What inspired your baby name choice?

[Fairybobbin]

What's your Little One's name/name to be? Did you hear it on a TV programme? Film? Family member? Google search? Mumsnet? Tell me your story!

[Youseethethingis]

I fancied Noah and his brother Jude in Home and Away about 20 years ago. Thought their names were so cool, so they were quietly on the “maybe one day I’ll call my son this” list.

Many years later... Customer at works approximately 4 year old boy announces (Glasgow accent - this is important) “I’m Noah McDonald! and my maws no a McDonald either coz dad won’t marry her”

I’ve got a Jude. Accent is important!

[mummycubs]

DD1 is my only singleton and she will be four in May. My aunt passed before my siblings and I were born, and I was the first to have children out of my siblings, so I honoured my aunt and named my daughter after her.
DD2 and DD3 are my twins, three in January. DD2 is named after my mother and DD3 is named after a historical warrior who my younger brother and I really admire and love to read about. DD2 has her own nickname so her and my mother don't get confused at family gatherings
DS1, DS2 and DD4, my triplets, were born in September and were named by their big sisters. DS1 is named after my father and my DS2 is named after my older brother, but both have also been given their own nicknames so it isn't confusing when around the family. DD4, I don't actually know where the girls heard her name as they haven't ever met anyone with the same name, but it's a gorgeous name and she suits it so much. I love their names and I'd love to have more children but I think six is enough for now, especially while they're all so young and close together

[Sweetpeach3]

I got my name because I was born right near Christmas.
CAN YOU GUESS IT ????
lmao

My kids were just names I liked and went well with their last name so quite random! Xx

[spiderlight]

DS has an unusual Welsh name that's part of the name of a tiny little village where I went camping as a child. I remember stashing it away as a potential name at the age of 11. Roll on a couple of decades and DH, who's a university lecturer and deals with 200-plus students a year, vetoed every name I suggested because he'd taught a smelly one or a lazy one or a rude one or a posh one, until I dragged this one name out of the archives and he (a) had never encountered it before and (b) really liked it.

[fin89]

My second daughter was named after a storm I laboured through...

[MamaDane]

I don't actually remember where we got the ideas of the names for our twins. We just loved those names?
The middle name for one of the twins is the romanized name of a well known philosopher.

Were we to have a girl in the future then her middle name would be after my grandmother

[MrsMoastyToasty]

I wanted DS name to reflect his Scottish heritage from my DH side of the family without repeating any other members of the family's name. His middle name is/was FIL and BIL name and my DF middle name. His second middle name was the male version of my DM's name. All 3 names are traditional first names as well as being surnames/clan names.

[Fairybobbin]

@CloudyVanilla Not insensitive at all, being too hard on yourself

@Emthebaker Thank you! So interesting hearing all the different inspirations and stories.

[Musmerian]

@PlantPotting - he’s just turned 16! I don’t think he’d take kindly to a name change.

[Emthebaker]

What a good thread idea!

My little boy is two weeks old now and we named him Arthur, which has been my favourite name since I heard it on a TV show back in 2009.

His middle name is Kieran after my fiancé’s twin brother who passed away a couple of years ago after suffering with leukaemia at just 22. He’d have been a fantastic uncle and it feels right that we included him in some way.

[theruffles]

My DD's name was the only one DH and I could really agree on. It wasn't after anyone or anything in particular but we heard it years ago, liked it and it just stuck despite lots of other names being discussed. Her middle name is the nickname DH's nan went by.

[CloudyVanilla]

Gosh reading this I feel so insensitive with my name choices

I didn't take family names into account at all. My dp is adopted and had an abusive foster family so it would have felt inappropriate and mean to use family names from my side, even if I had considered it.

My name choices were purely based on the sound and meaning (only positively though - as in a meaning I wanted would sway me but a meaning I didn't care for also wouldn't put me off).

The most important thing to me was that I loved a combination of sound, imagery and the feeling of the name if that makes sense; just the whole essence of it really.

[PlantPotting]

You could always change it to Ferdinand on the birth certificate and then he can use that option when he’s older @Musmerian

[Musmerian]

@puds11 - me too. My daughter is Hester from Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, DS1 is Edmund from King Lear. Third is Freddy and I wish I’d gone for Ferdinand as there are too many Freddys.

[SumAndSubstance]

Mine are named after saints who are important to us! One is quite unusual, while the other one is more common.

[BrunoLovesMe]

Nature

[BatleyTownswomensGuild]

DS is Owen.

For me it was a name I'd always loved. I like short, simple, traditional names for boys: Tom, Sam, Seth, James, David etc . It met my essential criteria:

1. sensible spelling
   
2. Not currently in top 20 of most-popular names
   
3. Nobody else in our immediate circle of family and friends with same name.
   
4. No strong stereotypes associated with it
   
   DH is a big reader and fancied a literary name. One of his favourite books at the time was A Prayer for Owen Meaney, so it stuck....

[lumpy76]

Criteria as follows:

1. Must be Greek (my hertitage)
2. Mustn't repeat the initial is another sibling or parent in first name.
3. Middle names are family names

Got very difficult when we got to DC8.

[Greyhound22]

I named my son after a famous-ish daredevil.

He was doing a very dangerous stunt and as we watched it live my exact words were 'if this idiot survives this I'll name my firstborn son after him'.

A couple of years later I did.

[mizzles]

The NASA spacecraft on the news when I was in hospital (Juno).

[BackforGood]

It wasn't one thing that inspired, so much as things I didn't want being ruled out

So, we wanted:
Things that were 'known' and easy to spell and easy to say (if seen written down)
Things that were only names for people - not flowers or colours or cars or drinks or places or trees etc etc
Different initials for each of us
Then (after realising our mistake with dc1) names that weren't really popular at the time
Didn't want them to be the same name (or very similar to) any other close relative
Then, being a teacher, several names that I otherwise might have liked, instantly reminded me of old pupils, which was a bit offputtting

All this narrowed it down quite a lot !

[SE13Mummy]

DD1 - we had three possibilities for her and chose the one DH felt she most looked like (he's awful at calling people by their 'look like' name, even if it's nothing like their name). Her middle name is my grandmother's.

DD2 - first name chosen for its meaning as we'd been told it would be unlikely we'd have a second child. Middle name is Hope because of the above.

[balletpanda]

I first heard of an actress with the name when I was only 8. Ever since then my first choice name for a DD stayed the same. It was never going to change and it suits her perfectly.

[NameChange30]

justone

It's Saul! Not huge fans of either character but we like the name.

[Ohyesiam]

When I was about 7 I heard a girls mane and o thought it was the prettiest sound I’d ever heard.
Fast forward many years and that never changed. Luckily dh loved it too.
She’s 15 now and as beautiful as her name.