How did you name your babies

I was just wondering how everyone arrived at their babies' eventual names. Where they family names or place names or what significance does the name hold for you.

In my case I am from the UK and dh is Greek. I felt that we couldnt drag these little girls down with long and many names because of the surname- Theophanous, being a mouthfull already. So we decided that we will each choose a name to personify our origins. No family names. So Victoria represents my english inheritance and Athena his greech inheritance.

What is your story?

 

Ours are family names:

Faith was my grandmothers name who passed away when I was little. Rose is my mothers middle name.

Thomas is DH's name as well as DH's grandfathers name. Felix was DH's Grandfathers middle name who passed away when FIL was young.

 

We decided that we would each get to name one of the girls. We did have veto power if we really HATED the name that the other picked but neither of us had to use it.

We both picked first names that we have loved forever (well, I am not sure a man really loves and name like a woman, but he liked it ) and then we used grandmothers names as middle names.

 

I love names that have special meaning for the family.

Bianca is the name of one of my best friends. I've known her since I was 3 and we were insperable in elementary school.
Gabriela is named for my MIL's twin brother, Gabriel, who did not survive their first year.
We looked for names that were meaningful, but also were pronounced the same or almost the same in English and Spanish.
Spanish my the language DH and I primarly speak to each other in, though he can speak English very well. So for middle names we went with one English and one Mixteco, which is MIL's native language. Itavii means beautiful flower. It's pronounced ee-ta-vee, we chose this name because English speakers can pronounce it. We had thought about using the word Joy in Mexico for Gabby's middle name but it was impossible to pronounce. Joy is because if these too could be as good of friends as my friend Bianca and I that would bring me such joy.

 

Me and my husband met in the Virgin Islands where he grew up. He's of Puerto Rican decent. So we named one girl a very Caribbean name and the other a variation of a very traditional Puerto Rican name. We then used our mother's middle names for the girls middle names. My middle name was after my mom's, so we kept the tradition going.

 

My husband is from India and we decided to use that origin.

Arjun was a very powerful god. I loved this name the second I heard it and said if I had a boy that would be his name, hands down.

Indira means goddess and we named her after Indira Ghandi. I too loved this one the second I saw it.

 

My first son's name popped into my head when I saw him the first time (middle name after my family); it turned out to reference red hair, which he has.

I had a name picked for my second son that sounded good with DS1's name, but he didn't look like that when he came out, so I waited until the right name came to me. His middle name is my mother's baby brother's middle name.

My first daughter has a name I have always loved and her middle name is DH's name with a changed letter (his name is not an either/or name) after him.

My second daughter is named after my grandmothers, but I changed each name slightly because we don't speak Norwegian and the other name was very dated.

 

We really like the Irish names. My great grandparents were all from Ireland. His were from Italy and Ireland.

Meghan was always my favorite girl name and Elizabeth is my middle name and my mom's first name.
Nolan was a name that we both agreed on and I loved the sound of it with Meghan. Rea is DH Grandfather's last name, he had no sons so we wanted to carry on the name.
Liam is for my grandfather William and Douglas is my husband's first name.

 

QUOTE(moski @ Feb 21 2008, 01:11 PM) [snapback]632908[/snapback]
We really like the Irish names. My great grandparents were all from Ireland. His were from Italy and Ireland.

Meghan was always my favorite girl name and Elizabeth is my middle name and my mom's first name.
Nolan was a name that we both agreed on and I loved the sound of it with Meghan. Rea is DH Grandfather's last name, he had no sons so we wanted to carry on the name.
Liam is for my grandfather William and Douglas is my husband's first name.



I loved the name Meghan too for as long as I can remember. Then my brother "stole" the name for his little girls. He did say it was done in my honour though..

 

I am west african and my husband is west indian. Keeping with my culture, we have these names picked out :

Raazia Nimata for the girl and Raazaq Aarun for the boy.


QUOTE(Boni @ Feb 20 2008, 04:02 AM) [snapback]630645[/snapback]
I was just wondering how everyone arrived at their babies' eventual names. Where they family names or place names or what significance does the name hold for you.

In my case I am from the UK and dh is Greek. I felt that we couldnt drag these little girls down with long and many names because of the surname- Theophanous, being a mouthfull already. So we decided that we will each choose a name to personify our origins. No family names. So Victoria represents my english inheritance and Athena his greech inheritance.

What is your story?

 

My DH's name is John and you can't get more common than that, plus we were having 2 boys so we didn't want one to be a Jr. and the other to feel left out. What we did at first is I looked through the baby book wrote a list of names I liked and DH did the same our common two were very similar I had Evan and Ethan and DH had Evan and Ian. Evan was a Welsh form of John but I didn't even think of Ian which is the Scottish form of John, DH did and that was it, Evan and Ian it was so they are both technically named John...lol...they each have a middle name of their Grandfather.

