No one actually has to reply to this or say what you thought…it’s just to get you started and share a bit of my naming process.
When I think name, I think:
Nickname you can use when it’s an oversleeping-morning and everyone is frazzled and rushed and you just don’t have time to say that long fancy name and their baby brothers and sisters can use when they’re so young they’re just understanding to use their tongues and teeth to make words…
Name that will be on everything from birth certificate to report card to resume and they are proud to tell people…
Name that could be anything, because you love your kid the way they are and encourage them to be themselves…
Name that will be yelled when they dribble the wrong way in the soccer game and shouted up the stairs when they’re late for dinner and called at their attendence every day till their graduation when it will be said into a microphone as they walk up to get their diploma and said by their friends when they hail your kid to share a piece of gossip or concert tickets and said by their future kids when they bring home their future girl- and boyfriends and husbands and wives…
Middle Name that they will confess (or not) to their friends in the middle of a crowded lunchroom and that won’t embarass them when they have to shout it to be heard and won’t confuse their friends because it’s a noisy lunchroom and hopefully won’t be shared by twenty others the friend knows (although the connection does make for a potential friendship…)
Name that its own name and your kid’s own name, just like your child is an individual.
[name]Hope[/name] this helped you! Or it could just be for fun…
I like to think of the name when someone who doesn’t know them calls them up for a job interview. Or how their name would sound if they were a judge and they were being announced, the honorable so-and-so presiding. [name]How[/name] it looks in the newspaper, etc. - reading the name as opposed to hearing it. Does it look as good as it sounds?
Thanks, for the feedback and the new ideas! I think this could be a really fun forum as more and more people respond, with more and more ideas.
Here’s another one: Is the name teasable? Does it sound too close to “Martian” or “[name]Silly[/name]” or “[name]Prissy[/name]”?
The first name I thought of was [name]Beatrice[/name]–on a casual day, sports shouting day, or for young children, it easily becomes [name]Bea[/name]. I like [name]Regina[/name] for a middle with it. Great thought experiment! I’m still thinking for a boy…
I’m quite guilty of using my girls first and middle names ALL of the time. I say them together at the store when they are doing something they shouldn’t, at home home when I’m asking them their opinion, and sometimes when I’m just telling them I love them.
My oldest isn’t too happy when I use her middle name out in public anymore. I think “stranger danger” has set in and she doesn’t want the world to “know” her anymore than she wants them too. For this reason, I’ve never and will never put my kids names on clothing or backpacks in visible places.
My youngest [name]Mia[/name], loves her middle her name. Her face lights up when I say her first and middle together. However at the age 4 (almost 5) she is completely appalled by the nickname we use to call her - [name]Mimi[/name]. [name]Mimi[/name] actually became Screaming [name]Mimi[/name] when she was baby and had colic for the first 4 months of life.
I figure if it could be part of a cheerleading chant it’s wrong. (I say [name]Alfred[/name], you say [name]Hitchcock[/name]! [name]Alfred[/name]! [name]Hitchcock[/name]!)
I’d also do the roll-call test. On the first day of school, is the teacher going to get the name right or is the kid going to have to repeat it three times, syllable by syllable? (variation, if someone’s on the phone with her, how many times will she have to spell her name for them?) When I was in middle school, one of the teachers asked a new student how to pronounce her last name. She didn’t know (her mom had just remarried). That stuck with me. And the poor girl’s name was [name]Feather[/name], so [name]Feather[/name]-brain didn’t know her own last name.