I want to talk today about name regret, but not quite in the way we usually would on a baby-naming blog. Today I would like the subject to be about regrets we still have many years later: not fresh postpartum regrets, or regrets about a name we used two or three years ago that is making things difficult with a current baby, but things we still wish we’d done differently long afterward—even if we don’t necessarily regret the names we actually used, and even if we don’t necessarily know what we would have done instead, and even if we think if we had it to do over we’d probably end up doing it the same way, and even if it’s a mild regret that doesn’t bug us much or often. (Though also if we do and we do and we don’t and it does.)
And this can include anything, small or large: regretting a spelling, regretting using one honor name instead of another, regretting not using a name for a reason that turned out not to matter, regretting a whole naming philosophy—whatever. Feel free to go on at considerable length; I’m planning to.
1. I regret using my own family’s surname as only a second middle name. I can defend the decision in part by saying that 21 years ago, and with both of us coming from conservative Christian families, using my surname in any way at all seemed pretty huge and tradition-breaking. I can also defend it in part by saying that I STILL don’t know exactly what I would have wanted to do differently. Do I wish we’d hyphenated? Do I wish we’d used my surname for the kids? Do I wish we’d used a double surname? I don’t know, not really, I just spin through the possible options I didn’t want when I theoretically had the option to choose them.
I guess what I wish is that I hadn’t thought of “second middle name” (not even “middle name” but SECOND middle name, the one that gets left off by default) as such a huge ask (not that Paul made it seem that way, just that to me it seemed like a lot to ask for), and such a huge stance. I guess what I further wish is that we didn’t have a patriarchal naming system that means, for heterosexual couples, that using the father’s surname isn’t even viewed as the giant, enormous concession by the mother it is, but instead is considered the default, the automatic, the not-really-worth-discussing-except-theoretically, the thing many mothers don’t even consider a factor in whether they should get more say in the other names. I am happy every time I see an example of a family where this is not the case.
2. I regret not even CONSIDERING using my own first name as my daughter’s middle name, even though I love her actual middle name. But I didn’t even CONSIDER using my name, and I regret that. We considered using Paul’s name as a middle name for the boys, but rejected it because (1) the kids were already getting his surname and (2) my mother-in-law kept “subtly” suggesting it, which turned my heart against it. But we never even DISCUSSED using my first name as a middle name for Elizabeth. It makes me a little weepy to think that she could have had my birth first/last names as her two middles. Furthermore, my mother and I have had many, many, many discussions about how our first names, both of which have the rhythm of my name (Kristen), just don’t WORK as middle names because of the rhythm: that emphasis on the first syllable just makes them really obviously FIRST names, and unworkable as middles. But think about some REALLY REALLY COMMON male middle names that have the same rhythm: Joseph. Michael. Robert. Edward. Andrew. Daniel. David. William. Thomas. Stephen. It’s not the rhythm. The rhythm is not the issue. ALL OF MY BOYS HAVE MIDDLE NAMES WITH THAT RHYTHM. But somehow my name just doesn’t work for some reason, some completely mystifying and absolutely-not-because-it’s-a-girl-name reason, I guess we’ll never know.
What are some of your regrets?
We hyphenated our daughter’s name and I really don’t know what we would have done differently–using his last name only was not an option for us–but sometimes I wish we had combined our last names. Her last name is pretty long and people make crummy comments about it a lot.
Our daughter is Frances nn Frankie. I love it most days, but it was a name reached in compromise. I am not sure it was the first choice for either of us. We both loved Frankie, I wanted Francesca as her full name and my husband didn’t like it. I was fine! totally fine! with Frances. When she was born-after a very hard pregnancy and failed induction–my husband looked at me and told me her name was my decision bc I had been through so much. There is a small part of me that wishes I had made a run for Francesca or even gone for my favorite name that he outright rejected (Della). Then again, I still contend that would be dirty, so I am mostly ok with the outcome.
So I guess what I am saying is naming a baby is really hard.
