How Did You And Your Spouse Decide What To Name Your Kids

How did you decide your child’s name?

I have 4 children and all of them were named in some part after something quirky.Ethan Raphael Ethan got his first name partially because I had never met or seen an unattractive Ethan in my life and thought that would be a good sign for him later in life.  His middle name however was more meaningful as it was a combined with a couple of things.  Originally my son was going to have a different name but he simply didn't fit it when I saw him.  While I was at the hospital I was reading a book: "Unlocking the Seven Genuises of Leonardo DaVinci."  In it it talked about DaVinci's interactions with this other punk artist of the Renassaince era: Raphael.But that's not entirely how it happened.  When he was getting his first bath he scrunched up his face like a turtle.  Immediately I thought of the Ninja Turtle and he became my own little turtle namesake since then.  (Surprisingly he has not gotten sick of the Ninja Turtle toys and things he gets from time to time... yet)Maddox Connor- Maddox got his name for geeky reasons... I grew up reading the blog made by a guy with the acronym Maddox.  It was terribly irreverent and hilarious and not something that I had heard any kid named yet.The Best Page In The Universe.Connor came because I was pregnant during the Lacy Peterson trial and that was the baby's name.  Yes I admit that one is a weird one even for me but hey I just admitted to naming a kid after a Ninja Turtle and a web troll so...Sakura Faye-Sakura after the flowers which bloom at the time she was born and because I remembered seeing the name on my Gelly Roll pens (the most coveted pens ever when I was growing up) and always loved it.Faye is a reference to the Cowboy Bebop character Faye Valentine.and lastly my latest son...Jonas Caspian-His middle name (previously debated to be his first name) was originally supposed to be Hunter after Hunter S Thompson but, as much as I love his written work, I didn't want to name my kid after a drunk.  Instead his middle name ended up becoming about as a reference to The Chronicles of Narnia's Prince Caspian character.So his first name?  It's a Weezer reference of course.  I joked about having it be in his birthing announcement but it never ended up happening.  Nonetheless I thought him having a song he could use in intros would be kind of cool... that and Rivers Cumomo is also extremely attractive.  (Note: his middle name almost was Rivers as well but I didn't want to overdo it with the Weezer references)

If your last name is different than your spouse's last name, how will you name your children?

Right now, I'm finally qualified to answer this.I kept my maiden name after marriage. There were technical difficulties with my job at the time that rather required my maiden name, and my husband didn't care either way. Besides, we have a sort of a predicament that his last name has some not very nice connotations in Russian, while mine is simply a pain whenever it needs to be spelled, pronounced, or otherwise relayed. And together they are so awkward that hyphenation was out of the question.Then we had a vague agreement that "the boys will get the paternal surname and the girls the maternal one", and left it at that.Our first son received his dad's last name. A simple conventionally Russian name combined nicely with the Russian last name. The second child turned out to be a boy as well, but by then the agreement was entirely forgotten and we didn't expect a horde of children of both genders to distribute our last names in accordance with it anyway; the second boy would be the last one.Now, the second boy received a name that was less popular in Russia and more western-Slavonic. This time, his dad insisted that we gave him my last name because 1) he wasn't too pleased with his own last name and he wasn't sure about continuing it for this reason, 2) he felt that my name deserved to be continued - none of my siblings and cousins managed to pass it on, so this was its last chance, 3) he felt that it combined better with the second boy's name. So, after some debate, my last name it was.Some of our relatives are freaked out by this decision; others are amused.Coincidentally (absolutely so!), the first son's full name is the same as his paternal grandfather's, while the second son's full name is the same as his maternal great-great-uncle's. The former is Russian, the latter was Western Belarusian. So this all fits in nicely. We're curious to see how it pans out and how the kids will take it when they're old enough to judge for themselves. My husband calls it A/B-testing.

Did you choose your child’s name? If so, how did you choose that name?

I went back to full-time work when my first baby was five weeks old. (My then-husband had taken on the role of stay-at-home-dad.)On my first day back at work, a client came into the office with a newborn baby. I was, as you can imagine, feeling a little teary and missing my own baby, so I ended up holding and cuddling this newborn for quite some time. I absolutely adored this baby boy’s name. It wasn’t one I’d ever considered when naming my own son, but it called to me.That night when I got home, I said to my then-husband: “If we have another baby, we should name him ______.*”To my great surprise, he looked at me, not like I was a crazy person, but like I was a genius. “Yeah,” he said. He said it aloud a few times, both on its own and in conjunction with our surname, and nodded. “That’s perfect.”Time passed. Our baby grew into a toddler. When he was two, my then-husband and I swapped roles. I worked from home in between being a stay-at-home mum. I realised I loved our family just the way it was. I couldn’t imagine having a second child.A couple of months after my son turned three, I sat down with my then-husband to have a talk about the future. “I’m thirty-three now,” I said. “We really need to make a firm decision about whether or not we’re going to have any more children.”The conversation didn’t last long. Both of us were happy with our little family the way it was. We loved our son with the fire of a thousand suns. We decided not to have any more children.A week later, I discovered I was seventeen weeks pregnant.Although we were both shocked by the pregnancy, neither of us were surprised when the scan showed we were having a boy. We’d already chosen his name three years earlier.These days, I can’t imagine a world without my gorgeous, funny, future rock-star. And it’s become family legend that he was determined to be born from the moment we chose his name. He was just waiting for the most droll moment to make his appearance.[*] I wish I could share his name with you, but I don’t ever use my children’s names on the internet. I want them to be able to create their own online personas when they’re old enough, without being burdened by anything I’ve ever said/shared about them.