A few weeks after my wife’s pregnancy was confirmed I took the opportunity to dust off the list of names that we had compiled when we were expecting our son. By no means was it an exhaustive list, as I had a strong preference for a boy’s name while my wife had a strong preference for a girl’s name.
At the 18 week ultrasound where we learned we were having a boy half of that list immediately became irrelevant. Additionally, I dropped certain boy’s names that I had on there to torment my wife, specifically Fergus and Maximus. My wife wasn’t totally in favor of my favorite boy’s name, but she quickly warmed to it with the news we were having a son.
It should be noted this warming came with absolutely no pressure from me. Had we been expecting a girl I would have agreed to my wife’s favorite because I knew how important the name was to her, plus I did like it.
Of course we have all read horror stories about families being at odds with each other over the naming of the child. My personal opinion is that the choice of a child’s name rests solely with that child’s parents. If a family member, no matter how far removed, wants to give input on what your child’s name should be they can only do so after 1.) delivering the child themselves and/or 2.) establishing a trust fund sizable enough to pay for college and graduate school.
If there is a family tradition, then it should be up to the spouse with said tradition to voice his or her preference in that regard and for the other spouse to give the tradition its proper consideration. For instance, my middle name is Joseph, which I share with my father and grandfather.
To me it was important that our son share my middle name and we took this into consideration. Thankfully my wife was totally on board, but did make a few requests with regards to what we chose for a first name to avoid any unfortunate combinations of initials.
Over the past month or so we’ve had a few casual conversations about name ideas and many of those that were on our original list are still in play for our second child. Our 20 week ultrasound is Monday, so we will soon find out what we are having, which means we should have the baby’s name picked out well in advance.
Still, naming a child is probably one of the most important decisions aside from committing to start a family. These are just a few things we took into consideration when choosing a name:
- Family heritage on both sides
- How the first name matches up with the family name
- If using a middle name, does it flow with the first and last name
- What the child’s full name will sound like when yelled out at full volume
- What the child’s initials might spell out, and
- The inevitable school ground derivations they will have to endure
No matter what name we end up choosing the only thing I can guarantee is that it won’t be chosen 1.) by using an iPhone app, 2.) with careful consideration of the expense of necessary therapy for said child and 3.) that we will work together to reach a consensus for the sake of our immediate family.
How did you handle the naming process with your child/children?
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{ 26 comments }
We batted around hundreds of names, for months, before we'd even conceived LOL…when we did, and found out we were having a girl, all the names we had considered were out the window. Deciding we did not like any of them LOL We'd considered on Isabella, but everyone we knew, and didn't , were naming their girls (at the time) Isabella..so we shortened it to Bella (Beauty in Italian) and gave her my mothers name as a middle…sounds easy, but it truly wasn't…GREAT POST! Thanks!
when i was young, i already had my kids' names picked out along w how many i was going to have (no less than 4 and no more than 12…what the hell was i thinking?! lol). i still had a strong preference for the name savannah & my ex was cool with it. but then he changed his mind, and in a way i changed mine, too, because the baby growing inside me didn't 'feel' like a savannah. we decided on a k name w a unique spelling which translates into: never finding personalized stuff unless you get it made. she has two middle names one chosen by me and one by her dad. he pretty much named her. when i was pregnant w our 2nd daughter i did the naming…we decided on a k name for her as well w only one middle name. she, too, will never find personalized stuff already made lol
for my son, who is going to be 23 this year, i named him because his father was not in the picture. at first i had picked julian michael until my dad & bro gave me a hard time about how he'll have to learn how to fight. so i changed it to brenden keith. now he gets upset w me that i didn't name him julian michael cos his last name is jones. haha
my hubs dad's side of family have a tradition of using the grandfather's first name as the child's middle name. my hubs has his gpa's first name as his middle name, and stepson has my fil's name as his middle name.
My kids are half hispanic. My first two were given white names. When we were pregnant with our third child together, I felt it should have a hispanic name because of their heritage on their mom's side. Even if it is watered down with a white surname.
Giving my second daughter a spanish name was the hardest thing for my white family. No one can say it right. So with this last kid. We went old school traditional white name. No one has a problem with that one.
Here's hoping for Maximus.
Why hello Maximus!
It is a serious job naming your kids because look at what some celebrities name their children. My friend Morgan (male) has a serious complex that his parents named him a primarily female name. He told me he and his wife will be extra careful with the naming of their children.
Like everyone, we had to narrow out names that were already used by family members, ex boyfriends, other kids on the block, friends kids, names that don't flow well with last name, names that friend who didn't take 4 years to get pregnant stole from you because they figured you were never going to have a child. After all those considerations the choices become much easier.
Hee hee, I tormented my wife with “Honus,” until we knew we were having a girl.
For awhile I had her sold on naming our daughter Tiger (this was before Tiger Woods was a household name) and now I'm very glad I lost on this one.
My wife's favorite literary character from her youth was Josephine March from Little Women. I liked the name Josephine because it had so many cool nicknames (Jo, JoJo, Fifi, Phine, Josie, etc.) I figured it could easily be adapted to suit just about any personality.