Also, now realizing this isn’t quite “many years later” regret (she is 21 months), but seeing as she will be an only, I am not worrying about more names, etc. Sorry if I flogged the rules a bit!
Oh, I loved Francesca too and my husband hated it because it sounded too “rich!”
Oh I didn’t even consider giving my daughter my first name as a middle either, but I wish I had! Especially since my name is not common, whereas her first name is relatively popular in her age group! Bah. Well, Ava makes for a great middle name, so I hope she considers it for any future kids!
I wish we had given my husband’s great grandmother’s name – Zeppa – to one of our daughters as a middle name. It’s such a conversation piece and I’ve never run across it anywhere else (I know, shades of Marx Brothers). I am encouraging my youngest whose first name starts with A to just adopt it as her middle so she can be AZ.
I’m happy that we hyphenated the kids last name and that my name comes first.
I regret that we didn’t maintain my maiden name as a family. It wasn’t something we discussed and rejected, it was something that never occurred to me as an option. I was really excited to take my husband’s surname for “tradition” (which seems less important to me now but seemed very romantic then) and plus my married name makes me sound like a French romance novelist which I quite enjoy. I ditched my given middle name and took my maiden name as my middle name… and then gave my daughter my given middle name. But I really wish I had considered trying for us all to have both surnames. It’s not a burning regret – we could make the change now, after all. But it’s a mild wistfulness for something that would have passed on more of my name to my kiddo. (Especially since her first name is an honor name from my husband’s side – one I loved above all family name options and pushed for!)
I am still sad that we could not use my Mother’s maiden name (Parker) as a first name for either of my kids. Our last name starts with a P and I COULD NOT give a child the initials PP.
I wish we had just named Quinn, Quinn. We went with a family name that ended up being a mistake on Ellis Island records that no one alerted to until he was months old. We did not keep the name a secret! If there was a problem with the name, why didn’t anyone tell us? I do consider doing a legal name change from time to time. Just give him the name we call him.
Sometimes I wish that we would have left the last “h” off of Hannah. She has my middle name, and I think it would have been something to have the less popular “a” ending, the same as Sara is for me. BUT, then we would have lost the palindrome, so…I guess it’s fine.
Overall, and after naming 5 kids, I don’t really have any regrets.
My daughter’s middle name is catherine. Perfectly fine. Lovely. And I cannot FOR THE LIFE OF ME REMEMBER WHY WE CHOSE IT.
I had very strong feelings for her first name, and husband acquiesced cuz he liked the name and it was important to me. So my memory is that I let him choose the middle, and he went with a saint name. He swears this is not the case and I picked it. It is not an honor name or anything. If I were going with the saint thing, I would have personally gone Frances. So … mystery as a name regret?
I feel so bad for laughing, but with so many stories you read about couples holding bitterness for a choice, and people holding onto the name choices they made for years and years, it’s really funny to have someone have a name and have no recollection of how you got there.
This isn’t a baby name but I regret changing my last name upon marriage basically every day. But it seems too late to go back now!! Happy tenth anniversary, honey, I’m changing my name…
Yep. I took my maiden name as my new middle name but the DMV kept my given middle name, so the state department initially rejected my passport application because they weren’t a perfect match. So much bureaucracy could have been avoided if I’d kept my name.
THIS HAPPENED TO ME. Whhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy. I didn’t even find out until 5 years later because the state we lived in originally the dmv accepted my middle name The new state won’t. So I have correct but non matching documents uggggh.
YES! Still and often and I get SO ANNOYED if I think about. Gggrrrrrr.
Me too! I didn’t change my name until our 3rd when we were moving overseas and I’d be doing lots of alone travel with them so I wanted my passport and my kids to all have the same last name. 10 years later I still hate it- it just doesn’t feel like me when I say or sign my name. My husband frequently suggests that I change it back but that seems like there is no way that wouldn’t be misinterpreted and I do like being the Lastname Family. So… I look forward to future generations figuring this one out.
