So when the UK sleeps, we know you other MNers are out there part II

[tadjennyp]

I was looking for thumbwitch's recipe for that cake and found the old thread has disappeared so Linzer and I thought we'd resurrect it!

lol, I have never namechanged, but this halloween I am tempted! Just not all that creative

that looks good, strandead!

marenmj - havne't quite got the hang of how your name goes together so not sure how to change it but am thinking...

marenmjinglebells might work for Christmas though?

I am SO stealing marenmjinglebells for Christmas

Believe it or not, thumb, Maren is my honest-to-goodness, RL name :) and marenmj is my email address. I don't really care who has it. I've had the same one for 15 years so there's no way I could possibly get more crap than I do now, but I keep it because it's on everything and everyone knows me by it.

mabroomenmj?
marenderslimbsmj?
not very good but might work for you?

lol, I'll have to think of something suitably spooky this weekend

What about nightmarenmj?

oh very good, frakkinstein - I like that a lot!

Maren is such a pretty name. If I were having a girl... I have no idea what to call our little boy when he arrives. Still 16 weeks to choose!

I never had problems finding girls' names I liked, but it was a different matter when we found out that DC3 was going to be a boy. I must admit I'm still not overly keen on his full name and always call him by the shortened version. However, there's another boy in his kindergarten class with the shortened version of the name (as his full name IYSWIM) and since he started kindergarten, DS has been insisting "I'm not [shortened version], I'm [full name]".

Have you got a thread going in baby names yet, Jenny?
I'm still waiting to see what Arizonagirl calls her DC4 whenever it arrives.. She has very interesting taste in names!

Oh I love the baby names threads. No idea why as I have no intention of having any more dc's so the only thing I am likely to have to name is pets but they draw me in all the time.

Jenny - what boys names have you thought of? We were going to be very dull and have William or Thomas for dd2 so glad she was a girl (Martha).

Nightmarenmj is inspired. And once you see it, it's so simple.

Who are you calling dull, stranded? Those are DS's names! We went for names that worked both in English and German (first names at least), so the DDs' names aren't particularly "exciting" either (in fact, there are too many of both of them around for my liking) but I can't imagine them being called anything else now. If we'd gone for my first choices, they'd have been marked out as British/not Austrian - not necessarily an advantage at school (DD1's first teacher seemed to be slightly prejudiced against children whose parents weren't Austrian in that she didn't consider the children Austrian either, even if they'd been born here).

i'm really glad that dd wasn't a ds, since having her i've completely gone off the name we'd chosen. actually, although we thought we were having a boy, the only name i ever felt 'right' about whilst pregnant, was dd's name. we were still discussing her middle name after she was born, even though i knew which one felt right.

Oh crikey I'll just take my foot right out of my mouth Linzer! We were going for those names because we both really like them but in the end was glad we didn't have a Thomas as we know at least 300 of them. William is slightly less popular but there are still quite a few around...

There is a reason they are popular - they are good names!

No worries, stranded - like I said, I've never been particularly excited about Thomas as a name but it was one of the few that DH and I could agree on and that worked in both languages. Unlike with the DDs' names, we don't know any other children called Thomas - just a Tom at kindergarten, but DS is always Thomas in German and Tom in English. I'd have liked to call him Toby but wouldn't have got it past DH, who's not keen on English names (not for DC growing up in Austria at least).

Not all Austrians seem to feel the same way, however - we know a girl called Joy (pronounced Choi), Kevin is quite a popular name here and I even saw an Elvis in the paper. It's often the pronunciation that grates the most, though; I was convinced that one little girl's name was Kessie, but it turned out that she's actually called Cathy.

I was often called Tchennifair in Germany - used to really grate on my nerves too. Is Arizonagirl the one who's going to call her ds Winter though she already has an Autumn? Ds is called Edward and I have to say I have a traditional taste in names. No Hunters or Coopers or other mediaeval occupations for me, I'm afraid!

I must go and get dressed as I've already had breakfast in bed for my birthday and should go and be with the family.

IMO people (naming no nationalities in particular) who cannot pronounce the letter j in the proper English way should be banned from giving their DC English names starting with J. My ILs have a cat called Jackie, which is inevitably pronounced Checkie - DH tried to correct his nephew, only to be told, "No, it's Checkie, like bleck" (the cat is black).

Hope you enjoy the rest of your birthday, Jenny - it certainly sounds like it's got off to a good start.

Happy Birthday toadjenny - Breakfast in bed sounds lovely

Is interesting the different fashions for names - in DS's Pre-School there is a Daphne and a Fiona. Very unlikely to find a 4 year old in the UK called Daphne!

Waves back to Climber. You have great weather on the coast . The last month has been too hot inland - good for the wine but not for an English gal like me!

We know a Daphne here too (she must be 10 or 11) - it always makes me think of Scooby Doo! And I quite often hear names here that I think would be more suited to a woman (it's almost always a woman, never a man) in her forties/fifties/sixties.

This hasn't been a good year for wine in Austria apparently, although we can't complain about the weather being too hot - we didn't have much of a summer at all (maybe that was the problem). I can't remember what the price of wine was like in the USA (the supermarkets didn't sell any and I was either pregnant or bfing the entire time we were there), but I'm always at the price in the UK and what my parents consider cheap - it's normally about twice as much as what we'd spend on a (perfectly drinkable, although I'm no connoisseur) bottle.

here in st lucia you get a lot of names spelled phonetically. I came across a corker at the supermarket check out the other day - Posher. Yes, it's pronounced Portia.

Linzer, decent wine is even more expensive in Australia. Wines that I can get in the UK (Hardy's, for e.g.) I pay more for here, in its native country, than I used to in the UK!! Ridiculous.

Arizonagirl is indeed the one who was thinking of naming her DC4 Winter - but has been talked out of it. I'm still hoping she'll go for my suggestion - lots of other people liked it but she wasn't sure...

strandead - is that due to general uneducatedness? Tis a bit like Magrat in the Terry Pratchett books - her mum liked Margaret but didn't know how to spell it. Or a girl I went to school with who was called Mysheele (pron. Michelle).

Somehow the zhennifair I used to get in France seemed quite sexy

It's been a great day, thank you. We went to a local deli for brunch, went to paint a plate at the pottery, went to a second-hand bookshop/coffee shop, wandered through the park in the middle of town. We are about to have the cake that dh and the dcs baked for me and tonight dh is cooking dinner! Perfect really. Hope everyone else is having a lovely weekend.

Aw that sounds really lovely!

I'm flopped on the sofa this morning - had a fullish day yesterday and feeling knackered now... Where's my second trimester energy boost?!

Jenny - that sounds lovely, sorry I must have missed the fact that it's your birthday - hold on...ah yes I see that it was your birthday, happy birthday!

Frakkinstein - assuming this isn't your first child I don't think you get any energy at all in subsequent pregnancies! Oh the first one was so easy - when you felt tired, you rested. Even at work I was sitting down most of the time! If only I had known it at the time.

Thumbwitch - there are a lot of very young mothers here so I am guessing it's often them that give their children the strangely spelled names. Most people do go to school here but I am not sure how good the level of education is....

We're off to s "swim meet" this morning. Both dd's are entered into three races each. We have to be there at 10.30am, dh and I have agreed that if they haven't had all their races by 3pm we're leaving. Apparently these things can drag on all day....