Dec 232009
Question Seven: What is the history of your name? Were you named for someone or something? Ever wished your name was something else entirely? How important is your name to you?
DAILY POSTS FROM EXPERTS
It’s mine! All MINE!
Places to Go:
I was named in the Jewish tradition of using the first letter of the name of someone deceased you want to honor. My grandfather’s name started with M and thus my name does too. As a kid, I used to think my name was too different (which is funny since my name is much more popular now than it was 35 years ago), but now I really love it.
I was named after Shari Lewis and Lamb chop. I like my name and the spelling of it throws people off. My middle name is Faith after my grandmother. All first born females in my family have the same Middle name (Faith). My boys are a bit more unique. They both have the same middle name – Dean, after their father.
- if you are bored – skip this section it is long and boring. My ex’s name is Laurel Dean, he was named after his Uncle Laurel Gene and his wife Norma Dean – hence his name Laurel Dean. Now our 1st born son is named Laurel Dean II – he is truly a second. In order to be named a II you need to be named after an uncle and he was kinda sorta (his GREAT uncle but more so named after his father). Oh, and he is known by Dean. So people always threw me looks because the boys have the same middle names and one goes by that name. Our baby boy was just named Andrew Dean. nothing fancy dancy his father named him. We call him Drew and his name fits him to a tee!
My real name is Ann Marie…I was named after Phil Donahues wife… She stared in a 70s sitcome That Girl…and her name was AnnMarie on the show…. my parents thought I was a boy for sure… so when I popped out all vagina-ee.. they were at a loss for names… apparently they werent very creative hahaha
I do wish my name was Annabelle… which is whatmy hubs has always called me… its cute and spunky..much like myself
My husbands name is Barney! lol poor kid.. he’s a 31 year old racecar driving Electrician covered with tatoos and his name is Barney ahha sadly he was born Jacob Michael.. but his Dad liked the name Barney so much he just refused to call him anything else… at the age of 2 he was brought to court and his name was legally changed to Barney haha
My daughter is Rowan Aislan… Rowan came from the Anne Rice Mayfair witches book series… Its also an Irish name meaning red haired one (perfect) and protected from evil…. Aislan is another Gaelic name meaning dream inspiration and vision..i just liked it…. it fits her well
I’m just another boring Jennifer born in the 1970s. My mom’s name is Pamela and she HATED HATED HATED that it was so ‘different’ when she grew up (in the 50s) so she gave me the absolute most popular girls name of the day. Yeah. My middle name is Carla after my dad Carl – to this day my mom wishes she had named me Carla. *shrug* I’m so used to Jennifer at this point that I don’t think I would like being a Carla.
My son Peter was named after my uncle who died too young, coupled with the middle name Sebastian which is a huge family name in my husbands family. I do love the name Sebastian but I felt it was just a bit too ‘out there’ for me (me and my crazy Jennifer name!) but I love the name Peter too – classic but not so overdone these days. And with the Sebastian middle name he has a name that means a lot to me. He seems to like his name too.
It’s the only one my parents could agree on.
My name was the result of my parents not being able to agree what to call me. Both of them wanted to name me Catherine, but my mom wanted to call me Catie, and my dad did not. He said if I were named Catherine, I would be called Catherine. So I had no name until my mom was watching the “Bob Newhart Show” (I’m not sure if that’s actually what it was called…but Bob Newhart was the star…) after having me. The wife in the show was named Emily, which my mom liked. My dad apparently agreed, as I was dubbed Emily Catherine.
I’ve always loved my name, and it’s fairly important to me. I liked my middle name so much that I chose to completely drop my maiden name when I got married so I could keep Catherine. For whatever reason, my last name was never super important to me. I preferred to keep the middle name I’d had all my life (and hyphenating wasn’t an option…it would sound awful).
Jewish tradition, named after my deceased great grandfather Saul. I was also given my mother’s maiden name as a middle name. However, my name is very popular (there were 6 of us in my Jewish preschool) so I have always lamented the fact that there were no nicknames to be derived from it. Then I went ahead and did the same thing to my son.
My oldest sister named me…well, my name was on a list of recommendations that she sent to my parents. See, her name starts with an A. My next older sister’s name starts with a J, and the next sister is also a J. She was outnumbered. So, when she was staying with my aunt for the couple weeks before I was born, she wrote a letter to my parents, requesting that they give me an A name. Apparently, I was supposed to be Elizabeth, until that letter came.
