What's in a name?

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

Choosing a name is one of the most important decisions parents will make. Names can have a special meaning, honor or remember a loved one or just be something "cool."

While I have several years yet before becoming a parent, I have reached a few basic decisions on the names of my children:

1. The names will be easy to spell and pronounce, thus reducing and/or eliminating the possibility of years of frustration and aggravation from teachers and peers.

2. The names will not be unisex names, be spelled uniquely or be the most popular names used at the time.

3. The names will be mature names, but not ones my children will have to do much growing into as they grow up.

4. My children will be named after loved ones in my family and my spouse's family that have passed on. (I'm very happily taken but we're nowhere near marriage yet!)

5. Both my spouse and I will reach a decision on names together, even if it requires a LOT of debate and discussion.

Ever since I've been within realistic grasp of parenthood, I've had my list of favorite names that I would bring into the discussion:


GIRLS
Bethany
Eden
Heather (taken by a niece)
Natalie
Savannah
Leandra (see below)

BOYS
Leander (it's a family name and no one else used it yet)
Etienne (I know this one would be harder to spell and difficult amongst peers)
Nathaniel
Herschel
Earl
Ezra

Comments

[zante.livejournal.com]

I love Bethany, and Ezra will be my sons' middle name :)

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

My grandmother's name was Betty and to me, it's a little too old-fashioned for my liking and I don't want to go with Elizabeth, either, so Bethany seemed like a nice choice.

Ezra just seems cool, straightforward and SIMPLE, y'know?

[zante.livejournal.com]

Bethany is a nice change from Elizabeth :)

My great aunt was an Elizabeth (Betty), hehe.

I got Ezra from a book, years ago, and have always adored it, but now it seems to be gaining popularity, which is dissapointing to me :(

[decim.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on all counts there. (Except for the family members who have passed on bit.) Lately I've become really adamant that if I do have children, they will have family names, hopefully a mix of my boyfriend's family and mine. Some favourites (absolute favourites in bold):

GIRLS
Carolyn (my boyfriend's mom's name, and sorta mine, which is Carol)
Christina (my mom's name)
Ivy (my great-grandmother's name)
Elizabeth (my middle name and my boyfriend's mother's middle name)
May (my mother's middle name)

BOYS
David (both mine and my boyfriend's fathers' name)
James (my brother's and uncle's middle name)
John (my grandfather's middle name, also very common in my father's family tree)
Robert (my boyfriend's uncle's name, my uncle's name and my grandfather's name)
Richard (my uncle's first name)
Miles (my last name)

They're boring, I guess, but easy to spell, and all are family names. Family is important to me.

[heyitsrebecca.livejournal.com]

I agree, mostly, with your sentiments.
And I was with you on the names until I came to Herschel and Earl.
They aren't terrible.. but they definitely conjure images of a generation that's now living in assisted living homes.
But, with the right personality, they can probably become 'cool.'
My BIL is named Howard who wears it extremely well.. and it doesn't sound old-mannish to me at all because of it. LOL

[nobodynomore.livejournal.com]

I've always liked the named Etienne & Ezra. Good choices. Also, Eden I like.

[skudge.livejournal.com]

I've always loved the name Bethany. So pretty! Also, I knew a boy named Nathaniel. He was in my Tae Kwon Do class, and for ages I thought his name was Daniel, because the teacher had a really heavy accent and when he said "Nathaniel," it sounded like "that Daniel," so I thought he meant that Daniel, as opposed to this Daniel (there was another boy in my class named Daniel). But then after a while I realized that his name was Nathaniel, and I decided I loved that name.

[singhappy02.livejournal.com]

I love Etienne, haven't heard it since someone chose it in French class to be their French name :)

I'm with you, I like mature names for kiddos that don't swallow them when they're little (my favorite names are Caroline, Lydia, Noah and Elijah....)

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

I liked Lydia as a middle name to Bethany...but my b/f had an ex named Lydia who hurt him badly, so that name is off the list.

[medland.livejournal.com]

I like your criteria. I cringe when I think of a load of adults called Pixie or Emmaleigh.

