anyone really regret the name they chose?

[littlegreyrabbit]

Ds is 9 now so it's just a little late to change his name but I wish I'd stuck to my gut feeling and tried to persuade dh on my first choice name.

Instead we compromised on a name that was second choice for both of us. There are 3 boys in ds's class with the same name and it's a name that doesn't even match our surname very well.

Anyone else feel the same?

I love my dd's name (dp's choice) but I don't think it really suits her, and the name I wanted does.

My ds is not a Joe. He'd have liked to be called Luke. I think he's more of a Tom.

My dd is a Grace. A lovely name - but not for her. She would have been a fab Rowan......

Wonder if many people change names? I think you can do it quite easily in the first year can't you? I do kind of regret DS's name as there are a couple I would prefer but I can't see him as anything else now, and dd just suits her name to a tee, so I suppose they were the right choices.

Actually there was a lady on another board I remember who changed her dd's name when she was about 6 months. She changed it from summer to something I can't remember, must be complicated with medical records and suchlike.

We changed ds2's name at 11 months and 3 weeks (you can do it up to 12 months!).
Not complicated, in fact almost disturbingly simple, just sent off a form. The full birth certificate shows both names and the "short" certificate just the new name.
Still don't really like it though.We changed it from the shortened to the full version and he's 19m old now.....dh and other dcs love it but it's just not growing on me as it should.
Don't like admitting it though, even on here. Feels disloyal to him.

Well I have always hated my own name and rarely use it ( I do more these days as a way of having a Secret Identity) so gave DS 3 first names (so he can choose when he's older), the very first one of which a lot of the family don't much like, but he has been addressed by his initials since he was about a day old.
Names have power, though. ON the simplest level, if you are normally addressed by a short version of your name, hearing the fullversion generally makes you sit up and shudder in apprehension.

my nan moved at 6 and when she moved she dropped her first name and took up her middle name. my grandpa was known as B when in fact his name was wg (iswim)my grandparents called my ma fs and from 6 weeks old she was only s when she was 17 my da started calling her an abbrivation of s which i always thought was cheeky. i on the other hand regret not calling dd the middle name of my choice, luckily at confirmation that was the name she chose.

My brother's step son had one of these "unusual" names people are always discussing so fondly on here. He had always hated it so when he was 11 he changed to to a name he chose himself - which turned out to be a very ordinary, conventional one.We had a special celebration and a party. There were a few legal hoops to jump through, but nothing too taxing - and he was so much happier afterwards. He went off to secoandary school with his new name, there were two others in his year and he was delighted!

I love DD's name. We didn't, however, give her a middle name. There is a 'family name' on DH's side but it is a boy's name. We decided that, if we have a DS in the future, we'll give him the family name as a middle name. If we have another DD or we don't have anymore DC then we're seriously considering giving DD the female version of DH's 'family name' as a middle name. We wouldn't do it officially, we'd just start using it. We had a friend a few years ago who did this; she just started putting another middle name on her DS's forms and no one questioned it. He is NA on his birth certificate and NAM on everything else!

I know several other people who are commonly known by names that are not their given first name ... DH's Nan was Christened 'Clipsy', which she hates, so is known as 'Peggy'; I used to work with a lady called Felicity who was actually a Barbara and a family friend is called Anne but was Christened Elizabeth. None of them have changed their names officially, they just use the alternative.
I know that this isn't directly in response to the OP but I thought it might be interesting if anyone is considering changing their DCs' names

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For the first six months I was very unsure about our daughters name, it seemed too long and too big a name for a baby, and the short form seemed too toddler or teenage. Now she is 4 it really suits her

Its Alexandra btw, and gives her the options of a pretty princess name or a tomboy fun short name. We make a point of using her full name often so its not alien and, as someone mentioned above, giving rise to feelings of apprehension.

I'm really happy with it now

We had 2 possibles for DS. On some sort of post birth whim I announced one of them to the assembled grandparents when we brought him home from hospital. It's a good name, and it suits him, but very, very commonplace, and I spent a lot of time wishing I'd not blurted it out and had spent more time actually choosing.

I think Alexandra is a lovely name. Would have had it for DD, I think, had we not had a nephew called Alexander

i still like the name we chose for ds but have been told by a few different people that it is 'posh', and not in a good way, which has spoilt it slightly for me

how rude of them stealth

in fairness, only one was a friend, that was before he was born. Another was someone i used to work with, bumped into her in the supermarket when he was a few months old. Also on here, but not aimed at my DS - remember mozhe and the waterskiing?

Not regretted as such as it is a lovely name and we would so choose it again but . . . we named our dd2 Grace - she is the least graceful child you could ever hope to meet. We should have called her Storm!! (actually I quite like that name now I've typed it)

no I don't, but I do wish that DH had agreed to my first choice name in each case (which I loved) - instead he stood firm and we had to compromise every time (for 4 dcs). Am pg with dc5 now and he is doing it again...

We compromised on both of our first choices with DD (we ended up with Hannah instead of my choice - Evelyn - and DH's choice - Armelle). Although neither of us really like DD's name still, we still both hate each others' name choices, so I guess it was still the right thing to do. But I do sometimes regret not fighting harder at the time. And I also regret only giving her one middle name (Blue) instead of a whole string of them, from which she could pick a name of her choice at a later stage....

Never ever regretted our choice for DS (Fergus) which we still adore and which suits him to the ground

SPB - I remember mozhe - FWIW I think it's a lovely name.

I love and adore both dses' names still, but I'm beginning to regret them having dh's surname - not because things are bad with dh, but because my surname would have sounded 'stronger' and more striking with their names. Also, because dh's surname starts with a vowel, girls' names for a future hypothetical dd that end with a vowel sound are sadly out.

This is what I am scared of - giving my lo a name that I end up regretting...

M2bR - give a selection of names then and you can use whichever one suits (either your choice or the DC's) later. I have known several people use their middle names rather than their first names - a doctor I once saw was always addressed and known as J Nigel Thomas (what's the betting his parents had called him JOhn?).

Think it is normal to fall out of love with your kids names, when they fail to live up to your view of what a mary is,or a jasmin.

Then you fall back in love with the name when
they become The Mary,or The Jasmin.

Always hated my name when I was a kid, and wanted to be called Maxine ! (really like my name now).