Is there a story behind the names you chose for your children?

[Lonnie]

Seeing all these threads I started wondering we have a story behind each name we chose for our children does anyone else want to share?

my oldest is Phoebe. Everyone said ohh like in Friends but actually she is named after JD Salingers book "The Catcher in the Rye" dh read this at age 14 and said back then If I ever have a little girl I want to call her Phoebe (how could I say no to that? - I love the name too)

my 2nd is Eloisa.. Whilst pregnant with Phoebe I had a very vivid dream that we had a baby girl and we called her Eloise dh would not hear of it so I spend the next year saying "I DO like the name Eloise.. Eloise is SUCH a pretty name and when I became pg the second time stepped this up he finally when I was 7 months pg said OK but I prefer it with an A at the end I said DEAL and she became Eloisa (weird thing is she looked a true copy of the girl I dreamt about)

our son is Conrad dh likes traditional names I like unusual names.. Dh does not want a biblical name so you try finding a traditional uncommon non biblical boys name I think we got one of the few there is..

Our youngest is Aoife it was just a name I utterly fell in love with when I first heard it and I love the spelling too it is just soooo pretty and luckilly dh liked it too..

anyone else willing to share?

DS was going to be Charlie - Charles being a family name but dh was concerned everyone would think we had named our son 'Cocaine' (he works in advertising......) so we changed to another name at the last minute. Took me a while to get used to and i did regret naming him so quickly for a long time.

DD was going to be Laura (after a sweet little girl we met on holiday, whose dad explained he had wanted a name that would suit a grown up as well as a baby...) - but it just seemed wrong when she was born, so we then spent the next week debating. Have been thrilled with her name since we made the decision...

DS1 is Max Anthony Stiva. I watched Hollyoaks and saw a character called Max and loved it as did DH. Anthony is after my Dad and Stiva is after BIL.

DS2 is Joshua Luca Italo. Joshua is a name DH has always liked. Luca is after DH and Italo is after DH's grandad. A very old fashioned Italian name.

DS's middle name is Rhys cos both DH & I love Michael Biehn's character Reece in Terminator. But we chose the Welsh spelling cos it looks nice (no disrespect to any Reeces out there) and I'm from Welsh stock

When I was heavily pregnant with DD I had I dream in which I was going through all the names on my shortlist and none of them were quite right.

Then in my dream I came up with a totally different name that we hadn't even considered, and I thought 'that's it'. And then I woke up.

I told DH - he laughed at me but gradually came round to the idea. He picked her middle name (which is the same name as the little girl in Bewitched).

People often ask me if she is named after a relative (it's a very old fashioned name) -when I tell them her name came to me in a dream they look at me like I'm bonkers :-)

After we found out I was carrying a boy, we struggled to find more than a handful of boys' names that we both liked so whenever one came up I made a note of it. At one point I suggested Joseph and DP rubbished it, saying it was too boring (I wrote it down anyway). Then a few months later he was reading a Judge Dredd anthology and said "hey, how about Joe?" So DS is named after Judge Dredd

Middle name is Simon after my beloved brother who died last year.

oh, i forgot, second middle name is DP's surname.

DD is named Matilda after my grandmother who pretty much raised me for the first year of my life and sadly died when I was 6.

Scout is from To Kill a Mockingbird - a book both dp and I love. It was the only "duplicate" book we had when we merged our collections when we first moved in together

During my first pregnancy everyone was utterly convinced I was having a girl (except me!). DH was SO convinced he wouldn't even entertain the idea of choosing a - 'just in case' - boy's name. Our baby was going to be called Charlotte.

A few days before my due date I managed to pursuade DH that the baby might be a boy so we started thinking of boys names, it was just before Christmas so we started joking about names like Santa, Jesus, Noel, Christian......

When we said Christian we both looked at each other and knew that was to be our boy's name choice.

Christian was born on 27th December!!!!

DS2 we knew we were having a boy and DH wanted the name Hugh, baby Hugh was born at 2:30pm by 2:45pm DH mentioned that he thought maybe the name James was better, to which I replied YES YES YES!! Phew! If you knew our surname you'd say the same thing, it begins with H!

DH and I could not agree on ANY names while I was pregnant. I was convinced it would be a boy so we Finally agreed on Adam James which are both family names.

As it was we had a beautiful daughter. DH came in with the name book and we thought we'd start from the back and came across Zoe (means life). We loved it and she looks like a Zoe (daft I know!)

Her middle name Isabella is a combination of my MIL's name (Isobel) and my gran (Bella). We jokingly suggested using my mother's name (Marjory) as well but she threatened to disown us if we did (she hates her name, in case you hadn't guessed!!)