Oh me too. The province I live in wouldn’t let me do a double barrelled surname without a legal name change, so I just dropped my maiden and I wish I had instead just dropped the idea of taking my husband’s name. I hate the name, I think it’s ugly sounding and doesn’t flow well with my first name, and it’s Dutch and I technically can’t even pronounce it correctly. And ugh the bureaucracy of all the places you have to update using different procedures. For NO GOOD REASON. My maiden name was great! Should have just kept it and saved myself all the hassle.
I regret that I didn’t give our third daughter my middle name. Her three siblings all have honor middle names and she is the only one who doesn’t. She is my December baby and her middle name is Noelle, which I love but looking back I don’t know why I didn’t even think to put my middle name in the slot.
I sometimes regret picking Anna for my daughter. I wanted something classic that would avoid the generational time stamp that girl names get, but it’s been way more common than I anticipated. I kind of wish I had gone for something more off beat, like Verity or Agatha or Maeve. But what’s done is done when your kid is 14!
I have a four-year-old Anna and I chose her name for the same reason: as you no date stamp. It wasn’t especially popular the year she was born either (here in the UK) but, nevertheless, she shares her name with another girl at preschool. I get what you mean about wanting something quirkier. Anna does blend in a bit. I still love it though.
This doesn’t technically meet the rules as my son is still little and we are planning on having more children, but otherwise it seems like the kind of regret you mean (as in, I don’t regret his actual name, and I don’t really know what we could have done differently, and it isn’t something that I think about often or that will affect future children’s name choices, but it is a regret I think I will have forever).
When I was eight months pregnant I had a very vivid dream that someone was handing me a baby, and a voice said “this is your son Constantine”. We didn’t know whether we were having a boy or a girl, but I woke up from that dream 100% convinced, like deep in my bones in a way that I can’t really explain, that he was going to be a boy. And he was. I said several times in that last month that if we had a boy we should call him Constantine, partly joking but also it was something that kept tugging at me even though it had never been even remotely a possibility before and was nothing like any of the other names on our list and we have no heritage connection to it and we already had a solid boy name. When he was born I pushed to have it included as another middle name and my wife was sort of ready to humour me, but when she went to register his birth the clerk literally laughed at how many names he had, so she decided against it. (He already has two middle names, which is not in itself a deal breaker – we’re English/Scottish and it’s not uncommon to have two or more middle names, I have three – but we also hyphenated our last names, so he would have had SIX initials if we added Constantine). I love the name we gave him, and there’s no way we would have wanted to give up either of his middle names (one for each of our dads), and neither of us wanted to give up our surname or to combine names so hyphenation was the only option, and six initials really is a bit much. BUT I do think we missed out on an amazing name story opportunity, and I regret that we were put off by a total stranger in a registry office, and also I worry that I somehow messed up by not using his “real” name (I’m not a new-agey dream-interprety astrology kind of person, by the way, which is what made the whole experience so striking to me). I love to think of him as secretly Constantine.
That is a captivating story!
I low key regret my oldest daughter’s middle name. She was named Claire after my grandmother and we gave her my MIL’s first name as her middle name. My grandmother’s name was Claire Elizabeth and I knew her mother was Claire as well. My daughter was named Claire Christina. Several years later I found out that my great-grandmother was Claire Edna. I immediately wished my Claire had an “E” middle name as well. If I could go back her name would be Claire Emmeline.
Much like you Swistle, I wish we would have considered doing something different with last names. I don’t know that I would have made any changes to the ultimate decision, but our last name comes from my husband’s side of the family, which has generations of abusive men (and we are now fully estranged from them).
I wish I would have given more thought to my daughter’s middle name. I still like the one we chose and the reasons for which we chose it (a more-common middle name to balance out an unusual first name), but now that we are done having children, there are many names left that I love and would have used instead.
14 years later, I sort of regret spelling our eldest daughter’s name Norah vs Nora. It gets misspelled a fair amount, but even worse, gets confused with Noah a lot.
