How did you choose your child's name?

[Tex111]

Our little boy is named Tobias John and is called Toby. I knew that if we had a boy I would want for his middle name to be John as it's my Dad's name. The first name was more difficult.

We have an unusual surname so we wanted for the baby's first name to be recognisable and easy to spell. Traditional but not very popular. We also wanted to give him a long name and use a shortened version so that he had some flexibility. My name is Katherine but I was called Kathy as a child. I switched to Katherine when I left school and always appreciated that I had that flexibility in my name.

We looked through lots of name books and were trying to decide between Thomas and Tobias when someone gave me the book Miss Garnett's Angel about Tobias and the angel. I then remembered the Verrochio painting at the National Gallery of Tobias and the Angel and the name shot to the top of the list. We still waited to see our baby before we made a definite decision but he was a Toby as soon as we saw him.

Oddly enough, both my sister and I have opted for Jewish/Biblical names for our childen, although it's the one thing our conglomerate racial backgrounds does not encompass. In my case, my partner is also mixed-race and in fact lots of people do think he's Jewish (probably strengthened now by having two daughters with Biblical names). There was something about the Middle-Eastern, diaspora, portable nature of it all that appealed to me. And I wanted fairly uncommon names too, although in fact I've realised girls with my dd2's name are two a penny.

Mind you, we only agreed on dd1's name a week or so before I gave birth, and on dd2's name when I was actually in labour.

With long and intricate difficulty!
We wanted a name that felt like 'us', not too common, not too wacky, easy to spell, as it would need to go with the mouthful of surname he has, and would work cross-culturally, (my DP's family are of Indian background, mine are from Notts mining and Yorks farming/Romany extraction).

We found a name that fitted perfectly, and that we both love...and have now discovered is, in another culture, the God of chaos and destruction, and a character in a soap! Durrr!

Oh yes, forgot to add that cross cultural dimension! We had that too and also had an issue with pronunciation. The Texan and English accents are very different!

I liked the girl's name Jemima but that wouldn't work so well in the States and I liked Eric too but dh said that was an old man's name in England! We finally found something that worked in both countries and is pronounced the same but it did take a while.

Choosing a name was the most difficult thing we had to do during pregnancy I think. The pressure! We just wanted a name that sounded nice, was unusual, but not unheard of, not difficult to spell etc. The middle name had to be a New Zealand name as we lived there for a while and wanted our babies to feel a connection with that place too Connecting with the 'stealing baby names' thread, we didn't tell a soul what our choices were mainly because we had so few, but also we didn't want all our hard work and research being nabbed by anyone else!

Don't Texans/Americans tend to just stick jnr, II, or III at the end of father/grandfathers name as appropriate

Hi Lipstickmum, we do get a lot of juniors, IIs and IIIs! So often the names are totally out of date and inappropriate by the time they're handed down that everyone ends up having a nickname. I knew a guy named Earl Dudley III but he was just called Chip as in 'chip off the old block'!

We had chosen our boys and girls names, conventionally spelt Ella and Jay respectuvely, but we wanted them to look slightly different so Ella became Ela and Jay became Jai.

We weren't going to have middle names.

The day I went into labour I was at Chepstow Race Course and, very freakily, there was a horse running called Ella Jay! We had a girl and had to call her Ela Jai.

x

...and Chip's son was of course Earl Dudley IV but he's called Ed - his initials! They got that idea because his mother is called Dot when her full name is Debra Ojean Trechell... D.O.T. And yes, that's her mother and grandmothers names.

To be honest Tex, it would have made our lives so much simpler if we could have done that ! Earl Dudley, that's just bad luck 60 years down the line!

I actully have always really liked the name Chip or Kip for a boy. However, I know if we had chosen them as abbreviations or full names all our 'English' relatives would have been very snotty about the whole thing and asked why we had chosen something so AMERICAN!!

We were lucky enough not to deliberate for too long with DS's name. We knew we were having a boy and agreed on a first name straight away. For the middle name, a couple of weeks before he was born DH and I sat down with a baby name book each, wrote down the names we liked and compared lists - we chose the only name on both lists.

I like Kip. You don't hear it very often anymore. Chip's brother was called Chet, no idea what his full name was but Chip & Chet were quite a pair. Very handsome and popular football players.

Names can definitely be loaded. We tried not to pick anything that was too American or too English so that everyone would be happy.