I don’t particularly like my name, but my full name is nice and short and easy to sign.
Again with the Jewish tradition…first name starting with the initial of my great uncle, middle name the initial of a great grandmother. I like my name a lot, though it started out more original than it ended up later on (in high school, I befriended a girl with the same name, same spelling…and then I later bought a house next door to a woman with the same name, same spelling).
Christina Michelle is my name. Which was one of the most popular names in 78 the year I was born. In fact I went to school with two Christine Michelle’s. I have always hated my first name….mainly because at some point in the first month of my life my uncles (Miles and Mike) decided that I had been named after them and started calling me Michelle. So I have spent a better part of my life correcting people and telling them to please call me Michelle. Christina is toooo foofie to me.
Our daughter was named Lillian after her great grandmother as well as a great great grandmother. My moms name is Belinda and well…..BLECH…..but Belle was charming so Lillian Belle it was.
Our new last name was a combination of our two last names. I felt so connected to my name that I couldn’t give it up completly. We felt like a hypen was just a punishment in elementary school for a child so we combined. So our Lilly Belle is rocking the last name Shadow (as are we). Sha from one name and dow from the other name.
All the names we have chosen for our future kids are family names.
My mother wanted to honor her mother, who died when she was young and was named Ellen. My cousin, who is four years older than me, was already Ellen, so my mom decided to use it as my middle name. When she was pregnant with me she worked with a woman whose name was “Beth Ellen” and she liked it, especially since the first name was short and we have a long last name.
I didn’t like it very much when I was little- it wasn’t “pretty” like some other girls’ and people always assumed it was short for Elizabeth or Bethany. But I like it now.
My sister in law is a Beth Ellen. Small world!
Like so many parents of girls in the late 70s, my parents said “Jennifer? That’s such a nice name and no one else has that name.”
I believe it’s a derivative of Guinevere and it means “white wave.” I am white and I also wave. I am Jennifer.
I like my name and don’t think any other name would fit as well. I think my parent’s second choice was Kim or Kimberly. Not for me.
My middle name follows the Jewish tradition of taking the first initial of a deceased relative. I am glad it’s the first initial and not the whole name because I don’t think I’m cool enough to rock “Ethel.”
JD’s family uses that tradition for both names, so our children will have all their names after loved ones.
Apparently my mother always liked the name ‘Elizabeth’ and was dead set on naming her daughter that from childhood. She tells me all the time that my dad’s lucky his mom turned out to be an Elizabeth, otherwise I’d be stuck with a non-family name. But, how likely is that in a heavily Irish family, right? There’s bound to be a ton of Elizabeths on the family tree. Anyway, it means “my God is an oath.” I find it kind of funny, seeing as my parents are both staunch Athiests. But it’s a pretty name with so many nicknames, I like it. (Although, playing the alphabet game in 2nd grade was brutal – “E is for… uh … oh man, EGG!” Turns out, eggs are my favourite food. Figures.)
My middle name is so weird I rarely disclosed it as a child. Yvonne. Ooh, strange. It’s my grandmother’s middle name (because my mom was adamant that I would not be “Elizabeth Beverly”). Turns out her father (my great-grandfather) had seen an article on Canadian quadruplets or whatever and he liked the French names so much he gave them to his daughters. Depending on who you ask and where you look, “Yvonne” could mean yew in French, or archer in Old French. I prefer the last meaning, but yew is cool too. Now that I’m older, I love my name and that it connects me to the great-grandfather I barely knew… it’s just that childhood is already cruel without having a weird middle name.
My last name is suuuuuper Irish, even though it’s not a native Irish name. Once you remove my middle name, and take a glance at my green eyes, red hair and freckled face, most people call me a leprechaun and move along. The combination of my appearance and last name landed my mom a coveted Guinness beer hat at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration way back. I’ve discovered a lot about my family, namely our ancestral land in Ireland and the long-lost cousins that are still there! I won’t say my name, but it means dark/evil foreigner, or dark one from the sea. Ooh, mysterious!
So, yeah… there ya have it!
Cool, you’re named after one of the Dionne Quintuplets.