I am also a little sad that I didn’t use my maiden name as a middle or second middle for any of my four children. It just didn’t sound right with our surname. But as a second middle, I wouldn’t have minded so much in retrospect.
And I do love the family middle we chose for our son but am a bit sad that we didn’t use my dad’s first, middle or last for him now that my father has passed. At the time, I was saving them for my brother to use but he had only one child (a daughter). Hopefully one of my future grandkids will have one of them!
My regrets are all about the patriarchy.
I regret giving my oldest his father’s surname. At the time he was born, I already knew his dad was trash, we were not married, I don’t know why I did that. It just seemed like how it was DONE. Babies get their father’s surname. I wish I had at least included my surname somewhere in there.
My husband and I both have my maiden name a second middle name and I am pleased with that arrangement. My husband was willing to change his surname to mine and have all kids have my surname, but I actually rejected this because my oldest has his dad’s surname and it somehow seemed like too much to be like everyone has YOUR MOTHER’s surname but you! A ha! I decided I wanted to just apply a rule of in our family babies have their father’s last names for the sake of inclusion of my oldest.
THAT SAID, I wish I had given my two younger kids my maiden name as a second middle or maybe as a first last name. And although I very much love (1) my husband and (2) my son’s name, I remain a tad salty that the child shares his father’s first name and is signed up for a lifetime of confusion by going by his middle name. I don’t regret that EXACTLY, it was worth the joy it brought my husband I think, and his willingness to take my last name as part of his name made me feel like it was less about the patriarchy, and his desire to name a possible girl (we didn’t have one) after me made me feel like it was at least fair, but I continue to have mixed feelings.
I also did that with my oldest, with a trash father, and I will regret it basically forever. Except I married the garbage man, dropped my own dearly beloved maiden name for his, and subsequently divorced less than a year later (Child pornography charges! Multiple other women! Went to prison for extortion!). But then I somehow decided to keep his name even after the divorce, because it was important for me to have the same last name as my daughter, so I was STUCK WITH MY GARBAGE EX’S NAME for years and years and years.
When I married my now-husband, I was so relieved to be rid of garbage-man’s name that I didn’t even think about adding my maiden name back as even a second middle name. We just had our fifth anniversary and even though I love my husband and love his name and we have another daughter with that last name, I have Definite Feelings about not having my maiden name back in some way.
Right off the top of my head, I can think of three women who were stuck with the name of Garbage Ex-Spouse when the marriage ended because they’d made a name for themselves with GES’s name as their last name.
Also, Elizabeth Warren. (I don’t think her ex was garbage, just . . . not the man for her). But let’s call it the Warren Problem.
Yowsa!
I wish I’d been stronger about my name choice for my son. His first name is after my FIL, and has my husbands surname. He goes by his middle name, which was my husbands only boy name which I resisted but in a drugged, blood loss haze I gave in mid c-section, and my husband wouldn’t even discuss it afterward. I wish I’d fought harder for a name with a connection to my family or added my surname as a second middle. I don’t hate his name but it doesn’t feel quite right.
Oh, I am so sorry, Amanda! I’m so mad at your husband right now. And the patriarchy.
Thank you!
This isn’t a baby name regret, but I do regret taking my husband’s last name with my first marriage. I don’t blame myself for doing so, but , like you, I really wish that our last name system was not patriarchal and it was not still the common thing to do. I married young and then went on to get a graduate degree under my married name and start a professional career using my married name. Now I am 12 years into that career and getting remarried. I kept my married name when I divorced a few years ago because it is my professional name (and my kids’ name). But what do I do now that I’m getting remarried? Keep my ex-husband’s name while married to a new guy? It’s just such a messed up system. I’d be interested to know if any of your readers have dealt with this and what they decided to do.
I want to add..Overall, it bugs me that men get this complete name that is their identity their whole life. Women are expected to be malleable with this aspect of their identity.
