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OLTL Discussion Group
Thank you all. I'm always curious how parents decide on names. Some names are so unusual, I often wonder how both parents could agree.
The other day I heard of a woman who'd had twins 10 years ago. She gave them odd names and now wants to change them. She won't. It surprised me that she would consider it.
Since it's a handle that goes with us throughout life, it's a big responsibility. JMHO
About a half year before we were married and 6 years before we had our first child, Kubette and I travelled to Barbados. We stayed at a small resort where we met a lot of British families. One of the families had a young girl with the name 'Leila'. We liked that name and we agreed that we would name our daughter this.
Over the next 6 years, we never mentioned this name to anyone. We didn't want anyone to steal the name or to 'bad-mouth' it. In 1990 our Leila was born.
Our next daughter would have been 'Darcy' however we had a boy. Darcy can be used for either sex and while I didn't mind it for our son's first name, we did settle on using it as one of his middle names. We agreed on 'Ian' for the first name. Since our last name is fairly long (4 syllables), we wanted something short for the first name. Something that would fit together with the last name, preferably two syllables. We agreed to 'Ian'.
Kubette, who is now reading this and who says I always get facts wrong, just pointed out that we actually had the name 'Ian' picked out before our first was born. She would have been Ian if she had been a boy.
Oh yeah. Kubette was not fond of the name 'Hagus'. That would have been my choice. That or Matutu. That is a whole different story.
Our first boy was named a name we liked. The second was named after a best friend.
If I had given birth to a girl we would have named her Caroline as in ''Kennedy''. More recently. ''Sweet Caroline'' as song between the top and the bottom of the 8th inning at Fenway. My beloved Yankees beat the Angels in the ALCS and are going to the WORLD SERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After 21 years I probably would have named them differently if I had a do over.
I mainly picked the initials first becasue I wanted them to have good initials. I grew up with JEW as mine. Nothing wrong with that but I felt awkward because it was a religion/people and people assumed that's what I was writing instead of my initials.
Our son was named after family, but it just so happened we liked the name and it would have been that anyway...a good solid first name. His first name is the same as the middle name of one of my brothers. Son's middle name is the same as thre middle name of one of my other brothers and is also my grandmother's maiden name.
We chose our daughter's first name solely because we liked the name. It's a name I'd never heard of until a few months before she was born. Her middle name was my second choice...there was a woman at Jeff's work with the same name as my first choice...the woman was loud, rude, and always had dirty hair. Whenever he heard the name mentioned he'd gag. I, on the other hand, thought of my great-grandma when I heard the name. Anyway, we decided to go with the second choice. As it turns out Daughter's middle name is the same as Great-grandma's mother's middle name...we had no clue.
So, there you have it...a little bit of family, a little bit of because we liked the name.