Which Name Would You Choose?

I chose my surname and changed it by deed poll. I didn't speak to my father for several years, or my sister, so no desire to share their name. I was divorced twice so no need of either of those names and I wanted something a little more unusual than that that I was born with but simple to spell. I have been very happy with my choice for 13 years. I am now married again (8 years and still going strong) but my husband is 'foreign' with an unpronouncable surname for the English tongue, therefore no change then and he has no wish that I should change my name to his.

Lucy. I've always loved this name. It was going to be my child's name but I had boys!

I don't mind my names as I have got used to them. However initials are a bit strange since marriage.

I would have liked a daughter . The name I had chosen was shared by two daughters in law so could have been complicated.

Surname I would like my maiden name again. It's foriegn but easy to pronounce. Will probably revert to it if I end up widowed in the future

Was talking to my gd about the origin of names as part of lockdown schooling and we had a lot of laughs. We spoke about surnames representing family jobs, where people lived or descriptions and we wondered where all the “bottoms” had gone? Longbottom, Wrigglebottom, Sidebottom, Ramsbottom, Higginbottom etc there certainly used to be far more of them when I was younger. As for picking my own name I would not know where to start.

My name is not Thelma, but something vaguely similar. But when I was at secondary school, for some reason there was a new science teacher who constantly called me Thelma. I told him endless times what my name actually was but he just never really got it, and in the end I gave up bothering. Till the day I left, he called me Thelma sometimes. As for a name I'd choose for myself, that's a hard one. I disliked my name as a child - it's a bit unusual and I thought it was old fashioned, and I didn't like that aspect of it when I was young and wanted to "fit in" more. But as an adult, I have liked my name and don't think I'd really want to change it. Can't really imagine myself being called anything else.

I always wanted to be Elizabeth. It was my mother’s name, and my grandmother’s name. I had cousins called after my grandmother, who died before I was born, I always wondered why I was wasn’t too. Still like the name now, much nicer than mine!

I think I suit my name or I've grown into it - its not at all unusual in women of my age but DH changes it to something a bit more interesting which is nice. As a child I wanted to be called Isobel as their was a pretty little blond girl who lived near us that my mother thought was lovely and I am a great bit brunette who she described as a lump. when I met DH I told him this and he said' Is a bell needed on a bicycle? Apologies to all Isobel's I still think its a lovely name. My GGD is named this coincindentally.

Lucretzia

I don't use my christian name - I am known by something else that I prefer. The only people who call me by the original name are those who don't know me well.

I love the name Juno as a first name

My first name is to me rather old fashioned but is now popular. Combined with my maiden name I was a very historic royal. I am sure no matter what I had been given I would have wanted to change it. My married name is short as are the first names given to my children. I read not long ago that if you want to be noticed, remembered eg at work, you should have a short name. Of course Benedict Cumberbatch proves the exception!

Moggycuddler your post made me smile, I had a teacher who called me Diane....not my name or even similar.
I'd correct her and she'd smile and apologise and then continue to call me that name.
She even crossed my name out on the class register and put Diane .

I have been known outside my family, by a shortened form of my first name for the last 60+ years. But my siblings, and before them my parents always used the full form of my name.

It just doesn't feel like me and I do rather resent their not using the name I prefer. Especially so as my elder brother uses, and is known by the short form of his name and my sister uses her middle name, and even changed the spelling to the French form, with no problem.

The Duchess of Cambridge shares my problem!

Despite that I like both my given names and would not want to change them now.

I hated my name as a child. I’m now used to it and quite like it. It is the French form of a very unfashionable name which, curiously is become very fashionable again.
Middle and surname? Don’t really care - possibly my mother’s French maiden name.

My maiden surname was Valentine which I really love. When I married it changed and then when I divorced I did consider reverting to that but with 2 young children at school I felt it was too complicated for them to have a different surname to me. This was in the mid 70s. I had given my son Valentine as a middle name and now my grandson has that as a middle name too. I feel it’s too late now to change my name as I’m in my mid 70s.

I’m quite happy with my first name.
However, I dislike my married surname although it not anything really awful. Wish I had realised 40 odd years ago that I could have kept my own surname. I still don’t really recognise myself when people call me Mrs ***. That’s my MIL who incidentally was glad to get a better surname than she had before marriage.

I didn't change my name on marriage in 1972, which was unusual at the time. There were two Mrs B..s at the time and I didn't want to be a third. (my father-in-law's two wives). I have a very dull first name and would have preferred Harriet or Frances or Judith - dignified grown-up names.

When I worked as a nurse in theatre ,one of the doctors asked someone what my name was. He always called me Lucretia, not my name or anything like it. I am called Sheena by everyone. That is not my offcial name either.

I have hated my name for always. Bullied at school (in Edgbaston), where they changed the spelling to something rude! and was always called it by one of the teachers.

The nasty girls in school stories often had this name! Not the heroines!

Try guessing!!!

I have an unusual first name. I have always been happy with it apart from the fact that most people mispronounce it or call me by the male equivalent which is much more common. I don't think I'd change it just wish that I was more easily read correctly.

I'm happy with my name now but I hated it as a child. My parents were from Southern Ireland and obviously we were given Irish names.
As a child I wanted the be Susan or Pauline or Jacqueline!

I grew up in Germany and my name was extremely popular at the time, cousin, parents' friends daughter, 3 of us in class.....
hated it. Always loved nature, specially birds and cheetahs, would have loved a name from nature. Called my daughter Bryony (with a french middle name)

My maiden name (which I still use) is Haworth. Years ago when working as a Lloyd’s Broker in London a colleague started calling me Rita - nothing like my first name! He said that my surname reminded him of Rita Hayworth and so I was known as Rita until the day I left ? Said colleague also put me through an initiation when I first started as a youngster by sending me upstairs with a message for Mr Scratchdick. I eventually found Mr Hitchcock ?