THIS.
Yes, yes, yes and yes!!
My MIL kept her 1st married name when she remarried. She is professionally known by that name and she said she wanted the same name as her grandchildren (all boys). I don’t think her newer husband was thrilled with it but… ?
Thankfully my fiance is fine with whatever I do, and it’s not just my ex-husband’s name…it’s been my name for 16 years. I’m just angry at the system, ha.
Hi. I don’t know what field you are in, but there are a few different ways I have seen women handle this.
1. Academia– you can get an ORCiD number– which basically ties all publications and work to you regardless of name.
2. Slow transition– I had a mentor who went by ex’s name for a long time, and slowly began working with a hyphenated name (ex’s last name, new last name), and then after about a year of that phased into new last name. SO she was Mary exlastname, then Mary exlastname-newname, then Mary newname. By the end of the year, everyone basically knew who she was.
3. Only using the old last name professionally, but transitional all personal life stuff to your maiden or new married name.
Thanks for the advice! I’ve considered #3, but a colleague told me she has major regrets for going that route (many years ago) because it’s a big PITA dealing with two separate names for different things. I’ve also considered #2…that’s probably where I’ll end up.
I know several people in academia who did #3. I kept my last name, which I generally have no regrets about. But in the last week, I had 2 separate rounds of last name confusion due to having a different last name than spouse and kids.
I still regret taking my husband’s last name. We dated for three years before we got married and I was firmly in the no name change camp, but it was hard to defy all the family pressure during wedding planning. I was pretty salty about it. Still am. I basically go my my maiden name his last name un hyphenated on every thing. Maybe I’ll add a hypen some day. Because of my lingering frustration with my official last name, I basically had all naming power for all kids. My reasoning- if they have his last name, then I choose all first and middle names. My husband had veto power, but he’s laid back and agreeable. I WISH so hard that they all had a hyphenated last name. Has anyone changed their kids last name long past the baby stage?
My kid is eleven and one friend just changed her last name from her deadbeat dad’s to her awesome mom’s. Another kid also had just his dad’s last name and earlier this year hyphenated to include his mom’s last name. Another friend changed to an entirely new first name that felt like a better fit. When my husband was this age, he started going by his middle name because it felt more like him. Another person I know started going by her gender-neutral middle name in her late thirties because she felt people weren’t taking her seriously as a professional with a name like Tiffany. You can do whatever you want!
My early front runner for my older son was Theodore, nn Theo, because my dad was Teddy, nn Ted; my bff was Theodore, nn Teddy; and my late FIL went by TJ, and it would be easy to get a J middle name in there. My husband’s reaction was, “Ugh, no, Theo Huxtable is so annoying.” I also wish I’d given one or both boys my maiden name as a middle, since my brother and I will now be the last carriers of our rare family name from our branch, and that makes me sad.
grr to your husband over theo huxtable!
I very much regret not giving my first born a family middle name. We considered my mother’s and mother in laws as well as some others and ultimately rejected them as not flowing quite right with our daughter’s name. She’s almost seven now and I really wish we’d gone with a family honor middle name even if it didn’t flow as well. We used a family name for my second daughter’s middle and it gives me such joy and the honoree was so pleased (my husband’s grandma).
My nearly six year old made a list of baby names for her little sister (now nearly two). We didn’t use any and instead gave her three names we liked and I really wish we had used one of my big girl’s choices. Most of them were very random but one was Ocean and that actually would have been really pretty and suited her!
I had a “revelation” when I was a few days pregnant that it was a girl, and that we were giving her my grandmother’s surname as a first name — my grandmother’s name was Anna Lee, so it’s not exactly weird or daring. Years later I came across the name Anneliese, and wished I’d named her that, in part because there are so many Lees in my family.
Having said that, my daughter, who has risen pretty far in a high-powered company says that because Lee is androgynous, lots of doors were opened to her that might not have been were she an Annaeliese.
