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Original poster

How did you choose your child's name?

134 replies

Tex111 · 15/04/2004 09:31

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.

OP posts:
kiwisbird · 15/04/2004 21:26

Max here too after 44 days of thought, (this was in Nz where you can register whenever you're ready)
I struggled for ages, he was meant to be Gabriel but was scared he would get teased for having girls name. So one day I had a dream and it reminded me of a book I read when 5 called Mean Max, a naughty bully who came good after a talking to... his cartoon image face sprung into my mind as being that of my baby son!
So Max he is!
And Emilia , liked Amelia but needed to shorten it but Amy we already have lots of those in our families. So we chose Emilia, we have two kids with Irish kiwi parents who have Italian names!
LOL

grumpyzebra · 15/04/2004 21:32

I feel so boring & conventional... we chose old family names.

mummysurfer · 15/04/2004 21:47

i was 8 months preg when dh's dad was dying. he asked us to put the name joseph in if it was a boy, after his own grandfather who was a big influence in his life. we had a dd! however, ds has joseph as a second name

jodiemay · 15/04/2004 22:00

We had the name Frank up to 20 weeks and then in the middle of the night, dh woke me up and said that he liked Jack, and now ds is 18months and called Jack! Simple really (although his middle names are Richard (after his Dad) and Jasper (after a golfer (we just liked the name)))

eddm · 15/04/2004 22:03

I had loads of girls' names ? she would definitely have been Lottie but couldn't decide between six or seven middle names. But the minute Dh saw it was a boy on the scan, he got very forceful about the exact names. Can't say what they are as very distinctive combination but we both wanted a Welsh first name (both our fathers are/were Welsh) but Dh vetoed all my favourites and we agreed on one of his. And Dh insisted baby had to have both his grandad's names as well. And my surname! Dh decided his name is toooooo common. Confused the registrar no end: 'So your maiden name is the same as your married name. But your husband's name is different. And the child is having your surname and not your husbands....'. Think she disapproved!

sammac · 15/04/2004 22:03

We did the list thing both times, and they're really funny to look at now.

With dd we wanted a short name, as our surname is long, and it took till the letter z before we finally agreed. Dh wanted his gran's name as middle name as she brought him up when his mum died of b.cancer when he was 4. Both name s really suit her

With ds, dh suggested name of boy he went to school with, as he always thought it was a cool name. Quite unusual, but I think is creeping up in popularity. At the last minute dh wanted his name as middle name- so it is.

Chinchilla · 15/04/2004 22:03

I could never call a child Frank, because that was my boss's name, and he was really weird!

mummysurfer · 15/04/2004 22:05

there were loads of names with 'bad' associations with me. i'm a primary teacher & i knew a horrible one of almost everything

eddm · 15/04/2004 22:05

Oh, and I had thought we'd been really helpful giving ds the English spelling of his Welsh name so no difficulties with forms. But no, everyone mistakes it for another, Irish name. Never occurred to me. Also confuses people because he has a Welsh Christian name and Scottish surname.

mothernature · 15/04/2004 22:13

ds1's name means 'gift from god' which he was, ds2 & dd came along 16mths later ds2's name means 'twin' and dd name is 'of the laurels'

Paula71 · 15/04/2004 23:03

Ds twin1 is Niall, chosen by DH from a reality tv show he was enjoying. One of the contestants had this name and the more he heard it the more he liked it (the game was they had to hitch around the world in a set time.)

Ds twin2 is named after my dad's favourite uncle - Adam. Even though I didn't want a popular name I wanted to chose a sort of family name. But I had to then give him FIL's name as a middle name otherwise his initials (both boys have my maiden name as middle names with Niall having my dads name too) would have been ARS! Enough said!

bobs · 15/04/2004 23:09

Couldn't decide with DD2, so DH picke d10 names, I reduced them to 5, then we picked one out of a hat!

deegward · 15/04/2004 23:13

After being saddled with Deirdre, I wanted my children to have names that a)people could pronounce b) spell, and very shallow c) buy pencils etc with their names on. (this was a big thing in my childhood)

Chose ds1 name after a character in TV Cold Feet - Adam - but he does have two middle names, one family name from each family.

Ds2 - came after had given birth as was so hoping for a girl, but Sam (Samuel) just sem to suit him. Again with two middle names.

Both biblical names, but not intentionally, and both have really suited them since day 1

BadHair · 15/04/2004 23:13

Both dses have first and middle names "liberated" from grandparents, not because of family history but because we happened to like the names.

mummytojames · 15/04/2004 23:14

james after my father his middle name
john as a middle name after my first son

Linnet · 15/04/2004 23:19

My dh overheard the name and liked it so much that he told me if we had a girl that was what we would call her.
I hated it and said there was no way I was naming my child that name. But...we couldn't agree on any other girls name. We had a boys name all lined up that we had reluctantly both agreed to as we just couldn't find another one that we liked.
Anyway in the end Dd arrives and I look at her and think well, dh's name isn't that bad and it's unusual haven't heard of another one so that's what we'll call her. Since then we've met another 2 and heard of another 3 but still few and far between. And Dd really suits her name couldn't imagine her being called anything else.

This time around, I'm due in 4 weeks, we both agreed on names before we'd even tried getting pregnant. I got to choose the boys name as I had a boys name that I had heard after dd was born that I loved and said if I ever had a boy I'd call him that. And we both managed to agree on a girls name without any arguing.

