My children are adopted, and we had basically two days until his placement to try to figure it out. (Birthmothers want to know these things!) His birthmom had given him a name, which we decided to keep for his middle name because it was extremely significant to the circumstances (Isaac–thinking of one of the ultimate sacrifices). Plus, we have always felt we needed to honor our kids’ birth heritage for their middle names, either by naming them after a birth parent or birth family member, or by using a name chosen by the birth parent. We stewed and stewed over first names. Dh even went to the temple and came back with a name that had come to him there–and I shot it down. I felt terrible, but I just didn’t care for the name and didn’t feel it was right.

We finally decided to name him after dh’s dad. We even took him to the hospital for some bloodwork and had that recorded on all the paperwork. We were actually sitting in the hospital office, still having no name, wondering what to put on the paperwork, and just made a decision to use fil’s name. But on the drive home, dh suddenly realized that his initials would spell PIG! We finally ended up giving him a name that I really loved and dh was OK with.

When our dd arrived, we had only a few days notice and were in the middle of an extended family crisis (mil’s funeral), so it was an extremely crazy time. We had not even considered any names after our previous experience. I did not want to get attached to any names. Her birthmom was clamoring to know what her name would be and asked us every time we saw her during those few days. The last thing we had time to do was think of names! We finally settled on 2 names that were similar, and ended up letting our ds, who was 4 at the time, decide which one he liked best. One was a family name, and one was a scriptural name. We went with the scriptural name.

We did not end up giving our dd a birth-family-related middle name, which I felt badly about. I did not care for any of her birthparents’ various names. Both birthparents had names that had virtually the same meaning, so I thought this was a sign that we should choose another name that had the same meaning, but we couldn’t find one we liked. Her birthmom had not chosen a name for her, so there was no help there either. She had a couple of names she liked, but wasn’t extremely attached to them, and we weren’t crazy about them either. We ended up giving her the middle name Elisabeth, which both my and my recently-deceased mil’s names are derived from. We chose the “s” spelling to honor Elisabeth in the scriptures, because of the infertility connection.

second baby, i waxed sentimental over family history. her first name is my name, my mom’s name, her mom’s name, and so on. we couldn’t come up with a middle name and went down the list in our family history program. it was an experience not unlike the one in the first post, where we were in the middle of a list, looked at each other, and said, “that’s it!” her middle name is my father-in-law’s mother’s name. my husband never knew his grandmother.

third baby, oy. another girl and feeling like maybe she’ll be our last, so we ought to make this name really COUNT! we couldn’t decide, had a list, and everyone said, “oh, when you meet her, you’ll just KNOW!” well, we didn’t “just know.” she looked like a… baby! we put off her name for a while because we could’t agree on a middle name. we flipped a coin to fill out insurance paperwork when she was, um, a couple of months old. horrible, i know. that name didn’t stick and it wasn’t until her blessing at five months that we had finally settled on a name. DON’T JUDGE ME! seriously, with a 3yo, a 2yo, a newborn, and a husband who was mia courtesy of a temporary work schedule, the last thing we ever talked about was baby names. it was haaaaard. i would have thought it was nuts, too, till i’d been in those mocassins.

baby four. another girl. now we REALLY need to make sure we’re narrowing down names! we’d always wanted to name a son after my father-in-law, but with all girls, we’re left with variations like bobbie jean, none of which i care for. we went with the name we had originally picked out for baby three, with josephine as a middle name, after my granddad.

my oldest girls were born in hawai’i and were given hawaiian names by local elders (polynesian elders, not church elders!). for our third daughter, we wouldn’t dream of giving her a hawaiian name because it’s considered inappropriate, but we do use the hawaiian version of her given name… which has somehow evolved into ‘ilio… which means dog. :::sigh:::

courtesy of my husband’s job, i never get to sign my real name (we have unique names), but suffice it to say i refused to give my daughters more than one middle name, like my parents did to me.

signed,
firstname middlename catholicname mom’smaiden mymaiden lastname

I knew my first daughter’s name would be Tally before I was even married. I always loved that name. When I was pregnant with her I got a few comments that it seemed like a nickname – so we named her Talisa. We gave her my middle name too. We find ourselves calling her Tallulah alot. Hmmm.

My second daughter was always going to be Caitlin but when it got closer to her birth it just seemed too common. So I decided I loved the name Corrinne, but not the spelling. So we named her Corryn. I think it’s beautiful, but not when people look at it and call her Corn – which has happened alot – and it’s now her nickname. We think it’s funny. We gave her Ruth as a middle name, which was hubbies Grandma’s name and my Great-Grandma’s name. When she was misbehaving we would call her Ruth or her full name, until Grandma finally said she noticed we only called her that when we were mad. Oh oh, we stopped doing that.

My third daughter was Siena Nicole all through my pregnancy. I had always wanted to name a girl Nicole but hubbie didn’t really love it, so it became a middle name. We were really into family history before she was born and found many great names but still really liked Siena. When she was born we looked at each other and decided Siena just wasn’t right. It took us just a few minutes to realize she was Serina Nicole. Since that time we have been able to do temple work for at least 7 Serina’s or Serena’s in our Norweigian line. Awesome.

We have not had any boys and hubbie thinks it’s because the boys names I like are odd. Oh well. To each his own.

Naming is a big thing on my mind right now because I’m pregnant My husband and I have radically different theories about proper names and so we have many bloody battles (ok, not really bloody but when you get two theatrical folks with strong opinions on the power of language and names then it can pretty heated!). I think a child should have a name with weight and heritage. He is greatly opposed to family names. My sister suggested using a family name from his side of the family but it isn’t that he doesn’t like my family’s names…he just doesn’t like family names as a general rule. For some reason naming a child a name that has been used by family isn’t unique enough for him but giving a child a name used by strangers is. I don’t get it. He’s also opposed to weird Utah names and old lady names (we are expecting a girl). That rules out my mother’s name (Lyona) and my grandmother’s name (Zora). Oh, the trial!

Then there is the recurring friction of the fact that when we were engaged his brother and sister-in-law were having their first baby and in our moonstruck recently-engaged conversations we came up with the perfect name for our future daughter. A name that I just don’t care for anymore (though he still loves it). I mean, do you know how many Kaitlyns there are out there? Do we have to add to that confusion?

What we did with our first daughter was battle, battle, battle and continually throw names into the ring until the Spirit quite forcefully testified that this was her name. My family thought we were a little crazy because we named her the same first name as her cousin AND we wanted to call her by both her first and middle names all the time, even though it is a mouthful (Emily Lara). It has turned out to be a pain in many respects, but it absolutely suits her (not that she is a pain! and I wouldn’t have her named anything else.

It was pretty much the same for this new little girl too. On a long drive we just started throwing out names and vetoing each other. I had been reading the Bible Dictionary for inspiration and threw out the name “Maran Elizabeth”–to my great surprise he was amenable and so was the Spirit. Maran, by the way, is part of an early Christian watchword that means “Come, oh Lord” or “The Lord cometh.” Elizabeth is a family name. Now that’s a name with weight and heritage!

Ironically, my daughter Emily Lara (5) has a “pretend baby” in her tummy that she calls….Kaitlyn!

We have a story to beat all stories, I think, with the naming of our children. It taught me that names do matter, at least they did for us. Maybe I will write about it sometime.

I have a friend who reminds me that the concept of names in the scriptures is very important, and a trigger for learning more about God, identity, covenants, temple, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that that names have ended up being important in a mortal sense.

I have wondered, though, why some people don’t seem to have such a time with it.