I use the name Karen and I feel “eh” about it. The name on my birth certificate is Karanka which is pretty much Polish version of Karen. I like that much more now than when I was a kid. But it is too late to change now. I am not named for anyone, but my parents want to name me Ruby. I am kind glad that they didn’t.
My name means A LOT to me…my mom found it in an article she was reading while she was pregnant with me–a few days after she had a bleeding scare (Im an IUI concieved baby!) and she had this “feeling” that everything would be fine after that…it also happens to be a variation of my paternal grandmother’s middle name. Its unique, which has created some difficult spots over the years, but I wouldnt trade it for anything–I love it!
According to my dad he wanted to name me Josie after the Outlaw Josie Wales, I guess my mom didn’t agree (DAMN) and they agreed on Amanda. I’ve often wished I had a cooler name or could go by my middle name which is Lauren. Amanda is just sooooooo…. eh.
My first name is Samantha. I was informed at the age of 15 that it was because my mother heard the name on bewitched and fell in love with it. Talk about a smack to the teenage ego..I was named after some lady that could twitch her nose?! (I did spend far too many hours trying to do it!) My middle name is Jane, I am the 4th generation to have the middle name Jane. My great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and myself all share the middle name.
btw if you think of any great names that go with Jane I would appreciate the insight! For future reference of course
Named after the Allmann Bros song Jessica but I can’t stand being called Jessica. Jessie please!
So my mom just really liked the name Lisa… along with everyone else in the 70s. It so happened that she also had a cousin named Lisa who died as an infant, but she tells me that this wasn’t much more than coincidence. I always wished that my name held a bit more cultural significance. My brother was the third child and the first son and his name was to be “Katherine Rose” if he was a girl and I kind of always coveted that name and wished I could have been a Kate. But as names go, I think mine is pretty good, and I do think it suits me.
My mama was watching a movie based in Hawaii the night she went into labor. The secretary in the movie’s name was Malea.
In school it was made fun of and became Himalaya,Malaria,Malaysia. During the dating years i heard that song “Maria” butchered more than once.They substituted my name in there.
And since Obama came on the scene i always hear “isn’t that the presidents daughters name?”, then to cover my annoyance i say back ” yes, but i had it first”….heehee. Blech!
It’s funny when i was a kid i preferred my nick name,because of all the teasing.As an adult though i don’t like non family calling me by my nickname and therefore never introduce myself as L.And hate it when my family introduces me to strangers by it:(
My mother was a teacher and she named me after her favorite student. Apparently the name is Scandinavian. My middle name is the female variant of my fathers middle name. I hated my first name for years especially since everyone else was named Susan, Linda, Kelly etc, but I learned to like the fact that it was unique especially since boys would remember it. I still hate my middle name.
(been reading everyone’s stories and LOVE LOVE LOVING them ~ and decided to state my real name…wasnt gonna, at first)
my first name is Connie (*not* Constance, Just Plain Connie) and i am named after Connie Francis, better known as my dad’s beloved gf (haha) and also my godmother. my middle name is Lynn, and this is after a very dear friend of my mom’s from high school.
when i was growing up, i liked my name, i didnt know any better. the meaning of Constance is “steadfast, loyal” and i think my name has always fit me perfectly. when i was a kid, i HATED when anyone would call me Constance, cuz it sounds so OLD. i was the only Connie in my grade school and high school and all but my last year of college. and then i got into the working world and there was usually only one other Connie around. i liked that my name is common but also a little rare.
funny moment: in the first days of nursing school we did ice-breaker things and we had this *autograph sheet* we had to get classmates to sign ~ things like “i collect unusual thing” or “i was born out of state” ~ and so i introduced myself to this young asian girl, also named connie. she was 22. i was 36. she states “oooh, i have only ever known old ladies named connie!” and i was like THANKS DUDE, YOU ARE A GEM! she would always call be Connie-1 and it was pretty fun.
i have a friend i met online eons ago and in 2001 we went on vacay to P-town for a week. her name is connie. and we have so many similarities is it ridiculous. at the B&B where we stayed, the fellow vacationers dubbed us “Baltimore Connie” (me) and “Colorado Connie” (her) and to this day, we still call each other Baltimore or Colorado
my last name is very irish and if you google the governor of MD you will know my last name. and before anyone types a reply to ask: NO RELATION
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names are so important and i am struck thinking of the baby names i carried with me for a long time, when my exgf and i were planning a family (family names from her family, who i loved) and i would write them out, but its making me sad, so i will leave this last fun name growing up story:
i went to grade school with mostly all the same students from 1st-8th. we had the same secretary for all 8yrs. in my class was a colleen. and the secretary ALWAYS and EVERY TIME she saw us would call her connie and me colleen. for YEARS. when i was in my last nursing school class i sat w/ a classmate named colleen and damn if the teacher didnt do the same thing!!!