Years after my children were born (they are 43 and 39) I became very interested in genealogy and came across some family names I wish I might have had the courage to use had I known about them. My great-grandmothers were Leva and Ingeborg, and both were strong, remarkable women for their times. There are also lots of ancestors named Kari (Car-ee) and Randa/Randi.
My second daughter’s name is Suzanna (a multi-generational family name of my side; we nicknamed her Suki. Tor a story too awful to go into, after we divorced my ex-husband essentially changed her name legally to Suki. I love the name, but…Had we named her Kari or Randa/Randi that might not have happened.
I kept my name, and it’s my oldest’s middle name but not part of the younger brothers’ names.
My sister’s kids (twins) both have her/our last name as their middles, and my BIL assumed I had done the same (and/or forgotten that we didn’t do that — we did tell everyone the names, and he came for the baptisms, so what the heck?) for all our kids. I wonder if naming two kids simultaneously somehow made that the default.
I also can’t get over the sense I had that my BIL thought my sister was somehow a more committed feminist than I am because of the middle name thing. The guy is the smuggest reactionary in all the land, and not that it’s a competition, but I feel as though anyone who isn’t putting up with him until her last breath is a more committed feminist than my sister. (Not that anyone has to be a feminist.)
I regret the order of my 27 year old son’s first and middle names. He goes by his middle name and always has. He’s never gone by the first name and I can’t stand when people call him by that name. Totally my fault, obviously. He’s named after his 2 uncles by using their middle names and they sounded funny with the order reversed. I should have just gone with the weird cadence and saved everyone a lot of grief.
We waited until our first baby was born to decide on a name. She’s seven years old now. We went in with a short list of four names (we knew we were having a girl), and planned to choose after the birth. From our short list, we selected Fiona, and it didn’t really feel like “the perfect fit” until a few months later. We love it now.
Waiting to select the name felt smart and respectful, at the time, but neither of us realized how strong my depression during the pregnancy really was until it was over (a few weeks after the birth). My pregnancy was difficult, and I didn’t connect with the fetus at all. Like, AT ALL. I had no emotional connection to my daughter whatsoever until after she was born. I was just going through the motions.
We both agreed that thinking of the baby by name would’ve helped significantly to form a bond during the pregnancy. This time around, we’re naming early on. Hopefully, we’re better prepared to deal with it if I go into a depressive state again; this is just one of many ways we’re tackling that.
I gave my baby the wrong name. It was a ‘he’ name, and as it turns out, she’s a she. And that meant she for to pick her own name, which is pretty cool. There were, however, a few awkward years, where the name I gave her just didn’t do her any favours: when using her name in the play ground would awkwardly identify her as a boy in a dress. Now, I’m not on a single-handed crusade to make all names gender-neutral. And I know not all trans stories sound like my daughter’s, and that most kids aren’t trans. But that said, if we ever have another baby, I’m pretty sure we’ll be going for a gender-neutral name, or at least a name with a gender-neutral nickname.
*internet hugs* Thanks for so much for sharing.
I regret not keeping my last name, and not having my last name as any part of my son’s name.
I only have one regret and to be honest, I feel conflicted about the regret. My husband let me have complete control over #1’s middle name. For #2, I wanted to use the masculine version of my middle name. My middle name was passed down through the women of my family for 3 generations and I was not going to have a daughter to continue the tradition. Husband wasn’t crazy about the name and had a middle he felt really excited about. So I let him have complete say. At the time, it seemed fair to give him this middle. I also love that he actually got to use a name he felt excited about because he so rarely gets excited about any name. When I think about all of that, I feel very happy with #2’s middle. But sometimes I do feel twinges of regret that I didn’t push harder to use the version of my own middle.
