Were you named after anyone?

[Shrinkingviolet6]

I know a lot of people use names/middle names as a way of naming their child after someone special but did you or your parents have any strange inspiration when choosing names?
For example, I’m named after a character from my DM’s favourite tv show in the 80s.

My middle name is after my mum's great aunt who was one of the suffragettes. I'm super proud of it!

I was named after my maternal aunt, and middle name was my mother's first name.
My DS has the English version of my father's name which is also the name of my first boyfriend. Not deliberately, just love the name!
DD is named after a character from a film because I absolutely loved the name. It fits our heritage though so isn't outlandish.

I was named after my Gran’s dead cat.

My father's first girlfriend, the 'one that got away'. Obviously my poor DM didn't know this at the time.

Oh, so would I be!

Another one who shares a name with one of my father's ex girlfriends here. There seem to be quite a few of us!

Stevie Ray Vaughans wife (my mum wouldn't let him call me Stevie so he settled for his wife's name 🤷🏻‍♀️😂)

Never met a Truly Scrumptious before!

I was given the feminine version of my mother’s brother’s name. My middle names are both grandmother’s names.

My daughter is named after a Charles Dickens character. We got inspiration for my son's name from a Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie.

Yes, after my mothers favourite character in a book she loved as a child. My middle name is my mother's name.

She was an emotionally abusive parent and I have no contact with her as an adult. I changed my name a few years ago as I'd always hated it anyway and wanted to remove that link to her but yes technically, (originally) named after a literary character.

My DM wanted to call me Angelique (from a book she was reading), however DF registered the birth and I was given Gran's first name and maiden name.

My friend called her daughter Renee after the 60s song Don't Walk Away Renee, could that be you !

If only...

Yes my grandmother

DM and DF always said I was named after a very beautiful and lovely actress. They may have been joking though.

how funny would it be if we were named after characters in the same show… or even the same character!

My dad wanted to do that too!

No. Mum had in mind a very popular name of the era, but then happened to see my name somewhere (very uncommon in my generation) and changed her mind.

Cue a childhood of never being able to find a bedroom door plaque with my name on it.

My big sister is named after one of dad's former girlfriends too! I thought it was unusual lol. Her name is beautiful and easy to spell- it was unusual until recently. Sis is really put out that she now shares a name with minor celebrity and an obscure writer.

I was named after my grandmothers and always hated it. They are not cute names and don't go well together - think Beryl Edna. I recently found out that a great great grandmother was named with exactly the same really odd combination of names. It shocked me and made me reasses and value my names.

It was a family tradition that a mother chose the name of her oldest daughter's first child. That was me. My grandmother chose her own name, Margaret, nn. Peggy, for me. Mum put her foot down because the family was awash with Margarets on both sides, but I got it as a middle name.

A generation later, my mother has never forgiven me for not calling any of my own daughters Margaret.

Yes. But middle name is my narcisstic M name and we are now more or less NC and my first name is someone my NarcM really admired (she would get really hung up on people and idolise them in the weirdest way). Spent my entire childhood being told how marvellous this person was and how inspirational and why couldn't I be like them and their sons? Turned out their sons both had massive heroin habits as teenagers. One didn't make it past 22 and the other was incarcerated in the US.

Never really occurred to me to change my name but maybe if I had clocked the weirdness of it all when I was younger I might have done.

Children should have their own names IMHO.

My middle name is the name of the midwife who delivered me

Middle name is after an aunt, but my first name is a specific number of characters long.
It wasn't deliberate to start with, but my siblings all have names of different length and when they got to naming me decided it had to fit in.
I like my name, but get irrationally irritated if it's spelled as a common variant as that's with an extra letter

Yes - my first name is from a lady my DM lodged with in the east end of London during her first teaching job at the end of WWII. My middle name was from a cousin of hers who was one of my godparents. And the two together were the name of her American pen friend so DM managed a double whammy.