If you’re a traditional Highland Scot, it’s dead easy. The list comes from your ancestors.

1st born male gets paternal grandfather’s first name, 2nd gets maternal grandfather, then uncles. Ditto for girls/grandmothers.

Makes genealogy dead easy. 🙂

With my boys we chose names that were unusual but don’t sound like it and for my daughter we couldn’t agree and in the end our oldest son chose a name for her. A tradition in my family is to give the middle name from the grandparents.

My sons name is Thomas. We chose this because neither Maddie of myself have ever met a bad Thomas and it can be abbreviated many ways to suit his personality as he grows.
My first daughter Molly was named after Molly from the Enid Blyton books such as the Far Away Tree.
Second daughter is Alice was going to be Sally until I remembered the trout up the road by the same name so we chose Alice purely on a bit of a whim but left registration until the last minute in case it didn’t fit. It does.

I find choosing a name more difficult than deciding whether to have another child or not.

First born, we spent absolutely ages crafting a name that we thought sounded lovely, was uncommon, didn’t have comedy initials etc. Second born – it was more a case of ‘oh that’ll do’ 😀

We went on a cold wet walk in the lakes and worked through the alphabet. After an 8 hour bimble we had a short list of 3 for a boy & girl. We then spent the next 5 months not giving it much thought and then when it popped out it was a boy and ‘Dylan’ felt right.

Golden Eye (with Sean Bean) on TV in delivery room, hence Sean.

I thought it was tough actually – you want you kids to have a name which fits whichever pathway they take in life – heart surgeon or hairdresser.
We had a shortlist for girls and boys, then when she arrived took a couple of days to decide that she looked like an Amelia Grace.
We liked Amelia as she could make it either Millie or Amy when she’s older (she’s always been Millie to us)
When the second one came along, ‘he’ was always going to be Charles after my grandad, however when ‘she’ finally arrived she became Charlotte Louisa (Louisa being 2 x Great Grandmothers + one aunties names)

All my friends seem to look at the top 20 baby names for the current year and then pick one from that.

Oliver, Joshua, Jack, Harry, Alfie, Thomas, William…

3 weeks left until our first is due. We agonised over girls names as we were convinced it was going to be a girl. We had a shortlist of 3 – Sophie, Sophia or Autumn. It was all academic, it’s a boy which was always going to be George after both of our grandfathers.

Still undecided on a middle name though.

Its all “Brant Richards” fault, Our son was named Zachary. In the early years of Mountain biking in the UK, Brant was a colourful Character on the circuit, talking late 80’s here. He had an alias “Zak Tempest” The name stuck with us and our only son got that name. Don’t think I have ever told Brant this. Its a while since I have seen him.

My wife informed me she was pregnant by giving me a book of “Baby names” when I got back from a snowboarding trip… studied the book, we both had originally liked what is probably the first name in the boy list.. but she was a teacher and it reminded her of a kid she didn’t like! That almost meant most of the reasonably common names were out! But we did want something a bit out of the ordinary.
So we threw names at each other over time when they popped into our heads.
I was looking at our book shelf and a surname sprung out at me. “What about…?”
And it stuck. Works nicely too, for something a bit different.

Its all “Brant Richards” fault, Our son was named Zachary. In the early years of Mountain biking in the UK, Brant was a colourful Character on the circuit, talking late 80’s here. He had an alias “Zak Tempest” The name stuck with us and our only son got that name. Don’t think I have ever told Brant this. Its a while since I have seen him.

Whereas I looked in the book of Jewish names for ‘our kid Zachary 😆

Still undecided on a middle name though.

“Danger”

I nodded and said “yes, whatever you want”. As long as my daughter got my surname that was all that mattered to me. As it turns out Juniper was not a bad choice, I like it, it suits her and I don’t think it’s too “Jeremy Kyle” Feel free to correct me though.

Still undecided on a middle name though.

It should be a bit of fun or different.

Mine is dull as ****.

Anyone worried about ‘bullying’ – a kid will be bulled for having blonde hair, ginger hair, red cheeks, glasses, a big forehead, being the new kid, being weird, being smelly, having a holy jacket etc etc and EVERY boy at my school was known by their surname or a variation of the surname!

my kids names have arabic meanings…
rayan…named after one of the gates of heaven that opens during the month of ramadan…he was born during ramadan
amelia hayah…beautiful life
iman abbas…faith and the name of the prophet mohammed’s uncle (also means lion)

I like Amelia 🙂

Really very simple, my twins are named after my favourite film characters. They are called William and Edward.
How my wife never twigged on to Bill and Ted I will never know….. 😀

Whereas I looked in the book of Jewish names for ‘our kid Zachary

Yeah yeah! It was after you favourite show really.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71QkcZQgOH4[/video]

We wanted somethin that had historical resonance, and because of our mixed European heritage (British, German, Ukrainian), wanted something that could translate easily and be recognised in different cultures.

So, for example, ‘Nicholas’.

Growing up in Canada, I always found it funny when kids with interesting, dignified surnames, had first utterly meaningless given names or names that in no way corresponded with their surnames. So, for example, transferred use of Scottish surnames was common for first names, even when the kid’s last name was something German like ‘Hildebrandt’ or Ukrainian like ‘Kurelek’. ‘Callum Hildebrandt’ just sound funny to me.

