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I typically just try to find a middle name that I think flows well with the first name. I will completely abandon that if the first name has a great meaning and I want the middle name to have an equally great meaning. Something that I’ve noticed makes it really difficult for me is that I want the love the middle name as much as I love the first name. This causes problems with finding one, and sometimes when I have found one, I want to take it away from the original name and use it as a first name. I think that’s why our list is so massive and varied. I love multiple middle names, but I rarely bother to come up with them. It’s usually just a single and I’ll find another one if I really think it’s worth it.
[name]Both[/name] of our families seem to have just chosen the traditional filler they liked, though there are some accidental family names in there. My brother is [name]Jeffrey[/name] [name]Robert[/name], [name]Robert[/name] is my Grandfather’s middle name. My sister is [name]Anna[/name] [name]Elizabeth[/name], [name]Anna[/name] was actually the name of two of my Great-Grandmothers and [name]Elizabeth[/name] is my Grandmother’s name. I, however, am just [name]Katie[/name] [name]Marie[/name]. There are no Katherines or [name]Maries[/name] (although I think it might be Aunt [name]Sue[/name]'s middle name) and my parents both come from pretty big families. They could have found another family name if they wanted to.
[name]Kevin[/name] is [name]Kevin[/name] [name]David[/name], and we know that they just picked that out of a book. It’s just an average kind of nice boy name.
Middle names were really only used in my family when someone was in trouble. It was kind of used as a gauge - yelling “[name]Katie[/name]” was just ‘Meh, you did something you shouldn’t have’, “[name]Katie[/name] [name]Marie[/name]” was ‘Why would you do this thing, what is wrong with you, I taught you better’, and [name]Katie[/name] [name]Marie[/name] (Last Name) was for an ‘OMG, child, why do you exist again? What on [name]Earth[/name] possessed me to have you?’ type situation.
The most important thing to me at the moment is having names that I love, names that look and sound perfect to me, and obviously to a future partner of mine. I’m not too concerned with family, it’s never been a big thing in my family to pass names down but I have chosen one family name, [name]Beau[/name], to honour my grandparents who mean the world to me. I think when the time comes for me to have children I might consider family names a little more, but until then I’m happy to have a list of beautiful names that I adore!
My family’s tradition is for the first boy born to have the initials RRR. (My brother’s mn is after our grandpa who died before we were born)
My bf’s family has the tradition for the first boy’s mn to be the father’s fn. So my first son will be ____ [name]Ryan[/name]. (Makes it easy for me, cause I like the name [name]Ryan[/name]!)
My middle name is my great-grandma’s name, and I like the idea of honoring family members. If I have girls I want to honor my mother either with her initials or a similar name.
I don’t really feel pressured to use family names, though. If I find a name that sounds nice with the first name, that’s enough for me.
I try and go for a middle name that I love, that flows well but isn’t a filler. My mum calls me by my fn and mn all the time and I like it, I might do the same when I’m older with a kid.
There’s really no obvious naming traditions in my family. Apparently my parents are drawn to “R” alliteration since all three of my siblings have it, so I’ve thought it would be nice to carry that on. The only true naming tradition is the number of [name]John[/name] R.s… my great-grandfather was [name]John[/name] [name]Russel[/name], my grandfather was [name]John[/name] [name]Robert[/name], my dad is [name]John[/name] [name]Robert[/name], II, and my brother is [name]John[/name] [name]Robert[/name], III. We’ve yet to see if my brother will carry it on, but I definitely won’t. I do have [name]Jack[/name] as a FN on my short list to honor them, though. [name]Both[/name] of my grandmothers named their first daughters after them ([name]Ruth[/name] [name]Mae[/name]'s daughter was [name]Jacquelyn[/name] [name]Ruth[/name]; [name]Arlene[/name] [name]Grace[/name]'s daughter was [name]Karen[/name] [name]Arlene[/name]), but my mom didn’t continue that, so I’m not sure how much of a family tradition that is, either, haha. But honoring family is pretty important–both my parents were named after their parents, my brother was named after my dad, my baby sister was named after my grandmother, and my other sister has a MN that rhymes with my other grandmother’s name (my mom says it was a slight nod to her mom). Apparently, I’m the only one without a family name, haha.