One of my rules of naming her, and this goes for naming dogs as well, is that it couldn't be a name that I'd be embarrassed to yell out in public. This is why our dogs are NOT named things like, “Sweetums” or “Poopie.” =)
I had the great pleasure of being responsible for both my kids' names. I don't know how I managed that in hind sight, but it worked out well. I decided to go with a theme. We have Neil and Alan after the Astronauts. Their middle names are meaningful too. Kenneth for my grandpa and Christopher for my best friend who died in the world trade center on 9/11
You know, I had wondered if Bella was short for Isabella. I love both names and would have considered it if we were having a girl, but we have two Isabella (one of whom goes by Bella) and an Isabel in our family already. We had initially decided on Olivia Grace, but then everywhere we went we ran into an Olivia or a Grace, so my wife changed her mind again
given that we had to come up w/ six, it was really tough. we're also southern where family names are a big deal. we decided the night before they were born. my MIL didn't approve of one of the names in particular. this just in… we didn't care what she thought.
No more than 12, Holy Hannah! We are definitely having no more than 2
That is a cool tradition your husband's family has with the grandfather's name. I had considered my father's father's name for our son, but he didn't like his name and begged us to never use it. If we are having another boy I'm going to lobby to use a similar name.
We've been having a similar situation in that I'm Irish & Italian and my wife is 100% German. Our son has a very Irish name and I'm totally on board with using a very German name for baby #2, but we just can't find anything we like that goes with our last name. Unfortunately, I've been told the only thing getting named Maximus will be a dog.
That's a cool name, right? Of course he'd be stuck going out as a Gladiator for Halloween each year.
It is a tough thing to decide, essentially, someone's identity. I've never cared for my first name and always thought of changing it when I was old enough.
Ah, yes, the elimination game. We lost a lot of potential names to friends that had kids before us.
That is very cool, I didn't realize there are that many nicknames. It is highly adaptable. And, I'm with you on the whole yelling it out in public thing, if it doesn't sound right at full volume, it definitely should be a no go.
Maximus Mullen has professional Wrestler name written all over it.
That is very nice tribute to your friend and grandfather. I strongly considered my grandfather's names until my mother reminded me that both of them hated their name and begged the family to never name a child after them. Still, if we are having another boy I'm strongly considering a name similar to one of my grandfather's name instead.
We have some friends who abided by their families very traditional southern naming traditions. Personally, I think it's nice to have such a strongly rooted tradition. Outside of the middle name I share with my grandfather, father and son, that is about it for us. I can't imagine coming up with that many names. I'm having a hard enough time coming up with one boy and one girl name for final consideration.
Love the comment about a massive trust fund to pick a name!
For the 1st 2 kids, we did the typical name list and narrowing. For the 3rd, we had more difficulties, because I had too many name associations with children/clients/students. That list was much shorter!
The final test to put to any name on your short list is to stand on the back porch and scream it at the top of your lungs 50 times. If you still like it after that, it's a keeper.
This is going to be tough, especially you knew my younger daughter at one time. The first one was easy. I loved the name Jennifer, but my husband did not. So, I kept tossing out names like Marilyn, Katherine, Rosemary, knowing that they would be rejected. Jennifer was deemed an acceptable compromise by said husband provided we tagged it with Delores as a middle name. Done.
Now on to the younger daughter. We had thought about Julie, but were also considering Janet and Nancy. We tossed all three names into a hat and Janet was born. No middle name. She has yet to forgive us for pulling her name out of a hat and for having her birthday on April 1.
We were positive that number three was going to be a girl. So Joanne Patricia it was. Until it wasn't. Lo and behold…it's a boy! We had decided on David Henry, III, as the boy's name for the first two, but it didn't see to work this time. My parents went on vacation just after this birth and come home to find that their grandson's name was John David. (Heck, I got everything monogramed the first time and just kept passing things down). It got sticky when I arrived home with little brother and was asked “So, where's Joanne?”
Please keep in mind…this was the 1970's. You never knew what you were getting until you got it.
It only seems fair, right
We are in a similar situation in that most of our friends and family our age had kids long before we did, so we've got to cross check so many different ways that a lot of what we probably would have used was eliminated.
Ok, done. But my neighbors are not happy with me right now.
The technology today is amazing. Both of our parents have been beside themselves when we showed them the ultrasound pics. Yesterday they even gave us a DVD with a video of the whole thing.
Before our son was born we had already picked out his name, but I made sure that my wife and I had a girl's name at the ready. I was having recurring dreams that we would be expecting a Connor, but getting a Connie. I guess I just didn't trust the doctors when they said we were having a boy. My inner doubting Thomas showing.
At least we have a girl's name ready if that's what we are having this time around. Still no clue on a boy's name.
We had some serious name discussions. In order to get my family tradition exactly as I wanted I have given up all naming rights to future children. I couldn't agree more that it is no one else in the family's business. Good luck. Naming is too hard for me. Other than my one request I just spent time vetoing. I brought no original ideas to the table. My wife on the other hand had plenty of ideas.
We had a few 'heated' battles but eventually found one that we liked. We wanted something different from the trendy, popular names. We also did the initials, rhyming check just to make sure!
I have three sons and my wife is pregant again and we are having fun and games looking at names again. We are sort of agreed on girls names but boys names we are no closer. For middle names its good to use family names (grand parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles). The baby is due the day after the world cup final so I guess it could be called Wayne if England win! I won't be calling John or Terry mind even if he scores the wining goal
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