I’m sure someone’s asked this before, but I’d love to hear your stories about when/how you fell in love with baby names!
I have been a name buff most of my life.
From 7 yo I would play make believe which invoved imagined children and what I would name them.
I remember being very impressed with a girl’s name when I started school- she was [name]Madeline[/name].
I wrote name lists from about 11 yo. My oldest daughter’s name was chosen when I was 12.
I was in my last year of primary school and we were singing [name]Christmas[/name] carols for the school play.
An adorable blonde little girl from Grade 1 kept following me around. I asked her name- and that was that! I was in love with the name!
My lists grew longer and more elaborate. I wish I knew where they were now!
My youngest DD has no interest in names, my older DD writes name lists too. We even both like some names.
My son has two views about names- he likes quirky names, he hates names the same as brats in his daycare! LOL
[name]Emilia[/name]
xoxoxox
When I was 8ish I had a family of toy rabbits who wore eighteenth century type clothing and I wanted to give them appropriate names…
I made lists of ideas for their names, such as [name]Clara[/name], [name]Abigail[/name], [name]Matthew[/name] and [name]Edward[/name].
This led to lists of future children’s names! Twelve years later, I am married and making lists with my husband (he has pretty good taste) but not pregnant yet!
When I was really little and naming my dolls, then it got super serious around age 12 or so.
When: Middle School
[name]How[/name]: I began writing stories and realized I didn’t know what to name my characters, so I started searching. Originally my obsession started with name meaning, so meaning to match my characters, as I got better at writing and continued, meaning became less important and sound became more important.
I remember having a notebook in which I wrote down the name of all of my dolls (looking back at the notebook, I realize I had an awkward fascination with Greek names back then - [name]Athena[/name] and [name]Artemis[/name] in particular :D). I also made up “my own” royal family (I’ve always been a horribly dedicated royalist) and gave everyone names :rolleyes:
My fascination with names goes so far back that I can’t remember when I wasn’t fascinated with names.
I think I was into names by age six…partly because I loved babies so much and loved meeting people with babies/holding babies/hearing their names. I started recording all the names of babies I knew of, on the page of my little Bible that said “Births”, not realizing that was meant to record births in the family only! Later as with many of you my interest was fueled by writing. I loved words in general and the meaning of words and was very attuned to how things sound.