 

My boys are named after their grandfathers. DH's dad's name is Jack and my dad's name is William. They have the same middle name Steven which is DH's name.

If I had girls I had names picked out as well, Ella and Emma. These were not family names, I just really liked them.

 

Ahh this is my favorite kind of question. Probably because I put so much thought into my names and love hearing how other people pick theirs. Sorry if I ramble on.
I have a hard time with picking boy names. My first DS got his first name from my uncle (who was like a second father for me). He passed away two years ago so it makes the name even more precious to me. The middle name was a lot harder but it goes with the first name and enabled me to shorten his name to J.T. So John Tyler is a family name : ).
My twin names crack me up because people assume I named them because of the baby A baby B names but the first initials are the exact opposite. DD was my baby B. I picked her first name because to me it was classic and eloquent and I love old movies and the actress with the same name. Her middle name is my great great grandmothers first name and my middle name and as long as I could remember I always dreamed of passing it on to my own little girl, thus Audrey Belle. Picking DS’s (my baby A) name was like my first DS’s name…challenging to me. My husband and I went through so many names. One day we were driving home and a country song came on and I realized I .liked the singer’s first name. The middle name plagued me, I even posted on here for help picking a middle name (and got a lot of great suggestions). We had a list of names and for a while thought about giving DS two middle names because I couldn’t settle. In the end I didn’t decide until the third day in the hospital when the nurse came to have us fill out the birth certificate info. My husband and I still couldn’t decide and had started to send the nurse away when I suddenly decided that it couldn’t go on a minute longer we had to decide. So I asked the nurse for the paperwork back, wrote down the name (which came from a book my husband was reading) and that was that, Blake Morgan was named.

 

My husband is a huge fan of music. So our girls names all come from songs. Allison comes from an Elvis Costello song (although spelled differently in his song), Grace from U2 song, Sarah from Fleetwood Mac, and Elizabeth from Counting Crows. Also, Grace is my great-great grandmother's name and Elizabeth is my husband's great-great-great grandmother's name.

 

DH wanted his son to share his initials, but not be a junior. His name is Jeff so for two years, we've been talking about J names. I'm a teacher so it's hard not to associate names with kids I've had in class. Jacob (Jake) was the only name we could agree on, even though I knew it would be really common. Jakes middle name is the same as DH's and FIL. When we found out it was two boys, I made a list of other boys names I liked and DH picked out his top 5 from that list. We decided on Ryan Robert for several reasons. First because I was expected to be twin boys and was going to be named Sean William and Ryan Robert. I've always loved the name Ryan and Robert was my grandfathers name. He passed away before he was able to attend our wedding and I thought it would be a nice tribute. I also like alliterations (I'm Megan Michelle). We named them in utero and they look just like their names! Jake looks like Jeff and Ryan looks like me. It all worked out!

 

My oldest ds is a junior - but we call him Tad - we have called him Tad since before we knew he was a boy! it just fits him!!

ds#2 is named after my brother and ds#3 is named after dh's best friend who passed away when they were teenagers

the twins - Addison - because we like the name and Ava because it means delicate little bird - that just fits her!! (but she is more like a tiger bird now - she's tiny but not so much delicate anymore!!)

 

DH has an affinity for"C" names because he can spell out the initials CEO. He honestly thinks his children may grow up to be the head of a major corporation because of these letters . I started looking at C names for this reason.

I liked alliterative names for twins, so both had to start with a C. My additional criteria was that they be names that were NOT in the top 50 most popular names, they had to have positive, non-religious meanings, AND I preferred names from our Irish/Welsh heritage. I was initially CERTAIN I was having a girl and a boy, so we had picked out Candace Elizabeth and Colin Evan. After the ultrasound we obviously had to come up with a second girl name and found Cassidy. DH had to compromise on his CEO thing because I didn't want two girls with the same initials (could get confusing) so they each got part of my name (Nicole Elizabeth) as their middle names, so Candace Nicole and Cassidy Elizabeth (he still got one CEO )!

I absolutely LOVE their names and feel they fit them perfectly!

 

QUOTE(Hillybean @ Feb 20 2008, 11:10 AM) [snapback]631185[/snapback]
We decided that we would each get to name one of the girls. We did have veto power if we really HATED the name that the other picked but neither of us had to use it.

We both picked first names that we have loved forever (well, I am not sure a man really loves and name like a woman, but he liked it ) and then we used grandmothers names as middle names.