I have no idea but i scribbled a name down on a post it once from seeing it somewhere. It sat on my office wall for ages, we did a list of boys and girls none of which seemed to fit and I mentioned this one and my wife agreed. Same name as Bullhearts daughter as well strangely. Thats useless trivia.

Easy. I’m English, he’s a Scot with an Mc in his surname. Traditional Scottish names appealed to me, he agreed so both of them have lovely Scottish names.

got a kids name dictionary and lost the will to live at once we got to I
I sought inspiration from science and mathematics 🙂 and the odd film I liked. and no I didnt chose Debbie or Austin.

I looked at my music collection for inspiration and found an album called Isla by the Portico Quartet (good album it is too) and ran the idea past the wife. She really liked it (Isla not Portico Quartet) and it stayed at top of our list until she was born.

I let my wife decide as long as I could pick the middle name. Our lovely daughter is very proud of being called Lily Kona Moran (I didn’t get to choose the middle name for the second one).

Wife got to choose first name for first child, I got to choose middle name.

There’s a few Islas in my daughter’s year at school. I always assumed it was because the dads fancied Isla Fisher when they were younger. I know I did.

I had certain “rules” I wanted to stick to, no ending in the “ey”, “ie” sound, must be shortenable, mustn’t be on the list of top 10 names, must be a “grown up” name not just a baby name

Mrs-g threw a million names out and we both sort of liked Ella, so to make it a shortenable version I suggested Eloise. Then to make it individual Mrs-g decided we would spell it Ellouise. No one calls her Ella, the Ellouise thing has sort of stuck.

Second one, wife was admanant that he was going to be a Jack, I hated the idea, then one day sat at home watching a certain HBO boxset about a borderline psychotic serial killer…..”what do you think of Dexter?” and that was that.

Middle names after royalty

years of debate and re-debate and starting again and flouncing and crying and lists, and arguing why I should have an equal opinion, but ultimately

The only one of my wife’s list that I didn’t hate….

was certainly true for child no.2

I thought of a few, my wife didn’t like. She thought of a few, I didn’t like them. We forgot about it for a few months. Then when jr_bandito#1 was born she looked at him and said “he’s a Samuel”. So he is. Mainly Sam to us and his friends, Samuel to his teachers, Sammy to his brother and cousins

jr_bandito#2, I didn’t really think about it, just let my wife have inspiration when he turned up. He’s a William. Interestingly everyone calls him William (even himself) except me, I call him Will.

Neither names have any relevance to us as such, but both boys have middle names chosen after people who mean a lot to us.

Incidentally, my middle name is the one thing I hold against my parents. I bloody hate it.

Choose something that can be shortened well and work back from there.

Incidentally, my middle name is the one thing I hold against my parents. I bloody hate it.

crispin? 😉

Thanks for all the posts, useful stuff to think about

Quite like kona actually. Any other ideas of “acceptable” bike based names?

Based on my current stable,

Rose and Scott also work

Not so sure about gt, charge, genesis or Santa Cruz…..

We went with the only name we both agreed on. Middle name was Mrs Danny’s dad’s name and I wasn’t going to object to that.

We got there by basically just chatting through the various names we both liked until we ended up in agreement.

Simple, my surname has 3 c’s and a k so first name had to have none. I have a 10 letter surname so it had to be short. Looked up short girls names and Erin got picked by both me and the mrs.

@dt78 – good idea, Stevens kinda works. But i don’t think orange or DMR would go down well with the wife!

Baby 1: Caden-Blake – took 6 weeks, still arguing on the way to reg office, double barrelled the first name, gets called the 2nd part officially, in law influence to blame,

Baby 2 (different mother from 1, 3 and 4): Harry, only retarded name she didn’t pick and i ran with it

Baby 3: Fletcher no idea where it came from

Baby 4: Carter she dreamt it, i liked it (unstoppable sex machine ain’t he)

Went on holiday to Germany. Lady that owned the hotel was called Heidi. She was hot.

Wife liked the name, decided we should put all out names into a list & compare the list – anything that matched would succeed.

I put Heidi on the list – that was all

My wife put a dozen down inc Heidi

deal done.

It helped it wasn’t in the top 95 names at the time, wasn’t a ‘family’ name and wasn’t british origin

my surname has 3 c’s and a k…. I have a 10 letter surname

Intriguing. Can we have the cryptic clue?

The first, I had no input with, as wasn’t with the current wife when she was born, but Holly is a sensible name My first child was spotted in the scan as ‘possibly’ a boy, so we had Thomas agreed upon and Edie, I liked for a girl in case the scan was wrong, but that was open to debate, nearer the time. Anyway, we had a boy !! and looked at this shrivelled up beautiful baby ( everyone thinks their babies are beautiful, when actually they aren’t really) and decided he wasn’t a Thomas, he is actually a Christopher 8O. So, even to the point of birth, things can change. We agreed his name within an hour our his first breath and we never changed it. Holly is now 21 and Christopher is nearly 12. Time is a scary thing………..