Honoring family is probably the only necessary thing when I am looking for a name… I wouldn’t want any of my kids to feel left out like I did because they didn’t have a family name. And even if they’re not the exact names, there are family connections in every one of my combos. Some more than others, but at least the connection’s there. 
And then I mostly just look at names I love but that I don’t love enough to use as FNs, or aren’t really usable as FNs… like [name]Isabelle[/name] [name]Aurora[/name] [name]Grace[/name]. I’ve loved [name]Aurora[/name] forever, and I love that it means “dawn” (which is quite sentimental and significant for me), and I even love the nn [name]Ari[/name], but it really sounds pretty awful with my “R” heavy last name. So I tried out [name]Isabelle[/name] [name]Aurora[/name] [name]Grace[/name] one day, and it’s perfect. Same with [name]Everett[/name] [name]Joshua[/name] [name]Charles[/name]… I’ve always really liked [name]Joshua[/name], but it’s my cousin’s name and we have some bad history together, so I always thought I shouldn’t use it. I love that it’s a more Anglicized version of the Hebrew version of [name]Jesus[/name], though, so [name]Joshua[/name] is definitely in honor of [name]Jesus[/name], and I just love the Biblical [name]Joshua[/name]. It just works as a MN, whereas it doesn’t really work as a FN for me.
I don’t know how it happens, really, but I just pick a combo I really like, and somehow as the combo grows on me and I make more connections to the names, they take on these deep layers of significance. When I first fell for the combo [name]Beckett[/name] [name]Oscar[/name] [name]Rhys[/name] (which is no longer on my short list, haha, but if I had a top 20 it definitely would be there), I just really liked [name]Beckett[/name] [name]Oscar[/name] as a combo. But the more it grew on me, the more connections I made to it, and the more I loved it in general. I liked [name]Beckett[/name] because it sounded so smart, and that it could honor my sister ([name]Becca[/name]), and I love [name]Oscar[/name] because of [name]Oscar[/name] Wilde and his delightful little play, The Importance of Being [name]Earnest[/name]. The association to [name]Oskar[/name] Schindler is pretty cool, too. And I just have always loved the sound of [name]Rhys[/name]. But then, I thought about it, and [name]Rhys[/name] could honor all my siblings (and my dad) since it would have that “R” alliteration, and I loved that as a combo, [name]Beckett[/name] (English) [name]Oscar[/name] ([name]German[/name]) [name]Rhys[/name] (Welsh) honored the three most prominent nationalities in my ancestry. I have a few others–French, Cherokee, Swiss, etc.–but none are quite as prominent as those three, so I liked that it sort of honored all my family, going back hundreds of years to when they were still in Europe in the 1600s and there was no thought of an [name]Ashley[/name] being born… I don’t know, it’s just so meaningful, and that sort of thing happens with all my combos! haha. I’m not quite sure how I manage it, though.
When I’m coming up with combos, if there’s a name I’ve been liking but not enough to use it as a FN, sometimes I’ll see if I can fit it in as a MN. Like I only have one more combo to pair up on my boys list, and then hopefully my top 10s are set for a while. So I’ve been trying to see if some of the other names I like but don’t [name]ADORE[/name] will work as a MN for [name]Asher[/name]. Like [name]Samuel[/name], [name]Oliver[/name], [name]Killian[/name], [name]Finnegan[/name], [name]Zane[/name], etc. But they really don’t, haha. Not with the one MN I have picked out already. So then I just let them go, I suppose. Maybe I can fit [name]Samuel[/name] and [name]Zane[/name] in somewhere else, down the road.
The only other thing I take into consideration is that I absolutely refuse to have combos with 2-2-2 flow, especially since my LN is two syllables. Something like [name]Charlotte[/name] [name]Eden[/name] [name]Winter[/name] or [name]Asher[/name] [name]Samuel[/name] [name]Patrick[/name] sounds terrible with my LN, imo.
