How did you choose your children's names?

Following on from Lisa's post about choosing a name for their new addition, I thought it would be interesting to learn how others came up with their children's names. Did you choose a family name, a name based on your family's heritage, a name based on its meaning, or just a name you liked?

 

For my first daughter I had three names chosen - Tabitha, Savannah and Samantha. I ended up naming her Samantha and we call her Sam. I got that name because I loved the shows Bewitched and Whose the Boss. Silly I know. I didn't settle on what I was going to name her until she was born and I held her and Samantha Nichole just fit.

My second dd is named Grace. I don't know why because it isn't a family name at all but as soon as I got pregnant with her I told dh that is what I wanted to name her, he was fine with it and I only wavered once when I contemplated naming her Ruth after an aunt that died. For her middle name I threw out about 50 names and dh didn't like any of them so I told him to just pick something already. He chose Renae.

So I have a Samantha Nichole that we call Sam and sometimes Mantha and I have a Grace Renae that we always call Bugg or Gracie Bugg.

For the last several years I have wanted another and without going into a story I'll just say that isn't going to happen but if we had a boy or if Grace would have been a boy her name would have been Drake Remington. If I ever did have another girl I am torn between Ruth, Ava and Isabella.

 

With my first, after several months of not being able to pick a name, it just sort of came to me one day that his name with Elijah (didn't know I was having a boy). It was such a strong impression that I couldn't even consider any other name even though I didn't really like Elijah. I know in my heart that the Lord named him and Elijah means "Jehova is God." Every first born male in my husband's family for 5 generations has had the middle name Dean, so that part was a given. (6 generations ago there were twins Dean and Gean. Their respective names have been passed on in that way to their great...grandsons)

My middle son was named after DH's grandpa's first name and my grandpa's middle name, in that order: Quinten Louis

After having two boys already, DH's sister informed me that DH had always said he wanted to name his son Alexander. I asked him about it and he said that he felt silly suggesting it because he had no real reason other than that he like the name. So when our third was a boy I let DH use Alexander. I hate "Alex", so we call him "Xander." My great-grandpa's name was James and he raised my mom. I grew up hearing all sorts of wonderful stories about him, so that's the name I picked for his middle name.

This time around however, I have no leads on any names. I just keep praying that the Lord tells me what her name is because I don't know.

 

Well, I wanted to name both of our girls Molly Ann after our mother's middle names, but DH didn't like that name. (And our mothers have HORRIBLE first names - Augusta and Vela)

So, for DD#1 was chose names that reflected her ethnic heritage - Kaitlin Elise. We had chosen Andrew John for a boy, both DH and my Daddy were named John, and Andrew was his Dad's MN. (Dh's Dad's first name was Sylvester.) We have a plethora of bad names in our families.

When we found out DD#2 was a girl, we went with names that reflected the initials of our Dads. Amanda Jillian.

 

I named the first after my dad. Dh named the 2nd by a process of elimination in a list of "normal" names (by "normal", I mean old, traditional, with easy spellings). We both prefer boring names, so at least we had a pretty easy time agreeing.

 

Dd is named Elizabeth Joy--simply because we like the names. We especially liked Joy, since it took us soooo long and many doctor's appts to ever get pregnant with her.

Ds is named Adam, since I got tired of writing Elizabeth out on forms and wanted something shorter, and his middle name is James--the first name of both of his grandfathers.

Carol

 

Garrett is after my daddy.. his name was Gary Allen and too dated for me in 98, so Garrett Allen it was.

Rylee I'm not sure where her name came from, but her middle name came from an Alison Krauss video, she is Rylee Allyson.

Reagan's name was picked by Garrett. We wanted an R name to go with Rylee since they were Irish Twins so we handed him a baby name book and let him choose. He is Reagan Andrew.

The new baby is named after hubby's grandpa and also his uncle who unexpectedly passed away last year. His middle name is hubby's first name.. he is Cameron Adam.

 

My daughter's first and middle names together mean "God has graciously given us a princess." There just was no other name fitting for her.

 

family members:

my grandmother...... samantha
my DH's grandfater ...Malcolm
my dad...................Donald
my aunt..................Eva

 

All six of our children have traditional names, five of them being biblical names. All of them are simply names that we liked - although Daniel was also the name of my wife's grandfather.

More meaning went into middle names. Our older daughter's middle name is Sian (pronounced Shan, it has an accent over the 'a'). This is a Welsh name because she was born in Wales. One has my first name as his middle name; another has my wife's middle name as her middle name. Another has two middle names representing my two grandfathers. Another middle name is shared by a friend of ours. Our youngest son's middle name is 'Lowen', which is the Cornish word for 'happy'. (Whereas 'Lowenna' is a Cornish girl's name, we invented 'Lowen' as a boy's name.)

 

We chose Rachael about the time we were married. Her middle name is Elizabeth. I didn't want Rachael Ann, which was the one everyone had. So one day, I asked a Rachael in my Sunday School class her middle name, and it was Elizabeth. I decided I liked that; later I learned that my g'ma's middle name was Elizabeth.

With Faythe, I wanted Abigail, meaning "Father's Joy". Carl said NO WAY, he didn't want a baby named after Dear Abby! I told him what a Godly woman the Abigail in the Bible was, but no good! So I gave him a choice of Joy Nicole or Faythe Nicole. The spelling comes from a student I had in class. Faythe Jackson was thrilled to death when she learned my baby spelled her name the same as she did!

