I need some constructive advice.

[desertdessert]

I need to make a choice between using the name I love or using my surname for DC. My surname doesn't go with my favourite boy's and girls names - not even double barrelled with DPs - and other names just seem a bit neither here nor there. So, it's either the first name I love or my surname and I just can't decide.

I really would like DC to have my surname but at the same time feel like I would be short-changing him or her if I gave them a first name that wasn't my favourite. I know it's down to what is most important to me but how do I decide?

Any advice will be helpful!

If the surname means a lot to you, then I'd try to find a suitable first name that goes well with it. There are so many names out there, have a look at the ONS list of names outside of the top 100 for inspiration.

Use your surname as a middle name. Nobody will ever use it so it won't matter that it doesn't 'go' with your favourite first names, but it will still be there on the birth certificate and as part of your baby's identity IYSWIM.

But then the op's surname is essentiall 'lost' in the middle and never used - I thought she wanted her child to have the same surname as herself.

How badly doesn't it go? If it's something they would be teased about then that's one thing, but otherwise I wouldn't obsess too much about it. You could always just work on the middle names to make a better flow?

Sorry if unhelpful, that's what I did.

rachel, it seems to me that she has started the thread because she wants to use particular names that she feels don't 'go' with that surname, and wants a compromise solution to her 'choice' of whether to use first name I love or my surname... Hence my suggestion of using the surname as a middle name so as not to lose it, but still enabling her to use her chosen first names.

Would it not go of you had Favourite name DP's surname-Your surname?

TBH, I would rather go with my favourite first name because that is the name that you will have to shout out for their whole life. I would have felt a twinge of sadness every time I heard the name mentione for somebody else and think "oh I wish I had called X that!"

*if

I really don't understand surnames and given names not matching. They are what they are, although the potential for Ben Dover or Kylie Wylie might need thinking about. My dad had a Japanese/Scottish friend called Yakimoto Hamilton, I am sure that combo must break loads of name 'rules'.

Didn't you post this the other day????

I always tend to think that most surnames go with most first names as long as they don't rhyme or spell out something rude in the initials, or sound rude eg. Mike Hunt, Ben Dover.

However, our surname begins with J and my favourite boy's name is James but friends said that they would take the piss out of me if I named a son James and had an alliterative name . I didn't have a boy anyway, so it didn't matter. I also avoided any B names to avoid BJ because people can be cruel!

If someone can be called Neville Neville I should have thought anything goes, really :o