I guess if someone had had a birth announcement card "Ralph has arrived" and then seen them in the street they might have asked the pronounciation?

Both are right.

I went to school with a chap named Ralph. He pronounced it Ralf. I crease myself when I hear it pronounced "Rafe". Which pronunciation is correct?

I just presumed the baby's name was on a blanket, dummy or toy or something.

Oooh, clever thinking LGP. I like it .

I think this bit's a lie too.

"I first got an inkling that we had given our baby the wrong name when another mother peered into his pram and said loudly, "So, do you pronounce it Ralph or Raef?" It wasn't the mispronunciation that made me cringe but how horrible she made the word sound; all hoity-toity with ugly, drawn-out vowels."

Unless she went out with the baby's name written on a piece of cardboard attached the pram, surely the question about pronunciation would have been redundant. Or am I missing something here?

Ralph and Huxley are both ridiculous names, and the author of the article is a frightful tit.

I don't mind the canvassing on MN. In fact I like the name Huxley. BUT I do mind the blatent lie about 'fierce resistance' on MN. Makes me wonder about how much of the rest of the article was completely fabricated.

LOL!! Oh i did enjoy reading the comments.....

Hmm. I have just read this in the Telegraph. (The thinking woman's Daily Mail, obviously.)

'This sounds just the kind of topic a journo would start a thread on MN to canvass opinion' thought I.

Oh, and sure enough, lurking at the end of the article, a reference to MN and 'evidence' that her name-changing was fiercely resisted here.

Er, no it wasn't.

If she had posted in media requests, it wouldn't have irked so much.

I think it is quite irritating, actually, and rather sly, to start a thread for the express purpose of writing an article, especially when a) she fabricated the tone of responses in the ensuing article, and b)she asked a direct question without being honest as to what the point of the question was.

I think it's the whole concept about quotes from MN being used in the papers, ongoing in the DM topic ATM. That's where I found this thread from.

TBH I don't care. The things I type in this box are far too boring to be quoted anywhere. I put extra effort in to ensure it is unworthy of duplication.

Thanks for the link Wotz.

I don't really understand why people would be annoyed that Lena canvassed opinion on MN tbh. She creditted the site after all.

I agree that it's irritating she said there was fierce reaction when actually the vast majority of the posters on this thread were warm and supportive of the namechange. I guess that's a bit of poetic licence to serve the purpose of the article.

Huxley's a brilliant name though. It's the name of the paleantologist who presents the Walking with Dinosaurs arena spectacular. <Useless trivia because Spiderdada has been playing the part of Huxley for the past three months.>

Spidermama - Here is lenac's (op) item in the paper Why I changed my baby's name LenaC

A link to the article would be nice.

Hehe, Spidermama.

Ahh. I must read threads BEFORE posting.

Lena, it is really RUDE to use a chat thread when yr fishing for article filler. Just a thought...

I think you did the right thing and were brave.

I know mums who regret the names they gave their children and will have a lifetime of so doing because they didn't have the courage to go with their feeling.

I LOVE Huxley. What a great name. Where did you get it from?

Laura Wattenberg, Dr Karla Umpierre, Pamela Satran so many lifted quotes...

She's getting a total bashing on Guardian comments... bet she wished she'd stuck with the MN response!

Do you think MN should bill the Guardian for this? Clear bit of journo research which shoudl have been paid for.

Or does that mean they should also be billing the DM?

How peculiar that she should lie in her article today about the fierce resistance. Journos, they're a strange breed aren't they?

If there had been a chat thread it would have been still here (unless it was longer ago than this thread).

(I have searched by the way )

A chat thread would still be visible wouldn't it?

AND in the Guardian piece (today) she says that she met with "fierce resistance" to her decision to rename Ralph/Huxley; I am struggling to detect any resistance here, am I the only one??

And who is it that allegedly called her a "crank" (as alleged in article)?? She completely fabricated the supposed MN response. Or did she start a Chat thread about it all, now expired and with much more bellicose tone, maybe??

How classy to use MN to research your article, lenac.
Journalists usually have to pay for this.

Did anyone else used to watch Huxley Pig ? In the late 1980's......

RALPH?!!!!
no farking wonder

xp's aunt changed the name of her dd within a few days of her being born.
prior to the birth she was telling everryone the baby would be called one thing but when she was born it didn't feeol right so she named her something else.

literally within days so it was confusing for a while till the message got back to everyone.

i think at 6 months it will be ok for the child but difficult for everyone else.

i think huxley a fab name too(better than ralph !)

i would like to change my dd s middle name could you plese tell me lenac how i go about this ?