I usually use names that I’m not brave enough to use as firsts {i.e [name]Thisbe[/name]}. I’d love to honour, but I don’t know who I’d honour.
I’m into numerology, so I aim for names that will add up to an ideal number, so for example:
[name]Elena[/name] = 1 and my boyfriend’s surname = 1. My ideal number is 3, so I know that I need a middle name that adds to 1.
[name]Katherine[/name], [name]Rose[/name], [name]Noel[/name], [name]Vivienne[/name], [name]Marie[/name], [name]Taylor[/name], [name]Gabriela[/name], [name]Daniela[/name], [name]Ericka[/name] are some that equal to 1. So I pair them up with [name]Elena[/name], and then consider the meanings behind each name, and the feel it gives off.
[name]Elena[/name] [name]Katherine[/name] is one of my favourite combos, so that gets put on the list for example.
I’m a fan of two middle names, as I have two. But no one else in my immediate family does. So if I wanted to add another middle name to [name]Elena[/name] [name]Katherine[/name] but wanted to keep the number 3, I’d have to add a 9 name. 1+1+1 = 3 + 9 = 12 = 1+2 = 3
So [name]Noelle[/name], [name]Jayde[/name], [name]Elisabeth[/name], [name]Leighton[/name] are a few 9 names.
So I can do [name]Elena[/name] [name]Katherine[/name] [name]Noelle[/name] for example, and again I look at the meanings, and feeling the whole name gives off, the initials, pop culture references, everything.
Numerology is a hobby of mine that I’ve seen a lot of truth in, and it helps give some structure to my naming so I don’t end up going all over the place and having a list of 20 middle names for one name. I have nine combos alone for [name]Serena[/name], and that’s using numerology to eliminate a bunch of ideas.
My family doesn’t have a naming style really, my boyfriend’s family pretty much have a theme of naming after family in the middle name spot, as well as a trend of M, and E names. (His mother and her siblings are all E, there’s about 7 or more of them)
I like names that personal meaning, so for example, if I get to go the university I want, I’ll be in [name]London[/name]. I love the idea of using the middle name of [name]London[/name] on my daughter as a tribute to that. Also, I met my boyfriend at a hotel on a street named [name]Kennedy[/name], I wouldn’t mind using [name]Kennedy[/name] as a middle name in tribute to that. However, I’m big on meanings and I likely can’t get past the “deformed head” meaning enough to use it.
I’m also big on flow, so I wouldn’t use a middle that didn’t flow right no matter how much I liked it. I don’t like filler middle names at all, I like more unique, meaningful ones, or ones that just seem to fit right. Like [name]Elena[/name] [name]Katherine[/name], just seems to fit right even though [name]Katherine[/name] is slightly filler to me.
My view on middle names is likely more new-agey than most, I feel that the middle name adds another layer to a persona.
I like the idea of actually verbally using middle names in day to day life, which is why I’m big on flow. My boyfriend and I sometimes call each other by our middle names from time to time. My brother goes exclusively by his middle name. So I’m used to using them.
I’m really fond of the idea of starting a family tradition of calling family members by their middle names every now and again.
Basically, it comes down to finding the middle name that fits and flows properly with the first.
In my mother’s side of the family everyone is [name]Lyla[/name], honouring my great-great-grandmother. Originally, she was [name]Liza[/name] [name]Jane[/name] (which she hated), but one day when the town hall burned down in a fire, all of the town records were lost. So when people were asking her what her name was she said [name]Lyla[/name] [name]Jean[/name]. So, because of her I’m [name]Eden[/name] [name]Lyla[/name]. When I get a lot older and decide to have kids I will give my daughter the middle name [name]Lilac[/name]. [name]Lila[/name], pronounced the same as [name]Lyla[/name] means lilac tree. So, since [name]Lyla[/name] means [name]Lilac[/name] I find that it would be a good way to honour the amzing woman that my great-great-grandmother was. My brother is named after my dad’s two middle names. My brother is [name]Erik[/name] [name]Alexander[/name] and my dad is Firstname [name]Erik[/name] [name]Alexander[/name]. So [name]Erik[/name] will have to name his son [name]Alexander[/name] to keep up with the family tradition.