First name, nope. My dad was insistent on naming all of his children the same initials, so then my mom had to search for the first name. Everyone except my youngest sister’s middle name is after someone. Mine is after my dad’s mom.
For me, I wanted all my children’s middle names to be after someone. A’s is after my mom’s mom’s first name, K’s is after my husband’s mom’s name, and E’s is after my husband’s grandpa’s first name.
my parents who were attracted by the 60′s had two names down for me: Arcoiris (rainbow) and/or Melodia (melody)
The story goes that in his sleepiness and shock, my dad gave the hospital the first name that popped into his head Ana (favored grace) my mother’s name and then the middle name, Sophia (wisdom) came from a Sophia Loren movie he was watching. I was called Ana Sophia for a while then just sophia to distinguish me from my mom and then Sophia just stuck and ppkl thought it was my first name. only my birth certificte and baptism certificate are Ana Sophia.
I love my names and hate that Sophia has become so common and popular lately
These stories are so much fun!
I was supposed to be Nicole. My mom and dad have always had a really bad relationship. They never communicated about names, so when my dad found a list of names he just assumed the first name on the list was the number one choice. In reality, it was just the first name from the alphabetical baby name book that my mom liked.
After I was born, he went out drinking and told all his friends my name was Carrie. My mom was devastated, but at that time in her life she deferred to him and thus I became Carrie Nicole.
I really like my name and can’t imagine anything different. When I was younger I went through phases were I liked different names, but in the end it is really nice. It is not an unusual name, but it isn’t very common either. My only trauma comes from the movie/book Carrie. A friend gave me the book for my 16th birthday and I’ve hated Stephen King ever since.
I was supposed to be Rachel. But my mother felt that Rebecca, Richard and Rachel as a family of first names was a bit too “twee” as she’d say. So somehow I ended up with Sarah. As a WEIRD thing there was another baby girl with the same last name and first name born at the same time – we have an odd last name so makes it weird. Anyway my mother picked up the wrong baby in the nursery and the whole family joke since was that I was separated from my real family.
As for my kids, my oldest is named after my husband’s greatgrandmother with my mother’s first name as her middle name. My second is just a name that my husband liked and her middle name is the original name we’d come up with for my oldest.
I guess my parents had both decided on my name, but my dad decided to just do the 1 L to make it unique and “easier”. Heh. It’s anything but easier, everyone and their mother usually mindlessly puts 2 L’s in it. I’m sort of over it (not). It’s not a family name, I don’t really know how they came up with it. But I will ask my mom because now I am curious.
My middle name (which you know if you’d paid attention when emailing my hotmail acct…) is a family name with a weird spelling that I really love now but hated when I was younger. The end. 
I was born 12 days after Christmas so I was named Noel. When I was 25 I had it legally changed to Noelle since I was tired of being called Nol by teachers, business associates and my brother. Ironically, now I get called Nicole a lot. I answer to it since that is easier than correcting people. And who really likes to be corrected anyway?
My first name is Amanda, because my mom liked Waylon Jennings’ song. Little did she know that Amanda was the hot name of the 1980s, so I could never go by just my first name. I hated it when I was young, but I think it’s cute now. Plus, it rhymes with panda, which is the cutest animal ever. Together, they’re the basis for my not-so-pseudonym.
My middle name is actually part of a very strict tradition. The oldest daughter of the oldest daughter gets that particular middle name and nobody else is allowed to have it. Unless I have a little girl, the tradition dies with me. (Pressure, much?) So my middle name is actually way more important to me than my first name could ever be.
My parents went to the mall and such places and listened to the names that people were yelling at their kids. Then they picked one they liked. Hence I am named Jennifer, the most popular name of my year. (Oh, and my sister has the second most popular name of her year.)
We showed them. We named Elizabeth after the TENTH most popular name of the year. Sigh.
