Did your name preferences change with age?

[BertrandRussell]

I know mine did- my imaginary babies when I was a teenager would have happily fitted into Bob Geldorf's family - the babies I actually had could join the Queen's grandchildren unnoticed.

So. Take, for instance, Sapphire. Would you use it? Are you over or under 25?

[MikeUniformMike]

If you asked me aged 7, I would have chosen the name of one of my friends or a character in a book or film. I would not recommend allowing siblings to name a baby. Aged 14 it would probably have been a pop star or a film character.

Names can say a lot about the parent's age, background, ethnicity, taste and so on. Prejudice including snobbery, racism and ageism exist whether we like it or not.

[MikeUniformMike]

Yes, it has definitely changed. Chose sensible names for DC, and they turned out to be very popular names. Both classic names. Have no regrets.
I think at some point I wanted to call my DD Chloe, Natalie, Anastasia or Sophie.
So glad we didn't. I still like Sophie but not the others.

[funkt]

When I was younger, they all had a mixture of ghastly and gorgeous names. After I was actually contemplating naming a living being that, my preferences changed. I'd love to name my kids something over the top like 'Basilton' or 'Bronwen' but honestly, I wouldn't. I mainly chose DD1s name because both me and DP thought it suit her and her intelligent little eyes and DD2 got her name because of the meaning and the fact it's such a different name that not many people know.

[Largemelons]

I have 5 children, the first was born when I was 16, the last when I was 31.
My first was a boy and I thank my lucky stars he was a boy as I gave him a pretty normal, sensible name. If he was a girl I had a rather weird and wonderful shortlist including Tammy and Savannah which was no.1.
I still like it but I'd never use it. My DDs all have very sensible top 25 names.
Interestingly, being pregnant again in my late 30's I'm finding I'm veering away from the top 100 names although I'm going classic rather than 1990s Australian sitcom. 😂

[SorenaJ]

Yes. When I was a teenager I wanted to name my children after reality TV characters.

[NapQueen]

When I was a teen I wanted Chloe and Matthew. When I eventually had my kids I totally changed tastes and they are named after the girl in the Griffin family ("shut up.....") and ds is the same first name as Mr bickle. Clearly dh and his love of TV has influenced my style!

[1horatio]

Emeraude Ottilie. Or Emeraude Millicent. Or maybe Emeraude Josephine...


But I guess it will have to stay a guilty pleasure name :/

[1horatio]

Saphire?

No. but I love Emeraude... 🙈🙈

DD is Clarissa, btw.

And yes, I'm over 25 and so is DH.

[ChittyBB]

I used to insist my daughters would be called Kylie and Charlene. My primary school teacher bet me £50 I wouldn't. I could not believe she would risk that much money when I knew it was a dead cert.

My children all have quite classic old fashioned names.

[AndNoneForGretchenWieners]

If I had had a daughter, I would have called her Aly-Louise. As a teen I always imagined a little boy called Raoul Erik and a little girl called Hero Aphrodite... dreadful. Now I'm much older (and glad I had a boy not a girl) I would probably still use Raoul as a middle name (and funnily enough one of my closest friends is called Raoul) with William or Roderick but would now go with Millicent Linda for a girl.

I've gone very boring in my old age.

[Kelsey28]

Me and my twin sister were determined we would have daughters at the same time and called them Moon and Star!

[blondmom]

Totally! LOL I love uncommon names before, I actually tweak the spelling but as I grow older, I just love simple names like Elizabeth.

[User1987654]

When I was a teen, I had written down Chantal ( before it had the reputation it does now) after seeing a Sandra Dee movie and Krystle as I watched Dynasty, I know, another very bad name LOL. I did have Amelia Jane but look how popular Amelia is now and Annabel.

I still like Amelia and Annabel but now that I'm much older and boring. Names like Emily and Elizabeth it is!

[NoncommittalToSparkleMotion]

Oh, totally. That, and being married to the co-producer of the children makes things tricky

I still love Damian as a name and will push for it forever.

[YokoUhOh]

I had an entire alphabet of girls' names pre-selected as a teen. Ended up with two boys (one of whom is Bert OP)

[griffinsss]

Should my daughters have been boys, they would have had awful pretentious literary names; think Atticus before it became almost acceptable. I was a 19 year old university student when my DDs were born. They have relatively normal names (the equivalent of Katie and Scarlet) thank god. As a child I loved Zoey, Stacey and Keeley.

I wouldn't use the name sapphire, but it just isn't my personal taste. I'm 24.

[Buntysoven]

The girl's name I loved as a teenager was also the name of the vilest woman I have ever met so that put me right off it.

[BertrandRussell]

My dd had two pretend babies called Isaac and Rose when she was little. She's 20 and still says those are her baby names. We shall see. But no for a long time!

[Pluto30]

When I was 14, I was adamant I was going to name my DD Nirvana.

Can happily say that none of my children have names reminiscent of that.

[MrsHouseBrownie]

I had a thing about J's in my teens. Jasmine Jamie Jack Jay Jake Jessie. And hippy sounding ones. Skye River Willow Blue (I was a 90s teen) I still like quite a few of them now but DD has a classic old fashioned name and a family name

[HumphreyCobblers]

I had many different names I was going to call my children, none of which I actually used. I think Anna, Leah and Jessica were the favourites of my teen years.

My dsis however had a girls name and a boys name from the age of eight, both of which she ended up using. I love it that she did this.

[OpalTree]

When i was at nursery in the 70s I really liked a particular name that was popular then. There must have been a child with that name at the nursery. I called my eldest the name and i still really like it.

[Sophronia]

Yes, when I was a teenager I was sure any future babies would be Ariadne and Zacchaeus my taste is a bit more traditional/boring now.

[LestatVonGaribaldi]

As a teenager I thought my kids would be Shannice and James. James is far too popular for me now (no offence to any parents of James out there!) and Shannice just isn't pretentious enough for me now (dd apparently has a rather pretentious name).

sglodion a lot of girls at my school had babies as teenagers. I recall 3 double barrelled the names, funnily enough one was Kadie although spelt differently and not Jo. I'm still in contact with one of these mothers and she's quite embarrassed about her dd's name now and only ever refers to her by the first part of her name.

[TownMouseCuntMouse]

Mine were exceedingly 90s 😄 Aaron, Johan for boys, Bethany, Kristen, Nicole for girls. shudder

Then at uni they changed to more pretentious-foreign-literary-references like Artemisia, Micòl.

My actual DDs have slightly pretentious and unusual but not too out there names.