Let’s Talk Baby Names

Man and women have always had a hard time when it comes to choosing a baby name. Why? It could be one of many reasons, that being a name is one of the most important things you can ever decide for your child because they’ll grow up with it for the rest of their life.  People will call your child by the name you have picked out, he/she will have to sign that name on papers for the rest of their life, etc.

Many believe a name can make or break a person, it hasn’t been proven that this is true but by looking through the past you can see a trend in certain types of names.  In a movie I once saw someone stated that people with only two names ended up being murderers, while I don’t believe that it shows what some think about names. What are some things you may have heard about naming a baby?

Some will try to figure out a name that can easily be called many others. Nicknames is what my father would call this and he believes when you “nickname” someone it shows how much you love them. But some names just don’t allow them to be nicknamed. For me, I have a common name, it’s Elizabeth, however my middle name is spelled differently and many people mistake it as being “Annie” instead of “Anne.” I never had a hard time learning to spell my name or was teased by it, except for being a good girl. Most Elizabeth’s are, however you shorten it to a “Beth” and you might get the evil twin. Growing up my name could be shorten to many things, most common was “Liz” I was never called “Beth.” However as an adult I wanted to grow out of the little girl that everyone knew and began calling myself, “Eliza” since it sounded so grown up and I loved the character in books, not to mention the name sounded exotic. Do you have a nickname name?

Names can be picked out because they are long or short, while others are picked because of the meaning of their name or named after someone else. Each of my children have really long names and to us they mean a lot, but to others we were just cruel. Growing up my children have loved to tell others how they got their names, each has their own special story to share. But I will admit it did take them until Kindergarten to spell the whole thing. (this wasn’t that long) I also know people that chose really small names because they didn’t want to stress their child out. For us, we couldn’t have two children with long names and name the next child something short. We thought they might feel cheated, that they weren’t important enough to have a thought out name.

Do you have a middle name? Some people actually don’t because their name didn’t sound right with one or their parents just didn’t want to come up with another name. Each of my children have three names, they have their first name and two middle names. The exception is our first child, he has two first names and a middle.

As you can see, there are many reasons for a name, but the number one thing to remember is it must mean something to you. Don’t just grab a name out of the blue that you might grow to hate because you can end up resenting the name and taking it out on your child. Try picking a name your child will be proud of, since they’ll have to live with it for the rest of their life.

Names that were changed:

Destiny Hope Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, changed her name to Miley Cyrus.

Made/rich Names: Simon, Phillip, William, Theodore

Bill Gates or even Theodore Roosevelt

Broke Names: Chester, Jeffery

Chester the Molester, Jeffery Dahmer, Charles Manson, Jack the Ripper

Short Names: Al, Ted, Ed, Tod, Jo, Bo

Long Names: AntonioMichael (my son’s first name), Bartholomew, Margueritta, Constantine, Isabella, Nathanial, Montgomery

Reasons for our names: We decided each child would have an Italian name for the first name and their middle names would be named after an uncle. Our girls got names I loved since I was a little girl and had a nice meaning, they also have a middle name named after a female in our family.

What’s your baby naming story?