If everything goes according to plan, me and my boyfriend will start having kids in about three years. But as a name nerd it’s never to early to start discussing names
[name]One[/name] of the dilemmas we have so far is if we want to honor family members with our childrens middle names or not. The family is very important to both of us, and we will probably have a truckload of kids so we will have the opportunity to honor our parents, grandparents, great grandparents etc. But, is it really honoring if you never met the person? What if we run out of honoring names?
What’s your take on honoring names? Did you do it with your kids (or will you)? Does the number of kids matter?
Eh. Personally, I wouldn’t use honoring names unless I was either really, really close to the namesake or happened to actually like the name. I refuse to stick my kids with [name]Edna[/name] and [name]Gerald[/name] in the middle.
My paternal family is very close, so I would love to honor them! My dilemma is that I’m not at all close to my maternal family, but I get the sense that it would hurt my mother’s feelings if I honored my father’s family and didn’t honor hers as well
I would only honor if I really liked the name. We thought of honoring my partners maternal grandmother, but neither of us liked the name so decided not to do it. If we have a daughter we will be honoring his brother, but only because we like the version of th ename =)
I think honoring loved ones is a good idea. If I have a daughter, I plan to name her [name]Johanna[/name], which is a mixed of my grandmothers middle name, [name]Joan[/name] and [name]Joanne[/name]. Also, I want to honor non-family members as they have had a great influence in my life. I think you should know the person you are honoring unless it’s a name that has past through the generations. Also, you should honor the more important people in your life first.
I don’t think that using family names necessarily has to be based on “honoring” an older family member as much as giving the child a link to their ancestry and heritage. I was named after my great-grandmothers and always thought it was very special to have this connection to my family because it helped me know where I came from.
Well. If I were going to use a name to honor someone, it would be someone I really cared about, or for whom I had deep admiration. I’m not close with many people in my family, so I wouldn’t be particularly inclined to use their names. I might be tempted to use a family surname to honor myself, if I ended up not using my own last name as my child’s last name. I could see honoring a couple of my closest friends with a name. But I wouldn’t do it just for the sake of honoring the importance of family… Maintaining good relationships and keeping your family close are how you do that! If you’ve never met a person is it really meaningful? I’d say no. Maybe you could namesake relatives that are even closer to you, like siblings and cousins. I think that would be a very nice gesture.
We’ve honored people with both our children’s first and middle names. I love their names so I wouldn’t change them but at some point we want a third and I feel like that child should also be named after somebody but nobody really stands out or at least not with a name that I would like to use for a first name. I also wouldn’t worry about running out since you could always go further back on the family tree. [name]One[/name] name I’ve considered is [name]Samuel[/name], which was a relative of my husband in the 1400s but it’s the farthest back relative we know of and I think that is interesting.
Yes, we will be using honoring names, probably as middles. It is somewhat of a family tradition on both sides. The names may be variations of family members’ names (example: [name]Patricia[/name] instead of [name]Patsey[/name])
I think there’s a difference between honor names and family names. An honor name is given in honor of someone you knew; a family name is one that you plucked from your family tree. There’s a wide variation in family names. It could be any random name you thought was cool, it could be the name of an ancestor you didn’t personally know but would like to honor, or it could be a name that was given as a middle name to every firstborn son for 12 generations until your grandmother vetoed it and the tradition stopped but now you want to revive it (whew!).
If you run out of honor names/family names that you want to use, no big deal. It’s easy enough for a child to understand that you didn’t name them after anyone because you ran out of names you liked.
All of my children will have a family name either from my side or their dad’s. Most definitely.