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

Well, now Pixie is a new one on me!

I've seen:

AERYK (Eric)
ICESIS (one of my great-niece's names)
JACKALYNNE
RHEACHAEL (Rachel)

I have two friends with daughters named Brianne (or Breanna or however the heck they spell them!) and both of them are school-aged kids who have at least four others in their class who share their name AND at leat two kids named Caitlin (or those variations).

When I was in high school, my choir teacher created the seating charts for each section based solely on last names. When she looked up at the alto section, she'd seated the back row as: Lisa - Lisa - Stacey - Lisa - Stacy!!! She made them move themselves around so it wouldn't bug her all semester. LOL!

[medland.livejournal.com]

When I was at high school the register/roll call in my science class read 'Katherine, Erica, Katherine, Erica, Katherine, Katherine, Katherine'! I'm glad my parent's called me Marguerite. ;)
Bob Geldof's youngest daughter is called Pixie.
Personally I don't understand at all the point of changing the spelling to an almost unreadable variation but pronouncing it the same.

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah, I've heard of celebrities with unusually named kids...like Apple...I can just see it now when SHE grows up!

I meant non-celebrity everyday folks. I don't think I've ever come across someone who named their kid Pixie. I've met one kid named DIXIE, but it was a family name.

[bas-cule.livejournal.com]

Ezra makes me think of Ezra Pound, so that's pretty cool if you like his work and i like Leander cos it's classical :0) not so sure about Herschel, it sounds a bit like an ice cream brand (to me anyway!) All your girls names are lovely :0)

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

I agree. If I have a son who IS named Etienne, I'd likely call him "Stevie" until he was old enough to decide for himself what he'd prefer to use, just to make it easier.

[fabgrrl.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly with the "easy to pronouce and say" and "not popular" decisions. Many of the names my husband and I are looking at for our baby are simple, classic, even old-fashioned.

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

A BIG thank-you for sparing your children from the annoyance of misspellings and mispronunciations!! :)

My name is Susanne and I get called "Susan" ALL the time...even my French teacher, who should've known better, insisted on using it (got me sent to the dean for a "bad attitude" when I finally stopped answering to it, but HE came back and corrected HER - HA!). Now, I just figure that if they can't get my name right, that's their problem.

My middle name is Whitney so I COULD have just avoided the hassle and used it instead, but it didn't occur to me until I was in college and had already come to the above conclusion. LOL!

[slidewithme.livejournal.com]

i LOVE andrew. always thought that was a great name.

also, my boyfriends name is nicholas, and he too hates being called nico.

[super-bitch06.livejournal.com]

You criteria (criterion? ::fails english::) list makes me smile so hard. Yay for sensible naming :-D!!

Eden, Natalie and Ezra are the ones I like best. :)

[jamykins.livejournal.com]

Eden and Ezra are my favorites

[iamcyber.livejournal.com]

Fraternal twins run in my family, so that's what I'd thought of as two easy non-rhyming names if I had twins that were a boy and a girl.

The three and a half sets of twins (my father's first wife nearly lost the pregnancy in a car accident, but one managed to survive and made it to full term, thus the "half" twin) in my family are all boys. Only one set of them have rhyming names...the other two have same-letter(s) names:
uncles
Alvin Kay ("K" for my grandmother's name of Katherine)
Calvin Jay ("J" for my grandfather's name of John)
brothers
David Duane is the twinless twin
nephews
Kyle Adam and Kameron Budd ("A" and "B" for birth order)
first cousins
Brent Thomas and Bradley Andrew (I love my aunt and uncle's choices in names - this uncle is a brother to Calvin and Alvin)

I went to school with quintuplets and I know their parents thought they were only having TWINS so they were really scrambling to find names for them...I can only imagine the generation of IVF parents having multiple births trying to figure out all the names for their kids! WHEW!

[http://users.livejournal.com/--melpomene--/]

thank god someone has sensible naming capabilities. I feel the exact same way. And your names are beautiful and classy. Nathaniel and Savannah are my favorites off of your list.