Do you like your grandchild's name?

AllTheLs

Oh dear, if my mum had come out with a line like that I would have called the child River whether it had been a boy or a girl just to teach her to keep her mouth shut! When I had my daughter I was going to give her my grandma's name as a middle name (my mum's mum). I was going to slightly change the spelling though. When I told my mum she said 'oh no you can't spell it like that!' It was only a 'y' in the middle of Jane but I just completely changed my choice of middle name. Later on my mum said to me 'that was me and my big mouth wasn't it?' And I agreed with her.

If we are introduced to a stranger we don't say 'oh I don't like that name!' do we so why do we feel it's ok to comment on baby's names?

Is your name Muffin Kittylester?

I am always surprised by the number of parents who give their children rather pretentious surnames as a third name.
It could be a family name, though; my father had a surname as his middle name (no-one could ever spell it!) and it goes back through the generations - it was his great-grandfather's surname and he and his wife had no surviving boys so I presume they wanted to keep the unusual surname going in the family.

Is your name Muffin Kittylester?
I think it's Looby-Loo (it can't be Miss Piggy and [Lady] Penelope is not that unusual)
Oh - Unless it's Hello Kitty?

When our son was born 30 years ago, we called him Joshua( very unusual at that time!) & my mother was extremely rude about it...when Joshua rang to tell me his own son had been born 3 years ago, I knew that, whatever he said, I had to be positive & not comment. They had chosen an unusual name, I don't know another child called it but, despite my initial thoughts - where did it come from, what'll happen at school etc - I now couldn't imagine him.being anything else. As so many grans have said here, it's none of our business, just as it was none of our own parents' when we named our own children.

Each generation has fashionable names. If you listed six schoolfriends you would know when they went to school.

My Mum's friends were Joan, Mabel, Doris, Betty, Edith and May

My friends were Christine, Jennifer, Linda, Pat, Rosemary and Sandra

My daughter's friends were Vicky, Sarah, Nicola, Rachel, Rebecca and Jane

My grand-daughters friends are Olivia, Hannah, Aisha, Isla, Evie and Ruby

It is solely up to the parents I agree. However I liked a name very much but my family said they couldn't like it. How easy to pick one they could like too. I am glad I didn't go with my first name because it sounds ridiculous now.

My dad chose my name (Estelle) which i love, but he always called me Dinah. i never found out why.
My granddaughter is named Chelsea, her mums surname was the same as another football team and she thought it was a good idea, but my sons name is on the birth certificate, so that idea went out of the window. However i still don't like Chelsea as a name, especially since i read that schoolteachers once voted it as one of the top 'chavvie' names.

starlily, my GD is Estelle. I think it is a pretty name. My initial response was to think of Great Expectations, but I then remembered that she was Estella.

Children accept each other's names and don't have any pre-concieved ideas about old fashioned /chavvy etc to taint them so amongst little kids it is not a problem.
What I used to find odd was that often parents from overseas would give their child an English name. I have taught Korean children alled Brian, Nigel and Alan as well as Beverly, Carol and Melinda! Such imo odd choices!

I have heard of Africans choosing words they just liked the sound of for their childrens' names. Two exmples are Helicopter and Jamsandwich!

Every generation of my mother's family except mine and my DD has had a Clara , Clare or Clarissa since as far back as we have gone which is 1787 that was Clarissa.
I was an only GC and didn't like the name but my D did and my GD 2 has Clarissa as her second name and now I like it.

Not sure about the name chosen for my latest grandson. It may be OK now (Sonny) but when he's a bit older I rather think he will start using his middle name!! Or at least, I hope so.......

I really like my gd's name, not so keen on gs's name, although it has same initial as surname it doesn't have a very good sounding alliteration however, both too short. First name would have benefited from an extra syllable, or two.

I became a first time nan last July and at first was very uncertain of my GD name but now I love it and it really suits her.

My elder DGS is called Ethan which I love and my 7 week old DGS is called Thomas, again I really like it. We know a number of new babies and we have trouble remembering which is which as the names are Alfie, Albie, Archie, and Bertie.

My new great Grandaughter has just been named Raegan. I quite like it now but thought it a little unusual at first. Anyway, she is a beautiful baby so what's in a name?

Some of our GC have middle names that are our names (first and middle) - we are very touched that they did this - they gave them the first names that they liked, but a nod to their Mum and Dad in the second names.

lullydully, you guessed!!

This has made me reflect on my family and I realise that in my H's family every generation has a James, it is my S's second name and in my D's "outlaws " family there is a Richard back as far as they can go. It is my soon to be ex Si L's second name and that of my GS, his son. Tradition rules.

I called my own daughter a quite unusual name. My mother said 'you can't lumber a child with a name like that!' Other's tried to be less obvious and said 'oh that's unusual'
Her name is becoming very popular now almost 40 years later!
I'm not keen on two of my grandchildren so names but I've grown used to them and can't imagine them as anything else.
Naming a child is fraught with difficulties and has to be the parents responsibility.if it's awful the kids can then only blame the parents!
(My daughter loves her name by the way!)

When teaching we teachers observed that children's names sealed their fate. Top set children's names observed the middle class law:- that they were drawn from traditional English sources. These mostly comprised names from the bible, Shakespeare, the Brontes (their own names and that of their characters), the classics, English kings and queens, Scotland or Wales if traditional, Jane Austen and other notable but traditional literary origins. Sometimes there would be a fashion for something like English Victorian names like Lily or Mabel and the boys' names were often traditional but shortened, for expample Sam or Ben. Nevertheless, these were the names that seemed to go along with parental interest and whose owners ended up doing well.

The bottom sets often contained exotic names which matched modern celebrities or passing phases. They had random spellings too.

I am not inventing this, merely passing on an observation made over 34 years of teaching. When one of my own children graduated at a good university doing a solid traditional subject her 150 peers for that subject all had names from the 'middle class rule book'. There were five Jessicas and four with my child's name. I was astonished at how the 'rule' had prevailed despite fashion and, especially, political correctness. My guess is that while much virtue signalling goes on in public, in private nothing has changed and that people really know, as they used to say, 'which end is up'.

A test that used to be made was the 'could he/ she be prime minister with this name?' Margaret, Anthony, Gordon, Edward (or Ed) and David all cut the mustard being dull, solid, dependable and traditional. A name is a signal of intent to the world, seemingly.

My GC have one English Name and one Welsh, to satisfy each side of the family. Both which I like and suits them. I wanted to call my second child, if a girl, Tabitha, my mothers comment was 'That is a cat's name' luckily he was a boy.

My own name was popular for the year in which I was given it and then disappeared completely thereafter. I used to have about two, three or four peers with the same name in every school class I was in ( I went to twelve different schools), a pattern which followed me when I was training to be a teacher. Amusingly, I can guess when people were born if they have this name and it will be 1956 only. My mother cannot tell me where she heard the name or why she gave it to me. Thankfully, we of this name all seem to be boring, respectable and normal and I have seen teachers, librarians, administrators and managers with the same name. I guess that 'Scarlett' also popular around that time would have cast a different fate!

Pippa000, my mother put the kybosh on 'Edmund'which we had liked from Shakespeare and Jane Austen. Perhaps she did the poor child a favour! Who knows?