Oh and we tried asking dd what she thought the baby should be called and she said if it's a girl call it Star and if it's a boy call it Moon, we told her we'd think about it
It's such a resposibility naming a child, for all the months that we argued over what to name dd, she has said to me on numerous occasions, mummy I'd rather be called Sarah/Amy/Laura/Sophie etc. My mum always said that children should be given a number until they are old enough to choose their own name, as once they get to a certain age they always want to change their name anyway. LOL

MADDI · 15/04/2004 23:40

Our dd2 was all set to be a Molly, but when picking dd1 up when I was in labour dh asked her what name she liked and she said "Poppy". So dd2 is Poppy. She never looked like a Molly anyway (as my husband said, all red and black when she was born, just like a Poppy). But India, dd1, is very proud of having choosen her baby sister's name.

squirmyworm · 15/04/2004 23:59

dh chose ours when I was in labour - up til then we couldn't agree. by the time he suggested it he could probably have chosen popocatopetl or chinondoxia for poor ds and I would have agreed!

alexsmum · 16/04/2004 00:03

We laughed when we realised that the meaning of our second child's name is 'usurper'. How appropriate!! His first name means 'gift of god'.He shares his middle name with his godfather, my grandfather,my brother etc etc. We like it too. My first child's name means defender of men, and his middle name is his dad's name.
Both pregnancy's we could only think of one girls name and one boys name that we liked. My dh kept coming up with deeply unfashionable 70's names .Won't tell which at the risk of offending anyone!!

WideWebWitch · 16/04/2004 06:48

My dd's name was chosen by mumsnet committee! Well, not quite true but I liked it anyway and dp didn't and then mumnsetters said I should use it and she was unnamed for a week or so and then he gave in

Original poster
Tex111 · 16/04/2004 08:22

Linnet, that is so true about children wanting to change their names but we would probably all have pretty strange names if we were allowed to choose for ourselves! I remember my brother desperately wanting to change his name to Enis after the deputy on Dukes of Hazzard. I would probably be Chastity as I was obsessed with the Sonny & Cher Show as a child!

OP posts:
Lethal · 16/04/2004 08:27

A boy at my high school (all those years ago) was a few years older than me but he was very popular with the girls, smart, good looking, sophisticated, AND he was school captain. His name always stuck in my mind because it was quite unusual back then (it's much more common now) and whenever I heard it, I thought of what he was like. So when ds was a week old and still didn't have a name, dh and I both came up with this name at the same time - I didn't even know that dh liked it.

So our little boy (for me anyway) is named after the popular boy back in high school

HiddenSpirit · 16/04/2004 08:49

I chose Paul as DS1's first name as I had always liked the simplicity of it. Like deegward, I wanted to be able to buy things with his name on it (I always complained to my mum you couldn't get things with my name on unless they were specially ordered). His middle name Daniel came from looking through baby name books (didn't really pay much attention to meanings) but ex-prats mum was so pleased that we chose a biblical name.

DD's first name I have no idea how it was chosen (my stepdaughter) but her middle name is her real mothers middle name too (unfortunately!)

DS2 is Alexander John, but has always been called Alex (sister occasionally calls him Alexander and it seems strange lol). I chose this again because I've always like it and so did DP. John was DP's choice for middle name (I knew he would chose this when I said to him about choosing Alex's middle name) as it was his fathers name, who died when DP was only 18 months.

slug · 16/04/2004 14:43

We had chosed Alexander Thomas for a boy's name. Alexander because we liked it and thomas as it's dh's dad's name and my dad's middle name. We fought long and hard over girl's names, but, as I was convinced I was carrying a boy we didn't really bother that much.

When the sluglet was born, we thought she was a boy for the first 20 minutes (long story why). So there was dh walking up and down with his new child cooing "Hello Alexander" until the midwife finally pointed out that Alexander was a girl. Without missing a beat, dh cooed "Hello Alexandra".

Her middle name is Ngaire, a New Zealand name, as I'm a kiwi. I desperatly wanted it for her first name but dh overruled on the basis that a) no one would be able to pronounce it if they see it written down, and b) no one would be able to spell it.

tallulah · 16/04/2004 15:09

deegward, we checked first that none of our names appeared on pencils etc before we chose them! I discounted a couple of names I liked because the badges were available.

DD was named after a little girl in a shop when I was 14- loved the unusual name & hung onto it! She has a common long middle name, which is not an obvious pairing with her long first name. When she was 2, a friend of a friend gave their DD the SAME first 2 names... & swore it was coincidence.. I think not.

DS1 was named after one of my Sunday School kids who was just the nicest little boy you could ever meet (& the name is not popular). DS agreed on the condition he had David as a middle name.

DS2 we got from a book- list of unusual names & the one we both said "that's OK' to, paired with a name that used to be uncommon & now is a chav name, but sounds good with the first one.

Ds3 I was going to call Warwick, with Thomas as a middle name after my grandpa who had just died. Very last minute DH said no way to Warwick & he became The New Baby for 2 weeks. Finally found a name we didn't both say "yuck" to & that went with Thomas, checked there was no-one at school with the name, registered & baptised him & THEN thought of several names we liked much better!! Too late. (& actually now can't stand the name Thomas either...)