The "Cullen" thread got me wondering...Do you care to share the names you chose for you child(ren) and how you settled on them?
I have 4 kids. My oldest daughter is JAELYN OLIVIA She was named after myself and my father...his middle name being Jay and mine Lynn. My second daughter is KINSLEY MONROE. When I was pregnant with her, I worked as a photographer and had a customer with the name Kensley; I liked it but the "Ken" part sounded to masculine to me, so I changed it. My third daughter is DELANIE AUSTYN. I actually saw a news story on a local bar called "Delany's" and it stuck. My son is my 4th child, and his name is COOPER DANIEL. We chose to not find out the sex that time around, so we wanted to choose only one name that would be suitable for either sex (with a gender specific middle name). Cooper seemed to fit the bill for us. His middle name is my husband's first name.
Great post! My daughter actually has 6 names. Hyphenated first, hyphenated middle and hyphentaed last. Her first names are the name we chose and my boyfriends middle name. Her middle names are what my father wanted us to name her. We put those as her middle because he passed away (which was devistating to me) 1 month before she was born. The hyphentaed last names came from a promise I made my dad to keep our last name going, and then of course my boyfriends last name.
ROXY-JO JANELLE-LEELA and then our two last names (which is an added 15 letters combined). =) I wouldn't have named her anything else.
we started with a middle name first. my husband's brother had died when my husband was 6 years old so he wanted Gary in the name. i didn't/don't care for GAry as a first name. so we ended up with samuel gary for our son. and after we decided on samuel we found out that his great great grandfather was a samuel!!!
I have Lydia Reed. I have always liked Lydia and it was the only name my husband would agree to. Reed was my grandfather's name. And I have Maggie Edward Kathryn. She was always Maggie. I just knew it. Edward is my dad's name. I've always liked Kathryn and wanted to give her a female middle name to go with Edward.
I have a coalton james. I gave my ex husband 7 names and told him to eliminate what he didnt like. james is after the book of james in the bible I wanted a biblical name. my youngest is storm ryan. he almost got named brandon rayne. we were seriously divided. so the agreement was if he was born during a storm it would be storm. no middle name chosen at this point. if it wasnt raining we would name him brandon rayne. so after 20 hours of induced labor he was born in 5 minutes he just decided it was time and came quick. it wasnt raining or storming and my other half just walked up and said we have to name him storm he came in like a storm.
my sil and other half chose ryan and I couldnt think of anything better so we named him storm ryan. an hour after he was born the storm hit(weather wise and he was not a happy camper) I got very adament about either rayne or storm because everytime itwould rain he would start kicking and quit when the rain quit. he would start kicking and then 5 minutes later the radio would say there is a tornado warning for a town within 20 miles of us. everytime.( we lived in tornado alley) so that is how my kids got their names. if he had have been a girl it would have been rayne and we didnt pick a middle name yet.
Rachael Michelle (rach after my grandmother)
Emily Suzanne
Andrew Michael (he just didn't look like the Anthony Joseph he was supposed to be lol)
Joseph Matthew (he didn't look like the Nicholas I had picked out for him)
Samuel Alan (grandfathers names)
funny my boys all have the same very italian dad. dark black hair and dark brown eyes. so I of course expected them to come out looking like him. so funny. first son had blond hair and blue eyes. second son 15 months later we were prepared for blond/blue eye got the black hair straight as a stick and dark brown eyes. 3rd son came out with brownish blond hair and curls like shirly temple and the longest eyelashes ever. funny how 3 kids with same mom and dad could look so different. when you saw them you would have put them as being different familes. now they all look very much alike
We started out with middle names as well, because that's how we choose to honor our loved ones. Our son's middle names are my mother's maiden name and my husband's grandfather's first name. For his first name he has a very old latin name, that is not in common use, because we both loved it and the history surrounding it. :) :) :) Doing a search on my sister's spiffy computer (PI), there are 6 people in the country with his name. All over 70 years old. Which I think is pretty cool. Not our intent, but a pretty cool side benefit.
I love your kids names!! We used my sister's middle name for our first daughter, and my friend's name for a first because we liked it. We wanted Emma, but Friends ruined that one for us! Our second was my husband's pick off my list , and I wasn't sure it was my favorite. On the day we found out she was a girl, we were looking for something and were at a stoplight. When I looked up to see where we were, the street name was the name he liked! I took that as a sign, literally, that was to be her name. Our boy name we haven't been able to use was Jack Leland, my husbands grandpas first name, and my grandpas middle name.
Ever since my mom passed away unexpectedly, I had wanted to name my first born after her. My first born was a son, so the obvious choice (with my mom's name being Patricia) was Patrick. My husband does not particularly care for the name, but was willing to use it as a middle name. I too, wasn't thrilled with it because it didn't flow very well with our last name. Then one day, when looking through a name book, I saw my mom's maiden name. That is when we decided to honor my mom by using her maiden name. In choosing the first name, we wanted something a little more uncommon, as both my husband and I had very popular names for our generation. We looked for names that we liked and had heard of, but also aren't used often. We wanted a name common enough that he would meet others with the same name, but we also wanted a name where if we called it out at the playground (or at the store, in his classroom, etc.), we wouldn't have multiple kids answering. In order to be sure we didn't pick anything too popular, we checked all of the name rankings. For the first name we didn't want to settle on one before the birth, so we went to the hospital with a list of possible names. As I got want I really wanted in regards to the name, I let my husband pick the first name. (If the name he chose was on the list, fine, if not I had veto power. The name was on the list ;) That was three years ago. His name has been climbing in the rankings, but is still somewhat uncommon (mid 100's on Social Security's name list for 2009).