I don’t know why my parents picked Barbara. I was born at home and they hadn’t chosen a name, so I was nameless for a few days. My middle name is the same as my Great Aunt’s because we were both born on the 16th of the month. When my daughter was born on my birthday, I gave her my (our) middle name.
Oh..and true story. The same daughter is named Amanda. I named her after Spock’s mother.
I am named after the women in my family. My first name, Amber, comes from my great-great grandmother. My middle name, Kalynn, is a combination of my grandmothers’ names, Kay & Evelyn. If I ever have a daughter she will also be named after our grandmothers.
My name “means” (if you look in naming books) “Famous Light”. My folks did not have any thought of the meaning when they named me. My mother had wanted to name my older brother, if he had been a girl, after her mother’s first name and the name I got for a middle name. But (a) he was born a boy and missed out on that and (b) one of her sorority sisters had named HER girl that exact name, and my mother pouted that now she couldn’t use it, even when her mother reminded her that she and said sorority sister would never be living in the same town and it wouldn’t matter. So, when I asked how she came up with my name, she said she had just heard my first name somewhere, a movie maybe, and she just liked it, and my middle name was her passive aggressive claim to part of her original plan. Funny that often when people first hear my name they don’t hear “it” but “hear” and repeat back with a ??? the name my brother would have had.
I used to wish I had a ‘normal’ name (defined as one of those that you can go in a store and buy a keychain or something with the name one of those hanging there waiting), but then, like so many of us it seems, I was glad to have something a bit my own; but then I really wish I’d been named “Smith” (family name) as that would definitely have been a name to claim that suited.
I’m so uncomfortable with my name – I never know really what to tell people to call me because in full they have difficulty with it. When younger, I was just called part of it, but when I went to college, where I knew no one, I insisted on using the full name. Somehow it felt like a fraud that I could not wholeheartedly embrace all of it. But then I had it and I kept it up. But it doesn’t feel like mine. But it is! “Hey, You” would work, too.
I am not a fan of my name. There is no great history or family tradition – my parents just liked it, apparently. It’s not that Sarah is a bad name, I just think that it’s boring and used a lot. As is my last name. And boring first name + boring last name = blah.
I like my middle name, which was my maternal grandmother’s. At least my parents didn’t name me after my paternal grandmother, as her name was Phyllis Ethel. But then again, she always hated her name, and threatened to wallop her kids if anyone tried to name any grandchild after her! Thank goodness for that.
What a fun question. I love names. I was supposed to be Beth, my mother had her heart set on that name and she said she “knew” I was a girl all along, so that was the only name they had in mind. When I was born, I apparently “didn’t look like” a Beth, so I went nameless for three weeks. Apparently the process of choosing a name that was not Beth was so taxing that I never did get a middle name. I chose Veronica for my confirmation name. For a long time that was the name I wanted. As a child I hated my name because my parents called me Becky, which is a perfectly fine name, but it never felt like MINE. I have retrained everyone to call me Rebecca and I like it; it is a nice solid classic name.
Funnily enough, my middle sister got two names (Elena Ruth, both of which I love) and my youngest sister got three names (Martha Mary Elizabeth, so they did eventually work Beth in… sort of), so I guess they got over their naming anxiety. But my youngest sister became a nun and abandoned her original name and is now called Illaria (Italian version of Hilary).
I gave my sons unusual names on purpose because our last name is the most common name in the English speaking world. My oldest is named Rhett Joseph. Everyone thinks that his name is Rex. He is not named after Rhett Butler; I got the idea from Rhett Miller of the Old 97s. Joseph is for my granddad. My youngest is named Jasper Clive. We thought Jasper was cute and Clive was my first choice for his first name but my husband vetoed it because it was an “awful big name for a little baby”. He wanted to give him a family name for a middle name, because the three other children have that, but we eventually went so far back in his family that he was considering Cleophus (true). At that point I put my foot down and said I wanted Clive, dammit.
Sorry, that was a really long comment! But it was a really good question!
I have always gone by my middle name which caused quite a few problems when I got married because I wanted to keep my maiden name as my middle name. I now officially have four names. My first name is Marlissa, a combination of Margaret and Melissa. Melissa was an ex-girlfriend (then really good friend) of my dad and Margaret is her mother. Not sure how my dad convinced my mom to name me that but calling me by my middle name may have been her idea
True story: I was named after the woman who played the Bionic Woman.