Baby names are a topic i love to discuss. even when i’m not pregnant (and i assure you – NOT pregnant) i hear a baby name that i love and imagine it paired with my surname. Ava Martell. sounds nice, no? then i start to think of middle names. Olivia. pretty name. wouldn’t work as a middle.
baby names are a topic my husband loathes to discuss.
the most exciting part of that little pink line for me – all three times – was that he was finally willing to talk to me about names. i would send him emails of lists of names. and he would email me back with his comments. they were mostly. no. uh uh. not a chance. over my dead body. you get the point.
when i was pregnant with Emily we only needed a girl name. i came into our marriage with my first boy’s name already – Ethan Aaron. that’s what it was going to be. Ethan because i loved it and Aaron after my grandfather. We discussed many names and really were only able to agree on Emily and Kayla. We decided to name her Emily Beth. Emily because we liked it and Beth after my grandmother, Betty. in the end, we decided on Emily Elizabeth.
good strong feminine name. it was merely coincidental that it was also the name of the little girl from the ever-popular Clifford series…published by the very company i worked for at the time…but i assure you, coincidental. but it didn’t stop the clifford gifts.
when i was pregnant with Joshie, again he was all set to be Ethan Aaron if he was a boy and we decided on Ashley Hannah for a girl. or Abigail. we weren’t 100% sold. two weeks before Josh was born a friend of ours said, "if it’s a boy you’re going to name him Ethan, aren’t you?" well…after that, i needed to change the name. i don’t know why. it just wasn’t sitting right. i turned to the husband and said, "what do you think of Joshua?" and he looked at me and said "i love it!"
we discussed many names for Isabella. we (and when i say ‘we’ i mean me, and the husband was open to the possibility) liked Ryan and Nathan and Ethan (again) and Jonah and Joseph for a boy. we liked Isabella and Hannah and Ashley and Abby for a girl. but then we found out it was a girl, and we hadn’t even left the ultrasound room when i said, "she’s Isabella." and like that…she was Isabella Rose. she’s named after my grandfather, Lou, but in a VERY roundabout way. his Hebrew name was Lev. so, Isabella’s Hebrew name, Nava Leba, is after him.
so, i’m about 99.9% sure we are done having kids. but it still doesn’t stop me from thinking about baby names. i hear a name like Shiloh and wonder where Angelina Jolie came up with it. did she send lists and lists of names to Brad Pitt? Did it hit her as she was coming out of an ultrasound? Did she meet a Shiloh that she thought was adorable? did she have a family member she was naming after?
what about all of you? how did you pick your baby names?
song of the day: Man in Motion by John Parr. great movie. great song.
video of the day:
come on over and say hi at Cheaper Than Therapy today
I found choosing names so hard because EVERY name I said my hubby went “nah…knew someone in grade 2 with that name”. He didn’t even not like these people! If he had ever known anyone with that name he vetoed it automatically. CRAZY! Anyway, we ended up with Joshua David (David is my dad’s name) and Meghan Victoria (Victoria was supposed to be Elizabeth but my grandfather died just hours before she was born and his hometown was Victoria – I babysat a little Meghan and have loved the name ever since!). Both are common names but not crazy popular…unlike mine and my hubby’s…Jennifer and Michael!
Shay, I just wanted to add that your children’s names are all beautiful.
I also loved the name Amelia (was my Great-grandmother’s name) but unfortunately, I worked with an Amelia and couldn’t stand her (to this day), so that was out.
Hi I’m new but I HAD to post! I love baby names too!
I love hearing what others name their kids and why. I have to say that I’m so glad my first was not a girl! She would have had one of those last name for first names or boys names for girl names cuz that was just the head space I was in 11 years ago when I was 22 and having my first baby! Whew, close call!
AND the fact that my oldest was going to be Ethan too lol. When he was born we took one look at him and just couldn’t go there. He ended up being Levi Peter Jay (Peter Jay are family names which you will see became our tradition). Thanks goodness cuz he must have 5 or 6 friends named Ethan – who know it would be that popular!
I had so much trouble with girl names when I was preggo with boy #1 & 2 maybe that was a sign? Next baby Isaac was born. He was alway going to be Isaac after his G. Grandfather that he would never meet. Isaac Bryan (second name after my dad). See how we are working into our tradition of traditional names. I wanted our names to have the same feel. (I have a crazy hard to read name so I didn’t want to go there with my kids.)
Our next baby was, much to our great surprise, a girl! WOW! Simon Jakob became Madeline Elizabeth (Elizabeth is my middle name and Madeline was our girls name from the beginning). Unfortunately everyone else also loves the name Maddy so she’s not alone and has many Maddy’s surrounding her. Please DO NOT call her Madison if you meet her – drives me crazy! lol
I was not about to do that again so again Simon Jakob was shelved again for Amelia Lillian. (Lillian was my Grandmas name! Wish she could have met her!)