Emma Rose
Grace Margaret
I saw a post that someone wanted different names but not too out of the ordinary. We liked Emma (which turns out is his grandma's name), Rose is my grandma's 1st name & my mom's middle name. We were quite excited, then a year later the baby on Friends was named Emma Rose! :o( We had a more difficult time with Grace ~ it was our mutual agreement. I'm not too fond of Margaret (sorry if I offended anyone). His other Grandma & aunt were Margaret. I was literally in the middle of my c-section debating the middle name & all the nurses were on his side (they were: Peggy, Marge, & Maggy!!). If she were a boy she would have been William (after my uncle who passed away 6 days before I had her).
I love your names you came up with and the stories behind them. I knew that I wanted my children to have somewhat of a unique name, a name with meaning for my husband and I and I always knew the middle names would be after my side of the family since my husband didn't want to hyphenate or add my maiden name to their last name. Logan Kay is my daughter - my husband and I first met, got married and lived in the town of Logansport - hence Logan - and I always love somewhat boyish names for girls. Her middle name is mine and my mother's middle names. Foster James, my son, is named after the subdivision we moved into when I was pregnant with him - and James is my dad and brother's middle name. A little hippyish on the first names and they may think we're dorks for naming them that way, but it worked for us and I can't imagine them being called anything else.
ps: I love Cooper and have always thought if I have another girl she would be a Mason or a Cooper.
With all of them (3 and another on the way) I read an entire baby name book out loud to my husband. We wrote down the ones either of us liked (even if the other didn't). Then, we sat down with the entire list and each took a turn marking off a name until we were down to the last one........that was the name we chose. Our oldest is Kolton (9). The girls are Tessa (7-a childhood friend that I have always loved the name of) and Sage (4 - we saw a street sign believe it or not and we both fell in love with her name). Now for the 4th, we just got done with the boys' names and ended up with Xavier, but waiting to find the right middle name. Now, we are starting to choose the girl name (since we never find out the sex until it is revealed to us at birth ;).
As for middle names.......the first two children (a boy and girl) were given my husband and my middle name. Then, the 3rd was just what flowed with the first and last name.
We have HAVILAH KARINA and SILAS MATTHEW. Our apartment manager when we first got married was named Havilah. We loved the name. It was 4 years later (and a move across state) that we finally used it. My husband found her middle name and it flows nicely. Silas came from a complete stranger suggesting it on a baby site where you could ask for name advise. I gave some choices we had and asked for other suggestions that fit our criteria and we both fell in love with Silas. His middle name is my husband's first name.
Elijah (Eli) William Dunn is named because we found an Elijah or Elisha in all 4 of our parents' families. William is my husband's and his dad's middle name (though FIL goes by Bill, it's really his middle name). Dunn is my maiden name and was actually still my last name until after the boys were born. I finally decided to change it after we'd been married 5 years as a 30th b-day present to my hubby.
Jordan Arthur Dunn is named for my deceased grandfather's middle name and his mother's maiden name, Jordan. Arthur is one of my husband's deceased grandfather's names. See above for Dunn :)
We haven't decided on a name for this next one if it's a boy. His brother's name is Bryan and we might use Ryan as a first or middle name. If it's a girl, she will be Anna Lynne Dunn. Anna is my grandmother's name and my mom and my middle names are Ann. Lynne sounds nice and is one of my husband's sisters' middle name - we aren't really sure if she'll ever get married and/or have kids, so thought it would be nice. She would have been Anna Jordan until #2 turned out to be a boy and we used Jordan for him :)
My son is Owen Maxwell; Owen is after soccer player Michael Owen since hubby is a big fan, middle name is my favorite great-uncle.
My daughter is Peyton Renee; no real story, we had three names picked out we couldn't decide between so we based it on hair color, she was brunette so it was Peyton Renee. The other two were Makenna Marie for a blonde or Logan Stephanie for a red-head. We had no bald name picked out so it's fortunate she had a full head of hair :)
We have a really common last name and prefer different names that you've heard of but not often. We always try to stay away from the top 100 and we have, however years later some of their names have become popular...to our dismay.
Chase Eliot - Eliot for my cousin who was killed in a car accident when I was 2 months pregnant
Lily Kathryn - she was supposed to be Isabelle Christine but looked like a Lily and is still such a Lily 12 years later and Kathryn for a girl in high school who was always so kind and I'd never seen Kathryn spelled that way before and I fell in love with it immediately
Mason Jarek - Jarek is slavik for January...he was born in January and DH's family is slavik...the tribute to them was lost on them however, but we still love it
Dallas Christopher - DH's favorite place we lived was Dallas and his middle name is Christopher as well
Zander Christian - We really like the name Christian but wanted it for a middle name. Again we like different names and I remembered the name from a soap opera my mother watched with the character Xander in the early 90's (I think) and DH wanted to nickname him "Z".