This is pretty much what we did too. We used one family name from DH's side (Margaret) and one from my side (Marie) and we each picked a first name, and then we just made sure the 2 names didn't sound silly together.

 

Ainsley was always our first choice girl name. We heard it on the show The West Wing and had been holding onto it for a while. We have no idea were Sierra came from. It arrived while we were narrowing down the girls' names.

Our final four ended up being: Ainsley, Sierra, Eowyn, and Emma. Since we wanted names that didn't sound alike, Sierra was really the best choice for one of the girls. After that, Ainsley was still our favorite. So the kids became Ainsley and Sierra.

All the kids have family names for their middle names.

 

Well, it was way easier to come up with a boy's name than a girl's name. I thought it would be the other way around. I had always wanted to carry on the tradition of family names. My great x3 grandmother came over from Ireland, her name was Mary Morgan Kelly. My great x2 grandmother was named Survannah Susannah Mulara Kelly. There is a Kelly in every generation, either male or female. My sister's name is Kelly Annette. My mom thought I should use Survannah Kelly, but I didn't like Survannah because people would confuse it with Savannah. DH had a great aunt that was very dear to him named Clara. When he said that he REALLY wanted to name our girl Clara it squashed the Kelly thing. Clara Kelly? Kelly Clara? Our last name starts with a C as a K sound too. I don't like the name Clara so I compromised with Claire, which I love! We came up with Lynae from my name....Raye Lynn...reversed and manipulated a bit.

My maiden name is Lucas and my father did not have any sons, so I wanted to carry on the family name somehow. I told DH that I wanted to use it as a middle name and he said no, he wanted it to be the first name. So I decided that DS's middle name should be in honor of his father, so Lucas Bradley was the choice.

Lynae Claire and Lucas Bradley

 

well after my mom passed away a few years ago, i have always wanted to name my 1st born after her! so when we found out we were pregnant, i knew if it was a boy he would be named Brantley (her maiden name) and for a girl, i would use her middle name elaine....so i had come up with a boys name Brantley Clark...brantley after my mom and clark after his mom (her maiden name) and i still had some work to do with a second name for a girl....then we found out we were having twins so that put a twist in the names i had picked out....

so then we decided to name our boys, brantley and clark...each after their grandmothers but needed a middle name! i thought about using my husbands name (he didn't want to), thought about using the grandfather's name as well since our parents have had a huge influence on both of our lives but in the end....the middle names, which all started as a joke at 1st, is now sticking....Remington and Browning!

so we have Brantley Remington and Clark Browning!

 

My husband had a brother who passed away 10 years ago on the 25th. He was 17. Since his death there have been numerous grandchildren on my husband's side---all girls. We have 3 girls and when we found out we were having twins and then boys we just knew we would have to honor my brother in law. His name was John Christopher. So, with my in laws approval we said the first baby born would be John, the second Christopher! It has been amazing to see my in laws bond with the boys. They seem to heal them in many ways.

Lisa

 

We´ve chosen Isabella and Hugo for our b/g twins. Neither name has any connection to anyone in either of our families.

My DH is Spanish and Im British. As we live in Spain, I wanted names that would be the same in both languages both for pronunciation and spelling. We aren´t giving them middle names due to the confusion that brings here (its not typical) plus I have so many problems with my name that I dont want them to have the hassle especially as they will be born here.

DH chose the names and I like them. We debated for ages over Hugo as I have a British friend whose 5 yr old is also called Hugo but she told me she doesn´t mind (I think she´s quite flattered!).

 

We chose Salvatore Joseph for the first born. Salvatore is after my husband, Joseph after my father. Dominic Walsh was the second twin. Dominic because we liked it and it is Italian (my husband is Italian), and Walsh after his uncle who passed away just before the twins were born. Unfortunately, we now live in the South, so we get alot of "Salvatore? How did you come up with that?" and then we have to explain our choice. But, we love the names we chose.

 

Fun topic! I have a lot of kind of crazy feelings about names... like no nicknames as "real" names, no crazy spellings, and middle names should be traditional names. I'm not sure where these came from and I was made fun of by co-workers for this when naming my first two. Also, I love Irish names (my heritage) and married someone who is Italian/English, so my feeling is they should have Irish names to represent my heritage since their last name is their father's name.

My oldest DS is Owen, which was the first name my husband mentioned when I was 4 months pregnant. It took me a long time to come around, but decided I too loved the name by the time he was born. Matthew is his middle name because I like it as a "traditional" boys name.