I wish i had had the courage to swap our dd2 names around as her 1st name seems so common unlike her middle name. But I wasnt brave enough when family seemed to disaprove. One of my friends then rubbed salt in the wound by nameing her second daughter my daughters middle name!! DD2 now 23 months and it seems to late.

I changed my ds's middle name just before his first birthday and i'm glad i did. No big deal.
Huxley - cool name!

i wish i had known you could do this! we chose a name for our dd, told everyone n then i changed my mind but felt because everyone already knew her name i couldnt change my mind so we registered it.by the time i really disliked it i thought it was too late cos she was registered! shes 2.5 now so abit old to change her name.

I like the name Huxley

Dd was born in Jan, we called her India Rose but every India i heard about had Rose as their middle name.

So i have changed it to India Bluebell.

Dh thought i was bonkers. I wanted to call her Bluebellas a first name in the end. Dh said nope. I call her it anyway

She get's called both, she may be confused as she gets older but i doubt it.

She will probably just say "Oh ignore my loony mother, she always calls me that"

Huxley is such a fabulous name. What a great choice. Everyone is probably going to copy you Well done for having the courage to change your baby's name. Ralph is a great name, but Huxley is soooo much better.

im thinking of doing this with my dd2 middle name, does it cost anything? and will her passport still be ok? or is it really complicated to do?
xx

My SIL unofficially changed her son's name after six years. She then expected the rest of the family to call him by his new name. My dh thinks that his sister is barking and still uses the old name. The poor child seems really confused.

oh i wish too that i'd given ds2 his names the other way round - now not as keen on the first name we gave him - its too long and i'm never liked the traditional shortened version! but he's nearly 3 so would be weird to start calling him by his middle name now!!

so instead we're trying out weird made up shortened versions of his name in the hope one sticks!!

or maybe we just try to call him his middle name!

lenac - love the name huxley!!

I haven't done it but have often thought about doing it.

Everyone told us that we had to have a name for DS2 when we brought him home from hospital, so that we could say to DS1 'Here meet your new brother ......' Quite why we went along with this idea I do not know. So we spent a day tossing round name idea's & came up with one we both quite liked.

And now we are stuck with it.I really don't like it now, it is a really nick-namey name. But he is 2.6 so don't feel I can change it.
We can't even use his middle name as it is DP's first name.

Should have guessed that as it took us 5 weeks to name DS1, trying out different names to see which suited that rushing it was not a good idea.

i want to add my surname as a second middle name for DD1. We did it for DD2 at birth. What do i have to do?? Need to do it sooner rather than later as her first passport expires in sept and i want her next passport to have her new name.

I think as long as you do it when they're little it's no big deal, you may live to regret it otherwise.

My friend swapped her DS middle name to first name when he was at nursery and soon enough we all got used to it.

When my 3rd DS was born, I was v. tempted to get his name changed when he was only few months old, we love the name Harry but after he was born and named did I suddenly seem to hear every child was called Harry and I panicked thinking it was too common.
I looked up ways on the internet and really considered it but didn't go through with it. Since grown to love the name and it suits him, although still don't like hearing all the other Harry's around!! oh well...

Do it I say!

Oh funny enough I have been thinking recently that dd2 looks morelike a similar sounding name to hers. I even told DH I wished I'd thought of that name as she is so like that. She's 15 months. It would not be a big deal to change it for her or her sister who liked it and thought we should change it but all the adult lookes at me in dibelief.
Luckily I still think her first name suits her so I doubt I'll change it. But think I would if really thought it didn't. So well done. It's very early days no one will remember.

When I had my DS (he was 1 last week) everyone had a porblem with his name (they all kept calling him Callum) and he did in fact really look like a Thomas - his middle name but he has grown into his name and really suits it.

My brother's first name is our family's traditonial name - Thomas but he has always been called by his middle name.

I have a double barrelled first name but changed it to an abbreviated version when I was about 13 as I don't think I look like my name IYSWIM, although I still get called all the versions by various family members.

I think if you are goping to do it do it sooner rather than later. For those of us who got married it took us ages to get used to our 'new' names I like the name Huxley too - unusual.

I would like to change DD1's middle name. It was bestowed upon her in a fit of emotional gratitude but is a bit cringy.
Would it be difficult now? She is 10.