I was of the names-that-flow-nicely school but my husband thinks they should be meaningful. My son is [name]Wyatt[/name] [name]Steven[/name], middle name after a cousin that my husband is very close to. Next one will come from my side of the family. I will probably honor my aunt or my sister if it’s a girl ([name]Mary[/name] or [name]Elizabeth[/name], so they will sound like filler names even though they aren’t) and my grandfather ([name]Perry[/name] [name]William[/name]) if it’s a boy.
[name]Both[/name] sides of my family have kind of interesting traditions for men, and I don’t know if they will continue. On my mother’s side, they rotated [name]George[/name] and [name]Perry[/name] as names for first-born sons, so [name]Perry[/name]'s son would be [name]George[/name] and [name]George[/name]'s son would be [name]Perry[/name] and so on. On my father’s side, the first-born son would take the dad’s middle name as a first name. [name]James[/name] [name]David[/name] --> [name]David[/name] [name]Graham[/name] --> [name]Graham[/name] [name]Christopher[/name]. I’m not sure my brother is inclined to carry on that one. From the name conversations we’ve had, [name]Christopher[/name] is way too traditional for him.
For me, middle names are in honor of someone and we use two. Also, on my moms side, it’s tradition to have a J in the middle, it’s silly, but it’s happened to work out for me thus far, might as well humor her.
In my family, middle names usually honor grandparents. (However, my older brother, my twin sister, and I were given FIRST names after our grandparents, and my middle name is Jane after my mother, Mary Jane.)
I always planned to give my children first names that I loved and middle names after a close family member. It was important to me that the middle names be ones that I like and that flow well with the rest of the name. I consider many of our family names to be unusable because I don’t like the names. My first son has my father-in-law’s middle name, Glen. However, if my father-in-law had been named Archibald Elmer, I would NOT have considered either name. My second son has a name that honors my grandfather (after making a promise to my grandfather when I was a teenager), and my daughter was always destined to get the middle name Jane. If my husband and I had had more than two or three more children, we would have run out of usable close family names. If we had reached that point, I would have had to use middle names that I just love, which would have been fun and actually more liberating, I think.
Giving a child ONE middle name has been traditional throughout our extended families; although, some of my German ancestors in the 1800s or earlier had more than one middle name. (And my late mother had the compound first name ‘Mary Jane.’)
A few years back, I came to realize that, coincidentally, in my direct maternal ancestry (mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, and on back) – from me all the way back to my 5th great grandmother ALL of us had first or middle names that started with M. In fact, all were “Mar-” names except two early ones were Magdalena. I made the very hard decision to pass up using a Mary variant name for my daughter (which would have been to honor my mother). I had strongly considered Marissa Jane, but I had a long-standing and deeper love for the name Rebecca; plus, Rebecca sounds better with our last name, which clinched the deal. In hindsight, I figure such a restrictive pattern (using M or Mar- names for a daughter) had to be broken sooner or later anyway, and it would be too much pressure and too limiting to have my daughter end up feeling compelled to keep the pattern going in naming a daughter someday.
I call my oldest son “Daniel Glen” most of the time, and I sometimes call my daughter “Rebecca Jane.” (I used to call her Becca Jane, but she insists on being called Rebecca.)
It can be difficult to coordinate pairing of a favorite first name with a very limited set of middle name options. Before starting that trend in your family, I recommend doing inventory to see what family names you have to work with.
We have a tendency to choose traditional filler middle names, but I’m Irish-Catholic, and just about everyone in the older generation (my grandparents and their siblings, cousins, ect.) are almost all named [name]Ann[/name], [name]Anne[/name], [name]Mary[/name], [name]Elizabeth[/name], [name]Rose[/name], [name]John[/name], [name]James[/name], ect.