So that is the overly long name story on my kids. I was just thinking the other day how I am sad to give up Simon Jakob:( but we are officially done so…go ahead and use it lol.
AND Sebastion which I love but DH vetoed.
Thanks for reading!
Jeremy didn’t have a name for 3 days – with everyone bugging us, he was still called Baby L. on his hospital cart – we want a J name- he was really named after one of my lust-hotties, Jeremy Northam (of Emma fame). Erik is his middle name, after my mother Erika who died in 1993.
Toby was named in utero – after Toby Stephens (another Brit actor, loved him in Twelfth Night). He is actually Tobias William – William after hubby’s grandfather who died in 1994.
Miranda wasn’t named until 24 hours after she was born – I actually had a “short list” – Mia, Charlotte, Annelies, Elisabeth, Allegra, Grace included, but I have always loved Miranda. Allegra was a close 2nd. Her middle names are Sarah Joy – after my 2 BFF.
So basically,you could say, I got my WAY with all the kids’ names – and their names suit them to a tee.
Also love all the meanings – Jeremy: God is great, Toby: God will uplift, Miranda: Fit to be admired.
I knew the monkey would be monkey. Hmph, cheaty little monkey! I knew it upon conception. Girls are MUCH easier than boys to choose names for. Although, these days, it seems boys names are easy: just call him Ethan (EVERYONE’S ETHAN in all the monkey’s classes!!!)
with #1 we just went through a baby name book and this was our list of names amber bella,cid,alexander,zoltan.thats about it.i knew it was a boy so we didn’t bother too much with girls names.so anyways one of those is his name.
#2 we only agreed on one girls name.the others were as different as savannah to blanche,gertrude to cheyenne etc.
#3 her name means descendant of the challenger.it was her name and i didn’t look for another.my hubby hated it.but in the hospital after he cut the cord i said so can we call her …and he said oh okay.so i got my way.
#4 was preemie so we just used her nickname peep in the hospital,we were going to call her freda but my sis-in-law said no all the cows in germany are called that.so i had a name picked out but my hubby hated it,again.so do you think i got my way again with bABYS NAME?i have known the sex of all of them so usually just picked those sex names.
We had our daughter’s name picked out before we even decided to try for kids. We named her Eva Meladee after her Great Grandma Eva, and her grandmas Melanie and Dee. My name was formed that way so I wanted it for my daughter. Our boy name went back and forth, I really liked Ethan also so it was going to be Ethan Gabriel but at the last minute I freaked out and decided that Ethan was too popular so we had to search all over again. Which was really dumb since we already knew we were having a girl. I was too worried if we didn’t have a boy name picked out then the ultrasound would be wrong and we’d have a boy!
I love talking about names too. I scan the Births section of the paper just to see what people have named their babies. When someone I know has a baby, there’s always a twinge of disappointment if the name is not to my liking!
My kids all have first names chosen just because we liked them and middle names with some family connection: Zoe Leanne (for grandmothers Lenore and Joanne). Luke Hutchinson (my maiden name) and Macy Laine (for my mother’s middle name, Elaine). We always had a hard time with names. With Macy, we had no boy names that we could agree on (Luke is the only boy name we have ever, to this day, agreed on). I was in full-on labour, going up the elevator to Labour & Delivery and my husband and I continued to throw out possible names!
Ooooh, good topic, Ali!
I had a dream when I was about 19 that I had a baby girl and her name was Julia Elizabeth. Julia has always been my favourite girl’s name. Always. And Elizabeth was my mother’s name. Dave really didn’t have a choice in the matter; I’d had that name picked out for YEARS before I met him.
When I was pregnant with Julia we talked a lot about boys names. Dave wanted Benicio so badly. But with our last name, it didn’t work, and I didn’t like it. At all. I started suggesting names that I like — Owen, Oscar, Oliver…and he nixed them all. When I mentioned that it was too bad he didn’t like Oliver because I would have loved to have a little ‘Ollie’ running around, he changed his tune. He loves the nickname Ollie, mostly because it’s a skate trick and it makes him feel cool. LOL. Oliver is such an Oliver, I can’t imagine him being called anything else.
If and when we have our third child, we’re screwed as far as names go for girls. We have a boy’s name picked (first name, anyway) but not a girl’s. A girl’s name is something we cannot agree on.
We honestly could not agree on names at all. I think when we went into the hospital to deliver, we had Ryan for a boy and Sam for a girl. When he was born I just looked at Andy and said what about Scott and he said yes love it! So he was named Scott Benjamin (middle name after my moms father whom I never met but was a world war I veteran). It seems that we needed to see him, to have the perfect name for him!
Originally our picks were Jessica for a girl and Jacob Peter for a boy. (My middle name and my dad’s middle name is Peter: my paternal grandfather’s name.) But then we went through a period of trying to pick a middle name that was a family name that “worked” with Jessica. We struggled, and even opened the option of Amy (a distant second choice). Finally, we settled on Jessica Paige (because we liked it) and justified the name by saying she had my initials.