbands favorite boy name since he was a teen and I like it okay, and Miley is his grandfathers middle name. Our second child’s name was a bit more of a trial, we wanted a matt but not a matthew, or Mathius etc. So I came up with Mattox, not gonna lie I am pretty proud of it and it fits him, his middle name sticking with tradition is my grandfathers middle name dale. So thus I am a proud mama of Jacob Miley, and Mattox Dale.
OMIGOD. The fights over what to name a kid!
With our first, we quickly came up with a girl’s name – Lillian Elizabeth but we could NOT agree on a boy’s name. The only reason I wanted to find out what we were having was so we could stop fighting over names if it was a girl. Of course it was a boy!
Growing up I always knew I wanted a son named Jacob Matthew. My great-grandfather and 5 generations before him were all named Jacob and no one had used it in the family since. Fast forward to 2008 and Jacob has been the #1 boy’s name for a decade. My DH is Matthew and grew up being one of a million and said he hated the name. We both loved the name Jacob, but were hesitant to saddle our child with the name of the decade. Plus, DH’s family has a name they’ve used for four generations – Daniel – which I’m not crazy over, but Jacob Daniel wasn’t bad. That is, until we mention it to my mother-in-law who says, “Oh, J.D. is a cute name!” Um. NO. Where I’m from, J.D. is Jack Daniels. Not happening! Neither of us would give on our family names. We’re both part Irish and we both loved the name Liam which at the time wasn’t in the top 100 but wasn’t too bizarre either. Two middle names run in my family (my grandfather was John William Robert, great-grandfather was Jacob Dewey Moore, and I kept my maiden name as my middle name) so I suggested we just add Liam to the beginning and we both win. So, Liam Jacob Daniel is his name. Of course, in the last 3 years it’s jumped to something like #15 in popularity.
Now I’m incubating baby #2. The name Lillian has lost its shine since Lily is now so popular and we can’t agree on an alternate girl’s name. If it’s a boy, his name is Owen. We’re still working on a middle name. How much do you want to bet this one’s a girl? It’s still too early to tell but Murphy likes to fuck with us.