The point to middle names?

[StrawbRhi]

Theres a lot of requests for help finding a middle name but personally Ive always thought a middle name should mean something to the parents, not just a nice name.

I have 5 siblings, each one has a middle name that was either in honour of a relative or something that meant something to my parents. For example;
DB1 has Russell- after a singer at the time they both loved.
DB2 has Henry- after our maternal grandfather
DB3 has Augustyn- after paternal grandfather
DB4 has Jonathan- after out uncle
Dsis has Mabel- after a much loved aunt who passed away a week before Mum concieved her.

My DD has 2 middle names- Heather (named for a friend who died just before she was born) and Olwen (after my sister), and my DH has Bernard as per a family tradition where the first born son has his fathers name as a middle name. It can be traced back over 10 generations!

However, I have Elizabeth... because 'it fit' . I've always felt left out. My siblings all have well thought out names. I just got stuck with something plucked from thin air.

So, does anyone else feel the same way or are my views slightly outdated?

We picked DS's middle name to honour a relative. My nephew has his paternal grandfather's name as his middle name, as does my brother.

I don't think it's unusual for people to do this kind of thing, but I do think that people who have chosen a middle name for its meaning to them are less likely to ask for middle name help on this kind of site.

After all, if you know you want your DC's middle name to be that of a close relative, friend, or a singer you & DH love, it seems a bit pointless asking the opinion of strangers who know nothing of your family dynamics or what significance a particular singer (for instance) has to you.

my elder brothers and sisters have middle names after people or maiden names etc, but me and my nearest brother (the youngest 2 of 7) just have names that they liked. Mine is technically a name my mums neighbour at the time loved but only had boys. Doesn't bother me.

I absolutely agree. Parents spend FAR too long finding the perfect sounding middle name, forgetting how rarely these ever get used (and even less said).

We too chose names that honoured family members - it feels like a lovely way to connect our ds for example to my dad. Our dd has the name of my favourite aunt, for example, one who didn't have children herself.

Even worse imo are standard 'filler' names like Jane in our generation or Rose now.

I gave my 3 DSs family middle names. DS1 is my maiden surname without the 's' which makes it a normal name. (Like Phillips) DS2 is Edward after both my dad (Ted), my exBIL (Eddie) and is my exFIL's middle name too. DS3 was more of a challenge, as we wanted names we liked as well as the family connection, so he got the same middle name as my exH (John) who was named after his Uncle John. My DB has the same middle name, named after my Uncle John. John does sound like a 'filler' name but it does have meaning for us, really.

I know several people who go by their middle names, so our DSs have them in case they decide they can't stand their first names. We just picked names we liked.

I feel very much the same. Middle name is an opportunity to pay tribute to someone in the family IMO. My parents didn't do this though - they simply picked nice-sounding names.

We did a family name for DS's middle name (John). Also, we figured that you can say what you want about "John" in terms of it being boring etc, but it's kind of hard to dislike it, so we thought if he decided he didn't like his first name at any point, he can just call himself John.

DC2 will be harder as if it's a boy, we're out of reasonable family names (mainly because they're nearly all called John), so might just have to go for a wildcard.

I didn't choose middle names for my three boys, they only have first names....it took us long enough to decide on those and with the twins we changed their planned names just after they were born.

However, the other day, my youngest told me 'You didn't even love me enough to give me a middle name'......What a sweetie.

But what if there is no one to pay tribute to?

One of my DC has the same middle name as a character from a comedy show. I would never, ever admit in RL that is why I like the name, and really wanted it as his first name.

DD has middle names we really,really like.

The meaning of the names were important to me, but not paying tribute to anyone, infact DH was determined not to use the same name as anyone else in the family, which is really difficult when you have 2000 Irish cousins, and you quite like Irish names.

We wanted to avoid family names as my DH's parents are both re-married and choosing one family member's name could be seen as 'playing favourites' and we didn't want to cause offense/be forced to call our next child 'x' because we called that one 'y' after so-and-so. It does limit us somewhat as some very nice names are family names... I agree it would be nice to have a genuine meaning, but we chose the path of least resistance and a middle name that goes with DD's first name.

I also agree that middle names are rarely used, but a common surname can mean a middle name is sometimes necessary to confirm identity later on... There are many John Smiths, but how many John Malcolm Smiths for example?

My brother and I have our parent's names as our middle names. Our parents both have middle names that mean something to them (one has their mum's maiden name and the other has an old family name).

I agree, OP!

I think they should mean something. We chose 'Jane' as our DD's middle name because it was the middle name of my wife's sister who died a couple of months before DD was born. Choosing her first name would have been too raw.

Middle names do also have another use - it allows escalation of crossness when said child does something wrong. Hearing firstname, middlename AND surname meant I was in serious bother as a child.

I totally agree and don't understand why people scrabble around trying to find one.

I also don't get the 'they can use it when they're older' argument. They can refer to themselves as whatever they want when they are older.

I always thought the point of middle names was to give the child an alternate name they can easily use, should they not like their first name as they get older. Consequently, I would always use names which are very different from each other e.g. I wouldn't have Ellie and Lily, because it's unlikely that someone would dislike one but like the other. I'd always pair a short name with a long one; a modern name with a traditional one etc.

I know that people can call themselves whatever they like as they get older, but legally it's a lot easier (i.e. you don't have to change everything by deed poll) if you use a middle name, rather than one plucked out of thin air.

In my family, we seem to have quite a thing for using middle names. Three of my four grandparents were called by theirs, as is my father, many of my aunts & uncles and now both my sons. For the past year or so one of my sons has been pondering dropping the use of his second name and moving on to his third! Who knows what he will eventually end up as.

I thought I'd given my daughter my late paternal gran's full first name as a middle name. found out a year later that the name she was known by was her actual name on her birth certificate and not a shortened version. Oops. (for example, giving the middle name Katherine only to find out the relative you were paying tribute to is actually registered as Katie).

I am one of those parents who chose MNs for a specific reason. The DCs' first and mns are family names. As a bonus, I thought the first and middle names 'went' well together but the pool of names I chose from was family names/ancestors (including feminine versions of names of male family members) and I would not have used any others.

At least you got a good regal name and weren't lumbered with something that just happened to be fashionable at the time.

Nearlythere -- One MN I chose for a DD was a name a particular aunt had chosen for herself at 16 after years of being called a nn that suited her tomboy ways. That particular aunt was never known by her original name, which was actually a doozy of a name to lumber a baby with.