I wish I had done this too. My dd is nearly three and I am still not comfortable with her name. When I had her I was pressured into naming her. It was all anyone could talk about. It is a huge regret and I wish that I had changed it.

Oh, I wish I had changed my ds name when he was much younger. He is 18 months. I have never been 100% convinced it is his name, on the way to the register office i said "I think we should call him X". I so wish we had used this name.
However, my decision is that I left it too long and he recognises his name now so I almost have to grin and bear it although I am currently in the process of adding X as new middle name for him.
Even if we had another ds, I could not use the name X as it belongs to DS1 if that makes sense.

I wish I had changed it - and good luck to you for the decision made!

changed dd's 2 names around officially just before her 1st b'day, I had been calling her by her middle name consistently since 7 months. So glad I did it, and now she's 3 everyone (family) agrees we made the right decision, although they were a bit reluctant at first. I think people get a bit emotionally attached to the initial name. Now the emotional attachment is to her new name, and everyone loves it!

I have always been called by my middle name, right from birth. My sister seriously considered changing her Ds's very unusual name because everyone seemed to hate it. It is very unusual. However, her DH would not agree to it. My nephew is now 18 years old and has weathered his name very well and she is very glad she didn't change it.

I just think if you are unsure about your child's name you should do something about it. At first my DH thought I was mad but when he realised I had a baby whose name I couldn't say he was very understanding. People were shocked but I think so what. Now six months later we have a baby whose name we both love and the mutterings of my in laws have died down.

Anyway as someone pointed out to me, how many different names (sweetie, darling, honey) do you have for your baby anyway? One more won't make much difference surely?

Before the age of one you can just get the birth certificate amended but after one you do it by deed poll but this is also easy to do.

My friend has recently changed her daughters name from Chloe to Skye - her DD is 14 months old.

She changed it because she said she just felt that the name did not suit her and it was too popular.

Personally - I find it a bit odd and I think her DD was confused, she still answers to Chloe and most people are still calling her Chloe.

I don't think using a middle name is as unusual - imo that is the point of middle names - allows a child some flexibility.

We changed our son's name unofficially at about 7 weeks old (yes, not long after we'd registered the name!). A few weeks later, when we'd decided we really did like the new name, we changed it officially. Easy peasy. No-one batted an eye - except my mother-in-law who still finds it incredible that we did it! Actually, many people's reaction was ... oh, I wish we'd done that. I think the trick is to do it early. Huxley is a great name.

Huxley is an awesome name

My friend did it twice!! Each time she changed it to something nicer though. If she'd done it the other way 'round, it would have seemed harder I guess.

Some of her wider circle of acquaintance though, can't remember which of the five names announced are the final 3 iyswim. (she has 3 girls).

It was quite traditional in Ireland and Scotland to be known as your mn. Definitely not unusual.

Lots of people use their middle and this is
fine, its their name after all, I don't see a problem with this.

I know 3 people whose parents did this

Rosamund Claire (known as Claire from birth but parents liked the sound of Rosamund Claire better than Claire Rosamund) Naturally as soon as we found this out at school everyone just called her Rosamund to annoy her

Caroline Serena (parents changed to calling her Serena at 6 months) All offical stuff was still Caroline, confusing I think

Charles James (parents always called him James but again liked Charles James better than James Charles) Again all offical stuff still as Charles

I do think calling someone by their middle name is just about ok but confusing, but changing their name all together is maybe going a bit far!

Did your DH want to change as well, what was your family's reaction? What does the birth certificate now say?

I have been thinking about this for DS2, he is now six months old, but DH does not want to and thinks I am being mad. DS2 is only 14 months older than DS1 and we just had a mental block thinking of a boys name again so soon we used the name I love for DS1.To be honest at the same time I have got use to his name and given I have changed my mind once I may change it again, so it may be better to stick with it. Its just that if I could turn the clock back I would have called him something else.

I think you are really brave, I would worry about how other people would react and also how I would explain this to DS2 when he is
older.

but part of the reaction might have been to the name Huxley rather than the fact you changed it?

I would be really surprised at someone doing this to be honest - never come across it. But if it didn't feel right then I guess you did the right thing... must be hard for people to get used to!!

I changed my baby's name from Ralph to Huxley when he was six months old. I just felt his name didn't fit. I was quite surprised at the reaction I got from family and friends. Has anyone else done this or is thinking about doing this?