How did you choose your kids' names?

My mother was named after the lady that loaned the horse and trap to get my grandmother and the baby to church for the baptism. I always thought it a lovely story but sadly the lady did not have a particularly nice name and my mother was stuck with it as she only had one forename.

Floradora9 - My mother hated her name and always called herself something else. She was named after a 'Lady' that her grandmother worked for in service. Interestingly when researching that family in later years I found out that the said 'Lady' called herself that name because she hated what she had been named. I don't think my mother ever knew that!

Yes, it's Cornish, Jalima. A diminutive of Thomasina.

I note the number of posts that say 'we' 'our' and 'us' relating to their children's names, with envy. I had no choice! My (now ex) went off and registered them without asking me. I did not really like the names but as Cherrytree59 said they grew into them. I suppose they had no choice really did they?!

I named our ds1 Dean as my maiden name is Welsh and it means dweller in a Welsh valley.....my ds2 is called Nathan meaning gift from god.....both my boys are adopted...we were only waiting 7 weeks for Dean but took 4 years for Nathan so he was a gift from god to us

When I grew up in Cornwall,proper Cornish names were unusual. However,one girl at school had a lovely Cornish name and I resolved that,if I ever had a daughter,I would call her by that name,even though I wasn't at all friendly with the girl in question. Fast forward to when said daughter was 30. We were buying a house and during the process we discovered the purchaser was none other than the one from school!

Son number one has the name of an ancient Greek king, I didn't give a lot of thought to yelling the name when he was born, that came later. It was my choice and I would have chosen the feminine version for a girl, bearers of this name tend to opt for the diminutive and we weren't an exception and adopted the shortened version from the outset, but I still love the long version. Our other son has a diminutive of a Hebrew name but that wasn't my first choice, my husband vetoed that but agreed to it for a middle name. I like classical names often centuries old, but timeless. We didn't use family names although my husband did want to use my foreign grandfather's first name which again is a quite classical name.

I love Cornish names and often tease her that she was nearly called Demelza.
Well my DS is called Ross, merlotgran, and I must admit it owed more to a particular character in a certain series of books I was reading at the time than to the book of baby names We did both love the name as well though!

merlotgran just wondering if the pony-mad girl is the same one that DD2 is named after?!

Is it Cornish too?

When I had our first daughter, I wanted to call her Lynette, but we thought that it would be shortened to Lynne, so we named her Lynne. Lo and behold, when she started to play out with other kids, they called her Linny-pinny! Our eldest son was named after his dad, with his middle name being that of one of hubby`s favourite brass band players. My MIL was upset because he wasn`t named after his paternal grandfather, so when the other boy was born he had the name we`d chosen, plus the names of BOTH grandfathers, thereby giving him 3 Christian names. The midwife said "he`ll think he`s royalty when he grows up!"

DD1 was named after the pony mad girl in my favourite book. It's not so unusual now.

DS was named after our favourite classical pianist/conductor and DD2 has the name of a Daphne du Maurier character.

I love Cornish names and often tease her that she was nearly called Demelza.

SIL (American) has a nephew whose surname is Gordon so his parents called him Flash! Only in America

Found it trueblue
www.gransnet.com/forums/ask_a_gran/1233965-Grandchildren-named-after-SIL-side

We did not call DD1 'Herbert' which is what DH called 'bump!

Left to me my DS would have been called 'Freddie Mercury' but as my DD always referred to my bump as 'Baby Thomas' thats what what we called him.

trueblue I think that was a different thread, there are two, one being this one and the other about people who are upset over the choice

This has gone from a thread about being upset about not being recognised in GC names to a discourse in what we named our children. Oh well!

We had chosen a girl's or boy's name for DD1 but the minute I saw her I decided on something completely different - DH just said 'Oh, but I thought we decided on ... ' then decided saying nothing was the best policy.

I always knew my daughter would be called Sarah . Just one of those things.

But we were sure our second child would be a boy so only had a boys name chosen. When our new baby arrived and was a girl we were stumped .

Then I heard a song on the radio and realised it was the perfect name. It's my grandmothers name, a derivative of my mothers name , a Danish derivative of mine too.

We named her Katherine but through the years she's been known as Katie, Katherine and Kat.

The song was Katy by Tom Paxton

We found a name for DS1 that was not a family name, but we liked it and it is not heard very often. DD was to be a certain name, until she was born, but then she didn't look like an "X" So we called her "Y" , just right, and we love the shortened version. By the way, when DGD was born, she was given her mother's first choice of name. DS2 was to be "M", but heard that name bawled out at a beach, and thought NO. So he became "P". I have always been fond of my own name, and it is only recently that I have heard of a few others.

I don't like my Sunday name, flora. Ten a penny in my age group and very uninspired (imho, I hasten to add). In fact, I was named for my grandmother, who didn't care for it either! I don't mind Maggie though, and sometimes get Meg or Mags, which I also quite like. Certain people insist on the full name though, as it's what they were used to when I was little.

DS has one name that I always said a boy of mine would have, plus my father's name and DH's name. DD was going to be something different to the name she has, but we already had one in the family. But she has a pretty name and it suits her. I have always hated my name and never use it.

Never liked my name - but have grown to like it, in old age...
DD had a lucky escape. I had wanted "peridot" but DH didn't like it; we argued about a girl's name throughout pregnancy and finally called her a very ordinary, but lovely name. the boys were no problem, they have biblical names - both apostles as it turned out!
it was the initials which were the problem. with a surname starting with an S, some pretty nasty acronyms and words could have ensued.

DD1 was called a name I had always liked . DD2 was a name my Mum mentioned in a conversation whilst I was pregnant and immediately liked .Dd3 was one from a shortlist after looking at a name book. Our only real consideration otherwise was that any name needed more than one syllable as our surname is short and quite sharp sounding.

Hi Flora, I didn't used to like my name - it's nothing like my user name BTW - but now it's quite popular and I am glad to be called it!