Lonnie - I dreamt my kid too, on the night she was conceived, and she is the exactly the same as the child in my dream. In the dream she saud "Hi Mama" and I said "Hi Eva". I love Eva Cassidy and I think maybe thats why I thought of that name.

DS2 is named after the irish mythical giant Finn McCool, which is ironic as we are waitng for results back to see if he has a form of dwarism

Throughout my first pregnancy I had a name chosen for either sex and I never once veered from these names until our DD1 was born and we went to register her birth.

The 4 baby girls before her in the registras book had the exact same name I'd chosen and I went off it in a flash.

DH groaned "well choose another name then" and I did without even thinking about it.

We then went to visit my mother who, on hearing of the name change said "how odd, thats the name you called your very first doll when you were little"

I couldn't remember the doll never mind what she was called! Spooky eh

I always had David for a boy as it's my brother's name and also dh's first name (although he uses his second name). Dh wanted to use Glyn as a second name as it was the name of his favourite uncle. My sil had a ds while I was pregnant and wanted to call him David but my brother wouldn't let her, so I felt I didn't want to use it as a 1st name so we swapped the names around.
I'm quite glad now as Glyn really suits ds and it's welsh (dh is welsh) but easily pronouncible as I am english and we live in England.

DS's first name is after a character in a TV show I loved as a child, although I didn't sell it to DP like this. He thinks it's after a character in The Godfather. His middle name was DP's choice after his team's greatest ever goal scorer, which also happens to be his dad's nickname and his grandads' favourite player as well.

DD is named after a character in a recent TV programme who we loved but also after a character in The Maltese Falcon, a book set in San Francisco where DP has spent a lot of time while I've been pregnant with her. Her middle name is after my mum who died almost exactly 20 years ago to the day she was born.

dd1 and dd2 just have names we liked (Isabella and Susannah). dd1 has Elizabeth from my side of the family and dd2 has Mary from dhs side as middle names. dd3 is Philippa, named after my dad who died before any of his granddaughters were born. He was always known as Phil as a nickname derived from our surname. dd1 chose her middle names, Lucy Jane, and I was so relievd it wasn't Cinderella or Esmeralda I agreed on the spot!

I am really enjoying reading all these stories of how we chose the names so many weird and interesting ways Lmccrean I love Eva too (and have one in Aoife) it is such a pretty name.. I dont know if you have more than one child but with the one I dreamt about I didnt have the huge rush of love when she arrived it was something far different like a little shift and she looked up at me and it was like she said "well Im here and you knew I would be" like she had always been inside me to love did you feel that way about Eva too? (I am wondering as we both dreamt about the girl before) I wont say I love her more than the others as I don't but there has always been a different way about it with her than with the others like she was meant to be my daughter

My eldest is called Connor,i wasnt loving the name when his dad mentioned it,but it grew on me! ( i was convinced i was having a girl anyway ! and would have been Lauren)

his middle name is also my dads middle name

My youngest son is called Ellis
we loved the name Ella for a girl, and thought Ellis was kinda close for a boys choice ! ( also liked Elliot and Elijah)
dont know anyone else with a child that name,and so is unusual but not too far out !

his middle name is my husbands dads first name ( who sadly passed away )

love this thread. lol at egypt.

lockets - i admire you letting the midwife choose between dd2s names. might have to come to that with us this time round.

ds's name was decided on a trip up to my parents when i was 5 months pg. its a four hour trip and baby names was the main topic for discussion. went past a road sign for Struan, and that was it decided. DH likes to tell people it was the layby he was conceived in . he has my dad's name for his middle name.

bit of family politics this time if we have a boy though cause i hate fil's first name. dh doesnt like it much too which is lucky, but dont know how not using it will go down.

i had been keeping a list of names that i really liked. DH alwasy said he wanted a son names Connor but our surname starts with C.
anyway, one day we ewre sitting there and he said what do you think of the name X.
It was #1 on my list.
his middle names are after DH's dad (who passed away before we were married) and my dad.

still no idea for DC2 though!

DH and I were married 18 years ago and decided that we'd call our son Iain since it's Scottish for John (DH) and I'm Scottish.

17 years later we had our Iain.

Not quite as expected. We'd planned an Iain James Stuart in about 2 years, but it was never the right time.

We now have an Iain Kiran (partly Indian) who is just perfect

some really lovely stories. My dd is called Rowan -in gaelic it means "little red one" and i am a redhead - luckely she inherited my colouring. As i am a practising pagan, her name also comes from the month in which she was concieved - the Rowan month (we liken our months to trees and plants) and in our tradition, her name means enlightenment, health and tree of life. I lost 2 babies before I successfully had her, so she is my tree of life xx