It was really hard finding a name that was OK in the UK and France. Dh liked some french names which to me were horrible, old fashioned and too commmon (to this day he says he still likes them...), I liked some english names that he disliked...., then there were english names we both liked but would have been hard for French people to pronounce (Ruth, for instance). We were lucky that we both liked Lauren (I loved it since I was a teenager), even though it's quite a popular name now. Her second name is Alice and we chose it because where we lived at the time, there was a pretty 'secret' garden with a statue of Alice in Wonderland, which is a book we both liked too, and we loved that place. We think her name really suits dd and she seems to love her name too.

Yeah, Kip, Chip and Chet do sound like 'the popular kids' don't they?

message withdrawn

DDs name was chosen by me alone because I liked it and it was/is not at all common. It suited her the moment she came out and still does terrifically.

The bump is either going to be called: Max/Tobias (aka Toby) or Felix or if a girl Madelaine or Grace - considering I am only 10 weeks this may change but once he found out I was pregnant DP started spending hours going through name books and getting quite weird about it - he does like Claudia/Francesca/Gabriella but I'm not sure as we have the most boring common surname ever!!

Middle names are proving to be quite difficult I think if a boy should have DPs name as a middle name and if a girl should have my mothers/DPs sister's name as a middle name (DD has mine) - he is going through the most awful family names which so far are Herbert or Vernon (YUCK!!!)

Hi Frenchgirl, Lauren Alice is a lovely name and the French pronunciation is beautiful as well. It's nice when you can choose a name that connects the child to a special place.

DS was conceived when we were living in Tokyo and we toyed with the idea of a slightly Japanese name. I liked Hana for a girl which means 'flower' in Japanese but is still quite easy to pronounce and is a recognisable name. Boys names were impossible though. In the end, we settled for a bib that says 'Made in Japan'.

Do you guys have older kids too? Chip and Kip are the main characters in The Oxford Reading Tree which is likely to dominate your lives for some years to come, if you're in the UK. Just a thought...

DS1's name was chosen by dh and I going through baby name books (separately) and writing out a list that we liked. We then compared lists and chose from those which appeared on both.

DS2's name was slightly more difficult. Our tastes had changed since DS1 (only 22 months previously!) and so our lists didn't really compare. Dh has a tendency to go for really outlandish ancient names (such as Tancred - he was really keen on this one until I pointed out that the child would probably be nicknamed Tankard when at school) and I wasn't so keen on landing a child with something so unusual. We still hadn't finally decided on a name when I went into labour. After DS2 was born, the midwife asked if he had a name, and dh (bless him) turned round and said "Oh yes, he's , isn't he, darling?" Having just given birth, I really was in no position to start an argument, so he is.

With DS3, I was in total charge. Dh had chosen DS2's name, so I chose DS3's. Seemed fair to me.

Middle names weren't a problem as we tended to agree on those (they have 2 each, lucky them).

Twinkie, I love the names you've chosen. Felix is one of our favorites but it doesn't work with our surname which is difficult to pronounce and starts with an F. Such a shame as there are so many great F names!

Twiglett, Joe Riley is a gorgeous name. My sister was named Nicole and called Nikki after a character on TV too. It really suits her though she's nothing like the character!

Tankard ROFL

Dd1 - Katherine Morna. I'd always wanted Katherine, since I was about 8! We wanted a scots Gaelic name as well as we live in the Outer Hebrides and loved Morna - it means 'beloved'

Ds - Aidan Paul Russell. Aidan was an Irish monk who became the bishop of Lindisfarne Island, one of our favourite places. We read the mane when we were reading a book about the Celtic saints, and knew we wanted it for our son. It means 'a flame'. Paul is DH's grandfather, the only one between the two of us who is still alive, then only one who never had anyone called after him. And Russell is my Dad.

Dd2 - Rachel Jessie. Dh has always loved Rachel as a name, and it also happened to be his Grandma's name (though throughout her life she was known as Ruby!!). She died 2 weeks before Rachel was born, so it seemed appropriate. As we had used one Grandmother, we decided to use Jessie, my Gran's name, as her middle name.

We have a really weird, Germanic surname that sounds vaguely rude, (dh is from Belfast but his Dad is German) so nothing goes with it, so we could have whatever names we liked!

Oh, and after we used Jessie I looked it up and it means 'God's Grace' - after all I went through to get her and after how ill I was, it seemed very appropriate! And I also discovered that in Scotland Jessie is often used as a pet name for Janet - which was my other Granny's name! Weird or what?

There are some beautiful Gaelic and Irish names. Some friends of ours named their little girl Orla which means 'golden lady' and she's very blonde so it really suits her. I also like Nuala for a girl and Malachy for a boy but Malachy is forever linked in the States to Satan's sidekick in Children of the Corn. So that's off our list then.

message withdrawn