My older DD is Maeve Elizabeth... I never thought I'd have a girl and decided when pregnant with #2 that it would be Maeve if a girl. Maeve is an legendary Queen in Irish history, and I think it is a strong name. Elizabeth is one of my favorite "traditional" girl names and also my middle name. DH agreed to Maeve even though it is an unusual spelling b/c he too thought we'd have a boy! It's a perfect name for her.

With the twins, we found it was b/g before discussing names. Then we called them a variety of celebrity-inspired b/g names for a while (i.e. Donny and Marie, Hazel and Phinneaus, Apple and Moses, Bill and Hilary, etc) while in-utero. Eventually, I made a list of boy and girl names I liked, my husband narrowed down by what wasn't too ethnically Irish, we went around on a few names and didn't name the babies until they were 3 days old because we coulnd't decide. My top choices for girls were Claire, Aine, and Talullah, for boys Colin, Declan, Liam, and Kyle. I kept calling them Declan and Talullah towards the end, which DH really did not like!

In the end, Claire Aine and Colin Thomas (means twin and we really just like that name) were named... we liked how Colin and Claire go with Owen and Maeve. And, of course, the names work perfectly for the babies!

Sorry to be so wordy, but I like this topic!

 

We are naming our boys Caleb and Silas. Two names we liked, both happen to be biblical and have a similar tone. We wanted them to have similar but different names, if that makes sense. No rhyming or same first letters.

 

I love this topic too! And my DS loves to hear the story of he was named, His name is Owen Michael. I was re-reading Lord of the Rings at the time, and one night I fell asleep while reading and woke myself up when I dropped the book on my face! First line I saw when I opened my eyes was about Oin, the dwarf. I knew I'd never get away with spelling it O-I-N, as the poor kid would be tortured at school...lol-so we went with the traditional spelling of Owen, and Michael is named after my best friend since I was 13-it's his middle name as well. Since he's gay and decided not to have kids himself, I wanted him to have someone named after him.

This time, with the twins, we don't know the sex yet, so it's still up in the air. I know my FIL Loooooooves the name Wendy, so if it's girls, one will be Wendy Renee. If it's boys, we think it will be Finn and Fletcher. (I'm American, my DH is English and we live here in the UK-very British names)

 

Mercy and Grace were my "twin girl" names while I was pregnant with them so when we had our surprise girls it was obvious what their names were to be. We thought we were having one big boy! haha. I am somewhat fanatical about names so I had a boy name, a girl name, twin boy names and twin girl names picked out...just for fun. =)

Mercy is a name that I always likes since my mom read us Pilgrim's Progress as kids...seemed so sweet for a little girl. And I liked the name Gracie but my best friend wanted that name so I thought "I'll just make that my twin name, since it's highly unlikely that I'll ever use it." The joke was on us when after 10 hours labor and four hours pushing....and after the FIRST girl was born that it was discovered there was another baby...and it was a GIRL...well there wasn't a question about what their names were. =) My husband and I even agreed without knowing "who was who" when we were asked separately by the astonished nursing staff what the girls names were to be. Their middle names were simple and seemed to go well with the first...nothing terribly special about them except that Marie is also my middle name and Ann went well with Mercy. =)

We love their names and we have learned so much about our faith through them being in our lives.

 

We didn't want to use family names or have middle names (although the boys ended up with middle names in then end). The family names we liked were taken (huge families) and the other ones weren't taken for a reason.

We really didn't want rhyming names. My mother is a twin and has a rhyming name and claims everyone always called her by her sister's name in elementary school (she thinks this is b/c it rhymed - who knows??)

We went with common family origins (we are both part Irish and part Danish). Ryker is danish and Rowan is Irish. We search through names with those origins until we found ones we liked that weren't wildly popular.

Ryker means warrior and Rowan means "little red one" - the funny thing is that Rowan is our smaller guy and it looks like they will both have red hair - so rightly named. Ryker definitely has a warrior cry - boy is he loud!!

Here are some baby name websites we had fun with:
Nymbler
This shows you a group of baby names, you tell it what you like and don't like, and it shows you other names that have similar characteristics. Pretty interesting.
http://www.nymbler.com/nymbler/

The Baby Name Wizard NameVoyager
This thing claims to have 5,000 names in it, and as you pick names you like, you can see how popular they've been over the last 100 years. Start typing in letters of a name and it shows you tons of derivations.
http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

 

We were at odds over the final names, the middle names were decided the girl would be lily after my nan and the boy thomas after DH father. When it came to first names I liked Amber and Lachlan DH liked Hunter and Brook. When I woke up after the c-section DH was standing there next to me and he said you have gone through so much call the babies what ever you like I said ok and Amber and Lachlan they are! I couldnt imagine them as anything else now but every baby since he still wants Hunter I hope this one is a girl just so I dont have to have it.