Friday, July 06, 2007

Baby mania!

Wow! kat and I must have 6 really good friends who are expecting (or new parents, Strangela and that guy who is to remain nameless), so we have been learning along with everyone. One of the most important decisions and eagerly awaited announcements is what to name the baby. I have been thinking about this and trying to come up names that I might gift to a young one.

I've been trying to come up with a name that isn't "out there," but isn't boring. I don't want to be too weird with the spelling, knowing how that feels from personal experience. But I have decided one way to go is to find a name where you haven't met anyone that shares that name. No baggage to deal with then. The other palatable option seems to be to find an old name and recycle it, but nothing too old.

How did all of you parents (or parents-to-be) figure out the name to bestow on your offspring?

9 comments:

L*I*S*A said...

Tyler Joseph is named after two band members of a very famous band.

Steven TYLER

Joe (JOSEPH) Perry

Hence, a name is born. Luckily, we just loved the name. All the credit is due to hubby. It was all his idea, as he is the rabid fan. :)

Tess said...

Long story...I'll try to give the cliffs notes version:

It was intended that my sis be named 'Rosalind' but somehow ended up with 'Amanda' in the heat of the moment.

When Amanda was in high school, she donated to Green Peace, taking the name Roslyn Miller.

My family has always been a big fan of Anne of Green Gables. In the stories, the name Roslyn appears as the character name in one of Anne's short stories.

I am also a HUGE Northern Exposure fan. Roslyn's Cafe, also known as "The Brick," was the place where many an important scene took place. Roslyn was also the lover of Cicely, after whom the town was named in the 1920s (if the town were actually real, that is).

For us (me?!), the name Roslyn was one that kept popping up in my life unintentionally. When I uttered it to Scott for the first time, he said, "Yeah!" and we knew it was meant to be.

Animal said...

Re: Lisa's comment...her son ALSO has a famous rock star LAST name. Paul STANLEY!! :-)

Yeah, Roslyn was really one of the first names that just reverberated with both of us. I really do like the idea of recycling family names, and so tossed out "Carrie" (a great-grandmother...could become "Cary" for a boy), "Constance" (shortened to "Connie," my maternal grandmother's name), "Ella" (another great-grandmother name) and, believe it or not, "Warren" (my uncle's name). Tess didn't much like any of those. *shrug?*

I agree with the crazy spellings: I have a "Sandi" and a "Lynzi" and all kinds of "Ashlee/Ashley/Ashleigh" spellings. Whatever. I WOULD do a Google search for the "most popular names" of the last few years...and then, avoid those like crazy.

Ange & what's-his-face picked a GREAT old name with "Hannah," which I hope will NOT catch on with millions of other moms. But, I might avoid "Gertrude" and "Mabel."

kat said...

What, no "SanDeE*"??

Fun Guv said...

I always had the market on naming our first born son...there was no budging on that one for me. So when our firstborn was a girl, Mike got the privledge of naming her.

Fortunately I talked him out of Euripides and other assorted stupid names...Penelope Piper was tossed out there too (ugh!) He settled on MacKenzie because a. 11 years ago no one was naming their kids MacKenzie and b. (his favorite "reason") he had borrowed a name book from his sister and had our nephew been a girl he would have been McKenzi(note the f'ed up spelling...if you know Mike's sister it makes perfect sense) so he decided to steal it from his sister so she couldn't use it in the future. Middle name Lynn is shared with father and daughter.

Then came Jimmy. I had a brother 6 years older than me who was hit by a car at the age of 6 (I was 9 mos.), lived in a vegetative state for 8 years and then passed away. I have always said my first born son would be named James Brian after my brother. My father & grandfather are also James (Louis). My grandfather had also passed away less than a week before we found out I was pregnant with Mack.

Jimmy is James Hayden though. The Hayden is from Mike's mom who passed away just after Christmas '99, it was her maiden name. Mike wanted to use her middle name, but I refused to name my son James Dean. So I guess Jimmy either has a lot of angels hanging over him or he's surrounded by death...poor kid, what did we saddle him with?

Had Jimmy been a girl he would have been Samantha Jewell. We both liked Samantha and Jewell was Mike's moms first name.

Strangela said...

When we were out sight seeing in Salem, MA a couple of years ago we saw something about a woman named Hannah who lived there 200 years ago (no she was not one of the "witches"). We thought it was a cool name. When we moved to our new house we weren't sure we could still use the name since our neighbor's dog is named Hannah! Christina is my middle name, was my grandmother's middle name as well as one of my great aunt's name so it was our happy obligation to pass it on.

If we had a boy we would have used family names from Josh's side of the family.

Steph said...

Even though my husband and I are in the process of adoption, we barely think about names anymore because adoption makes it so tricky...I would hate to change a name that a birth/first mother gave our potential child, when that could be a gift from her that the child really deserves to keep. On the other hand, what if it is something I really, really hate? Something like "Misty"?

My mom directs a preschool and sees the wildest spellings ever, stuff like "Britanye." She also says Celtic names are in big-time. Apparently we are all Irish.

Fun Guv said...

I just typed over 200 names to start the process of assigning tables for an upcoming baseball league banquet. Let me just say that the name Nicholas (spelled about 80 different ways) seems to be a very common name these days. Close seconds would be Tyler, Zach (again 30 different spellings) and Jacob.

Susan W said...

Eleanor was a name that really resonated with both of us - I think we heard it in the movie Contact (jodie foster's character is Eleanor airaway) she's not named literally after that character, just a name we liked...

Jean was my grandmother's name and is the middle name of both my mom and Jim's mom...so it is a family name on both sides.