I love my kids’ names and wouldn’t change them, but I do wish we’d been able to find a German, or German-adjacent, boy name that we liked. Basically I wish that Callum were a German name. It’s the one little niggling imperfection about his name, that it’s not connected to half his nationality (his middle name – Michael – comes from my side, although it’s a name in Germany too) and that German people aren’t familiar with it and have a hard time pronouncing it at first. Annika’s name is perfect in this regard – I LOVE it *and* it’s a name in both countries – and I wish Callum had that too. My alternative option for Callum would have been Felix, which is a popular German name, but I like Callum better than Felix and I like that Callum has an obvious nickname option, so Felix would have had a niggling imperfection too.
I low key regret only giving my youngest one middle name. I looooove middle honor names – we thought we were having a boy at first, had the whole name picked out, and then WHOOPS NO FIRST ULTRASOUND WAS WRONG, IT’S A GIRL. And then I couldn’t come up with a single girl honor name my husband could tolerate, so we went with his first choice.
I wanted to do a second middle name as an honor name, since it would basically never be used but at least I would know it was there. Husband veto’d, because “that’s weird.”
I was operating on the assumption that maybe with the next baby I could talk him around or we could use our awesome boy name, but now it looks like we’re done having kids. :( I wish I’d pushed harder before.
My only regret, which is just a minor regret, is that I did not use my maiden name (Fisher) as a middle for one of our boys. I thought about it with our second son, Zachary, but my parents didn’t like Zachary Fisher. They talked me out of it and my husband was so disappointed baby #2 wasn’t a girl that he was having a hard time liking any name. So we went with Owen instead… which had absolutely no sentimental value or family connection. I only briefly considered Fisher as a middle for our third son, Jeremy, but at that time I was focused on the name Matthew after not being able to use it as a first name so we went with Jeremy Matthew. But Jeremy Fisher would have been a cool name, too. (A Beatrix Potter character!)
We’re certain we are done with having kids after having three boys in three and a half years. I’m definitely done. Pregnancies are physically hard on me and the first six months postpartum wreck havoc on my mental health. So we won’t be to use our favorite girl name. That breaks my heart a little, too.
I did not realize that my daughter’s name AND her nickname would be difficult to pronounce, and I likely would have made a different choice if i had known. Alas, when she was one day old and the nurse came to get her for her weigh in and loudly said “BEAT.RICE? BEAT—- RICE?” I was like……oh. shit. (Also people calling her Bee-UH vs Bea (rhymes with pea) makes me slighly batty.) Regrets.
We know a family whose daughter is Bea but they pronounced it be-a and I always want to say b.
Beat, Rice is not a normal way to pronounce Beatrice. You should disregard that nurse and her mistake.
I ordered a pizza once and the kid called my name to give me my order and pronounced Leigh as: Lee-eye-gah. I said it was just pronounced Lee and they said, oh, that is SOOOOO weird. Whatevs to pizza person and whatevs to that nurse of yours.
My dad and uncle (in their 60s) called/call my grandmother (in her 80s now) Beat Rice and have since they were snotty teenagers. It’s a thing :)
Well, 20 years later and I am still regret that I didn’t insist on naming my youngest Miller. (My maiden name) If I was naming him today, that would be his name no matter the objections. I am tired of the patriarchy and it’s naming conventions. My husband offered up the middle name spot but his 3 older brothers all have ‘J’ middle names and I wanted to keep it that way. We didn’t do honor names but they all (& I) have my husband’s last name. I did drop my middle name and replace it with Miller. And now, I use the initial always.
I have to add, the entire family including the child in question are glad I didn’t follow through on the plan to name him Miller but I’m still sad they all get to carry my husband’s family name and no one is carrying on mine. (My brother doesn’t have any kids so… this is pretty much it for my line.)
Me, to husband, after reading this post: “do you have any baby name regret?”
Husband: “what do you mean? Give me an example”
Me, thinking about it for a moment: “well, do you wish we’d…. no, wait, you wouldn’t have baby naming regret would you? Because we’ve used all your names. Every single one.”
Hmmm. In fairness to him we have two boys, and basically every male in the family was called James or John. So those are their middle names. Oh, and my husband’s surname only for both (and me). Oh and my husband’s first name as a second middle for the youngest. Hmm.
