Why don't we give super fun middle names?

[wangsgs]

There was a girl at my school with a middle name framboises, meaning raspberries in French. I remember how much she loved telling everyone and how cool it was.

My niece has a friend with the middle name Yellow, and she came home from school asked her mum why she had such a boring middle name when she could have been called Yellow.

Even as an adult I would love an awesome middled name like either of these. Something you can always bring up when they say 'tell me a fun fact about yourself'.

Would you have liked this as a kid or not? How about as an adult?

bec naming a human being isn’t a silly game?

😴

She'd maybe have felt differently had it been her first name. I often wonder how some of the kids whose names have been discussed on here will feel when they're older. Or if there are any Neveahs around who love or hate their name.

'Super fun?' Right. I see Zowie Bowie changed his name to Duncan because Zowie is just super. And Dweezil Moon Unit isn't called that as far as I know. Give your child a break and either don't give them a middle name or something that isn't 'super fun '

@StormKate yes I wouldn't suggest this for a first name

I would have found having such an odd middle name really embarrassing as a child and would probably have refused to tell anyone what it was or claimed that I didn’t have one.

@Strawberrycheesecake7 cheesecake is quite out there!

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I wasn't a confident child so I'm not sure I would have carried it off and would probably have been laughed at, but I quite like the thought of something unusual or exotic as an adult.

My sister has a very unusual middle name, and she absolutely hated it, as a child. Mine was super boring, and I don’t like it.

Personally, I think that you do your best to choose names that sound nice together and suit the child, and you try to avoid the really daft names - like Reighfyl (pronounced Rifle) - a genuine name I have seen. I am not sure that ‘fun’ is one of the criteria I would use to choose/rule out a particular name.

A lot of people I know who have been given more unusual middle names have dropped them from their teens upwards wherever they can.

I can see why it would be a fun fact for some children, but if I met an adult whose fun fact was all about their quirky middle name it would give me "I'm so unique/random/wacky/not like the other boring adults" vibes.

I love hearing interesting facts about people, their interests, places they've travelled, cool things they've done by the way. They're all far more interesting than "my parents called me Charlotte Sparkleberry".

I agree that generic or “it just sounds nice” is a dull thing to do for middle names. But It’s really going to depend on personality isn’t it? Shy kids will be glad for something boring, extroverts are going to love something that would make them stand out.

Personally I like the middle ground of picking something with links to family/ actual meaning for the child (whether it’s an unusual name or not)- even as a kid I liked that my middle names had links to people I cared about/our family history (even if they were also a bit old fashioned and therefore slightly embarrassing to an introvert like me). I appreciate it even more as an adult.

I think there is a lot of middle ground between ‘it just sounds nice’ and ‘it’s a super fun name’, @IamnotwhouthinkIam - and in that middle ground there are plenty of lovely names. It’s more important to remember that the baby is a person, who has to live with their name all their life, and choose names that suit them than to demonstrate how funny and quirky the parents are.

Super fun? Oh dear, they probably won’t thank you for it in years to come.

Yes, I agree, my son is just learning the significance of his middle names in terms of the people he's named after (both of my grandfathers!) and I hope one day he's proud to talk about his connection to them :)

He was born exactly 100 years and one day after one of them as well, which is a very cool story in itself! And both of them were born in a pandemic 😂

DH and I have super boring "filler" middle names, which DPs seem to have picked at random as "that's a girl's/boy's name, that'll do". It makes us gloomy even to type them out and we both think "why did our parents even bother wasting the ink"?

We've given our DC unusual middle names which mean something to us - but not in the "Sparkleberry" league. The DC are happy about them.

I agree with you SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius. The middle ground is huge and there's no need for something out there or super fun to be nice, even interesting.

Some of my friends have lovely reasons for choosing their children's middle names and they're ranging from the commonly used middle names to less used names that aren't off the wall. They're far more interesting than prioritising what sounds unique and weird.

I think those names are odd not ‘super fun’ but I get what you are saying

my daughter’s middle name is ‘little sunshine’ in her dad’s native language. It was a bold choice even in his cultural context but it made us smile

i did not want to give her a boring ‘rose’ ‘May’ filler middle name

i think they should be a virtue, something interesting or to honour a family member (ok so fine if you want to honour your auntie may) - but it tends to just be dull, inoffensive names that may as well not be there

I have a ghastly twee middle name, which I loathe and hate even having to admit to. It doesn't suit me so much that nobody can quite believe that my parents (good, down to earth sensible people, who gave me a very sensible first name) would have given it to me. I can only assume that my mother was having a 'literary' moment when I was born.

All my children have two middle names each and they are 'family' names. A child's name isn't really the place to experiment, if you ask me. Use 'fun' names as nicknames by all means, but that person is going to have to fill in official forms at some point, and you don't want them having to cringe and wonder whether you'd been on something when you named them.

One of DD’s friends has the middle name - sunshine. She is such a lovely person and her middle name is just fabulous.

@ShanghaiDiva I love that name!

I used to know someone whose middle name was Laser. He said it was cool when he was 5 and just sounds stupid as an adult.

A surprisingly high number of people actually decide to use their middle name as their first name, so for that reason I would always choose a reasonable middle name.

I agree. A middle name without a story isboring.

I also have the world's most boring first and middle names which every other girl was called that year (6 of us in my class at school!) My middle name is rarely used and my son sometimes even forgets what his is, it's so off his radar. Therefore I kind of wish I'd given him something totally random and fun. He could choose to use it or not and it really wouldn't matter.

I dunno about the UK but in Ireland we only give a middle name so our kids know they are in trouble. If we get to the confirmation name they know to ring the gardai. So essentially it cant be fun cos then it would not be threatening lol