So really, the filler names are the family names!
All of my children have (or will have come [name]September[/name]) family names from DH’s side as their middle. ODD is [name]Amelia[/name] after [name]MIL[/name], DS is [name]Osvaldo[/name], which is a widely used name in DH’s family, and the new baby will have [name]Frances[/name] after DH’s grandmother. I really like for children to have their own first names, but to have some history associated with their middles. No middle got chosen from my family because of the similarity to first names in my family. DD is named to honor my mother, [name]Elaine[/name]. And DS and my brother both have first names that are variants of [name]Michael[/name], so he’s somewhat named in honor of him, although mostly [name]Micah[/name] was just a name we both liked. [name]Morgana[/name] has no significance in either of our families, but the only person I would choose to honor is my grandmother who asked me not to use either her first or middle names because she doesn’t like them, so DH’s grandmother gets the honor.
I would like to pick a middle name from our family tree
I was very close to my materal grandmother, [name]June[/name] and really want use that as a middle name for a furture daughter
My DH was very close to his maternal grandfather, [name]Richard[/name] and we have a furture sons name picked, [name]Alexander[/name] [name]Richard[/name]
I have been thinking a lot about name with planning to TTC this [name]August[/name], mostly using names from my family. I know DH likes the name [name]Ethan[/name] and was thinking of the mn [name]Daniel[/name], after my brother. I also quite like the name [name]Amelia[/name], honoring my sister [name]Amy[/name] and paring it with [name]Florence[/name] (DH grandmother) or [name]June[/name]. I love the name [name]Eleanor[/name] [name]June[/name] and is my top girls name - though DH is not so keen on [name]Eleanor[/name].
I am really like the idea of looking back through our family tree for a middle name, [name]Florence[/name] - DHs grandmother, [name]Ivy[/name] - my greatgrandmother, [name]Henry[/name] -my grandfather.
My mum, [name]Denise[/name], doesnt have a middle name and is the only one out of her siblings who doesnt. Her Brother is [name]Ronald[/name] [name]Edward[/name] (after his father) and [name]Julie[/name] [name]Susan[/name]. She also had another sister, [name]Dawn[/name], who passed at 4 years and i was given her name as my middle name, [name]Lauren[/name] [name]Dawn[/name].
DH’s family has English first names and Chinese mns.
My family tends to have one name (fn or mn) after a family member and the 2nd name of my parents’ choice -chosen based on flow, meaning and something they like -at least that’s true for me. My brother ended up having two family names, but mostly because they liked his fn so much.
We are expecting our first little one in [name]September[/name]. His first name is a family name from my side, but that was incidental. DH picked it 2 years ago without knowing that it was both my grandfathers’ fn. His mn is one that we both like and that flows well with his fn. He’ll also have a Chinese mn in order to honor DH’s family. The tradition is for the baby’s grandfather to choose his name -so my in-laws have sent us a list of a few names so we can choose which one fits best for baby.
Wow, a lot to answer!
I’ll only be using one middle name, and I’ll use it to honor people - family and friends - in my life. Traditionally, this is what my family has done, however, I think I’ll let my brother use the one middle name ([name]Campbell[/name]) that has been used in at least 5 generations, because that’s his middle name to carry on, not mine.
There aren’t any real middle name traditions in my family. When I’m looking for middle names, I look first at family names. They have the most meaning to me. If I can’t find a family name I like with a first name, I look for names that represent/remind me of something important to me.
We use names from family members for middle names, which is the norm for both our families. My son’s middle name came from my grandfather’s name, and my daughter’s middle name is a common middle name for women on both my side and my husband’s side. If we have any children in the future, we will use family names for their middle names, too. Many of those names are so-called filler names, but they have meaning for us. The middle names do have to “go” with the first name, though.
[name]Both[/name] of our families only use one middle name, with the exception of my half brother who has two middles. No one really uses them, though; they’re there more for honorary purposes than anything.
And there was me thinking I’d just choose the top 2 from my list (1=fn, 2=mn)!