Phillip was my difficult one. I really liked Caleb. Carl said NO WAY; to him it was a "hillbilly" name. Again, I tried to tell him what a Godly man the Biblical Caleb was, but it didn't matter. It was a while before we settled on a name. The baby I miscarried was Aaron Christopher, and we didn't feel right using that name for Phillip! Had he been a girl, he would have been named Angela Noelle, a fitting name for a December baby!

I have always been one to pick a name early, and use it even before birth.

 

For my oldest dd she is Ashly Hope no reason other than my dh and I liked Ashly and I really liked Hope. My youngest dd is Courtney Faith, we actually had not named her until hours after she was born and the nurses got really upset that they were still calling her baby XXXX. So I looked at dh and said Courtney and he said ok and he said Faith and I said ok. With our son he's uh, got a mouthful for a name but we gave him a nickname and it's stuck he goes by Gus.

 

Matthew Howard after my grandfather
Maggie Marie after two of our grandmothers
Katie Beth because she was a total surprise twin to Maggie and my sister named her
William Seth because we had to stick to Bill and my grandmother named him Seth
Robert Lane because Bobby wanted his name changed and Lane after Freddy
Crystal Jane because we had to keep the Crystal and Jane is for my sister
Emily Grace because it is her birth name and I just couldn't improve on it.

Our grandson are all named after their fathers. One just the Matthew part. His first name is Austin, one is the exact same name as his father and the bonus grandson we call Babyboy on here is the fourh in his family to have the same name so he is O.L.A. the fourth. He goes by a nickname of his first name.

 

For our first we knew he was a boy and we wanted a name that wasn't so common that he'd be one of like 6 in a class or group setting but that also wasn't way out in left field so to speak either. So we chose Blaine and his middle name is my father's middle name Anthony.

For our second we also wanted a name not too common but not too weird. We chose Skyler (which was really neat because a Skylar was on the front page of the paper the day he was born). His middle name is my husbands first name Thomas. My DH is a Jr and we didn't want to carry that tradition at all mostly because my DH can't stand his father.

For our third we again wanted a semi uncommon name (though I think we may have failed in that one) but that woulndn't be crazy difficult either...we chose Logan and I liked the middle name James with it...only after the fact did DH tell me that was the name of a comic book character (DH is a comic collector, and video gamer) but by then I was already so attached to the name I decided we'd just let it be.

 

The middle name is always after someone or has meaning basically, generally after someone. The first name is meant to be unique and just something we like. That is how we do it.

 

My sons name was picked based on what it means. his middle name is the same as my husbands. My oldest daughter's first name was a name my husband wanted from the time he was a little boy. She has two middle names. My youngest was just because we liked her first name. her middle name was picked because we knew her daddy would be deploying soon. Her middle name is Liberty.

 

Well I did not get to name any of my children. My oldest son was named by my sister. She wanted to name him Trey Eric, but his dad would not go for it and we settled on Trey Joseph. (he wanted to name him Montel! I mean come on, like the talk show, I was not going for it! I wanted to name him Mathew Alexander)

My daughter was named by her dad also. I don't remember where he came up with the name, I think it was from the dungeons and dragons game or something. Sharna Leann (her middle name is after my youngest sister, I wanted to name her Autumn Rae. No one else like it)

Now my youngest was named by dh. He never wanted any kids of his own, but had thought years and years ago if he did he wanted to name his child Seven, well guess what my sons name is Seven James (middle name after dh) I never picked out a name for him because I knew I would never be able to name him anyways. lol

 

We chose names we liked. We had 2 girl names and 1 boy name picked out when we were expecting our first, and decided to choose after the baby was born. She was a girl and became Joy Elisabeth. When we were expecting the second we decided we still liked those names, so she is Katerina Jo. (She would have been Katerina Rose, but she was born on my little sister's birthday and my sister and my mom both have Jo as their middle names, so we changed it.) If either one had been a boy, he would have been Zachary Allen.

 

Our first was I have to say the hardest to name. My dh and I both came up with list after list after list of names we liked and everytime we compared we ended up hating all the names. Somehow we ended up with the name Zachary Lewis (Lewis is the middle name of the first sons back 6 generations...I had no say in that one). With our second I liked the name Kaitlin and had to convice dh over the course of the pregnancy that it was a nice name. He finally agreed and we went with Kaitlin Danielle. We wanted our girls to be able to use their initials to be able to "spell" their names. Soo..Kaitlin (we call her Katie) can use her initials KD to say Katie. Does that make sense? #3 is Tyler David. Tyler is a name we both liked and David is dh's name. #4 is Lindsey Nicole. We call her Linds.....and her initials are LNS. #5 is Emily Jo. Emily because we both liked that name and Jo because it is mine and my moms middle name. She can't use her initials like the other girls, but her name just fit her.

 

We chose not to use family names for a couple of reasons--we didn't really like some of them, and we didn't want to leave anyone out. So, we went with names we liked.

With our first, we both liked the first name, and dh picked the middle name.
With our second, a friend of ours had a baby 5 months before I had mine, and she (unknowingly) picked the name I sooo wanted to use if we had a boy. It was a boy, but we had to pick another first name, which I like a lot too, and it fits him. I think dh picked his middle name too.

We finally got to use the girl name we liked with our third child! If either of the boys had been a girl, we'd have named them this name! I brought it up when we were pregnant with our first. I had heard it first when I was 11, and a family singing group sang at our church. One of the girls had this name and I always liked it! He liked it when he heard it also, so we agreed right off the bat with the girl's name. Her middle name was for 2 reasons: I knew a girl with this name in school that was the sweetest, kindest, neatest girl, AND because we were so happy to have a girl!