Search Results for: naming after family members

Choosing A Family Name For Your Baby

Many people turn to their family’s past when they are looking for a name for their baby. Including family names in the names of your children is a wonderful way to honor members of your family both past and present. That said, using family names can be a bit of a tricky situation to navigate. For example, some people are easily offended. If you choose a name from one side of the family and not the other, someone’s feathers may be ruffled. As hard as it may be to deal with the ruffled feathers, the decision about your baby’s name … Continue reading →

Pressure to Name a Baby After a Relative

The joy of finding out your pregnant is overwhelming. Everyone is so happy and always asking you how you are feeling and treating you in a delightful fashion. You bask in the glow of motherhood to come thinking the blessings of parenting have already begun. Then you are asked the question. The question that shakes your reality and reminds you that other people mistakenly feel they have a stake in making one of the first decisions a parent should make; the name of the baby. Opinions on names can make the naming process more confusing and exhausting. Naming a baby … Continue reading →

Naming, Claiming, and Letting Go

Naming our children is a very personal decision for all of us. My own parents preferred to think of new names, rather than naming their children after family. However, my husband and I gave our first child (our birth son) one name related to my family heritage and another after a recently deceased relative of my husband’s. We planned a girl’s name at that time also—a first name I had always thought was beautiful, and a middle name which was Charles’ mother’s, grandmother’s and sister’s middle name. When we adopted, many of the Asian language names sounded strange to our … Continue reading →

Most Popular Pet Names of 2012

One thing we see a lot of this time of year is lists of baby names: the top baby names for the year, and names that are projected to be popular in the coming year.  What we don’t expect to see are studies of a different sort of name: dog names.  But that’s just what MSN did, compiling a list of the top puppy names for 2012. A familiar name tops the list: Bella.  It’s been a popular female dog name since 2006, thanks to the “Twilight” craze.  I can attest to that; Chihiro was originally named Bella when we … Continue reading →

Tips for Preserving Childhood Memories

Whether you are a parent or there are grandchildren, nieces, or nephews in your life, you know the value of photographs as a way to preserve the story of a child’s growth and development. Unfortunately, even the most well intentioned among us often end up with a collection of snapshots that capture select moments from a child’s life story yet somehow fall short of preserving the entire journey. Here are a few tips for taking pictures of children which will tell their stories long after the children have grown. Instead of focusing only on portrait style pictures or only on … Continue reading →

What’s In A Name?

Genealogists often spend a lot of time concentrating on reseraching people with the same surname. While surnames are important for genealogical research because they connect members of the same family, it is interesting to look at first names too. First names, or given names as they are often called, are just that – the name that a child is given by their parents when they are born. In the past, there were many children that were given the names of their ancestors. In some cultures, there was even a precise formula for naming children. For example, in the 1700’s and … Continue reading →

What’s In A Name? Nature Names for Babies

I adore baby names. I love the sound of them, I love putting them together into groups of two, three, and four. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I obsessed about the meanings of names. I love hiking in our local forests and beside rivers, and I wanted to name her something that would reflect that love. A name with water in it? A name that meant forest, perhaps? We ended up with a name for our daughter that was both inspired by nature and was fairly subtle about its origins. The subtle part is from my husband. I … Continue reading →

Parents and Baby Names

Jeffrey Dahmer murdered, mutilated and cannibalized 17 young men and boys between 1978 and 1991, and somehow his parents were to blame. At least according to some psychologists, who claimed that Dahmer’s “disturbing behavior” was a result of a strained relationship with his parents. Frankly, I don’t buy into the whole blame-all-your-faults-on-your-parents philosophy, and I certainly don’t think Dahmer’s parents were to blame for their son’s psychotic behavior, but there is one fact of life that is the sole responsibility of mothers and fathers: baby names. When it comes to naming children, parents are the ultimate decision makers. While some … Continue reading →

The Evolution of Baby Names

Are you agonizing over what to name your baby? Most parents our though tons of baby name lists searching out the perfect baby name for their little one. Relatives get involved, too, and everyone seems to have a definite opinion. While parents have discussed possible baby names for as far back as there were babies to name, parents today have a harder time of it, I think, then parents of past generations in our recent history. In previous generations, most babies were given family names. They were named after fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers and great grandparents. While some … Continue reading →

Choosing A Name for Baby

Choosing a name for your baby can be fun. Or it can end up as a nightmare. Firstly the couple needs to decide if they want to use the name of any family members either as first names or second names. One thing we were agreed on was that we didn’t like the idea of a child having the same name as a parent, even though I love the name Michael, which I think is a romantic sounding name. Mick doesn’t. like it. That was a compromise I had to make when we started going together. Each time Mick and … Continue reading →