I love this topic, probably because I have lots of thoughts. My oldest is in her teens and her first name has been a struggle since day one. Its Kyra but spelled -eira which I thought was “normal” but my goodness it seems it’s mispronounced or misspelled by everyone. I had zero inkling it would be a problem and when she was 10 would tell her every year she can change the spelling, pronunciation or the whole name any time she wants.
It’s funny also my husband does not like his full first name. He uses the short version and doesn’t let anyone call him the other. He won’t even use the whole name in his signature. I’ve tried different approaches to suggest he legally change it, but he won’t.
Personally I also regret not keeping my maiden name somehow. Now I tell every woman who is getting married to keep it. It’s part of us, it’s who we are! It helped when I realized we’re all technically from 4 families. Our last name only represents one quarter of our ancestry.
I wish I hadn’t married my ex and given our daughter his last name. She hates it anyway. When she was in 7th grade she even considered changing her name to her stepdad’s name but she was afraid to hurt her dad’s feelings.
My maiden name is now my middle name and I like that.
My kids are double-barrelled, with both of our names. And on the one hand, I SO love that their names represent both of us and also our values on gender equality. But also… neither of my kids have super short first names. And my husband’s name is very Germanic and consonant-heavy. So I worry that they’ll grow up feeling like their names are a big old mouthful and resent us. So not a regret; more of a niggling fear.
Now that problem could have been solved if my husband had been on board with my favourite girls name. Tess! It’s so perfect. Nobody could object to having a lengthy last name when their first is so short and sweet.
Mine too – double-barreled surnames (distinctly from different cultures, to boot) and long first names. But when we all stick our hands in a pile and shout “go team hisname-myname” I think how glad I am that we did this.
I am just trying to mean it when I say I don’t care what they do with their names when they’re older. Turns out I do care. If you’re going to choose, please pick mine!
Ha! Yes that’s so true. When my annoyingly traditional (blunt!) friend asks me what happens when Margot G…-P… marries Bob Simmonds -Labradoodle, I always say ‘she gets to make her own mind up, if she’s mature enough to marry she’s mature enough for that.’ But what I *actually* mean is that I hope she persuades whoever she marries to take her name, or she keeps my half, ha! Mine is much more succinct so I feel like I’ve got a chance…
I love my son’s name but regret how popular it has become. When I named him his name was in the mid-60s on the Social Security database chart. Now it’s in the low 20s. At the time I had an inkling that perhaps I would come to feel it was too popular, but it was the only boy name my husband and I both liked a lot. Now I wish I had searched for something out of the top 100. My daughters (both younger than my son) both have much more unusual names (one is in the 800s and the other isn’t even on the list). When I introduce them their names still give me a little thrill even now, years later (especially my youngest’s, which is funny because hers was the one I felt the least certainty about when she was named). But my son’s name doesn’t feel all that exciting to me. I think it definitely suits him and I still think it’s a really nice name and I can’t imagine him called anything else. But if I could make it less popular I would.
I regret my son’s middle name. It was my ex-husband’s friends name, a person we have not seen for at least 30 years. I wish we had used a family name.
Oooh, boy. I’ll bite. I slightly regret taking my husband’s name, only because I wish there were better default options. I like the name, and I like that we share it as a family, and I like that I CHOSE it, versus my maiden name which is, of course, my father’s surname. But the patriarchy is annoying. “That’s not why I did it!” I want to say.
I slightly regret my older daughter’s name, which is lovely unto itself, but which rhymes with several unpleasant things. When I was pregnant, hubby said this was no big deal, but he is super oblivious and I worry that she will get made fun of (she’s only five so this hasn’t come up yet).
A non-regret is giving my second daughter my middle name. I am really surprised how much this pleases me.
Yesss to the first part of this! I did not like the sound/look/letters of my maiden name. I love my husband’s surname and the history associated with it. I love that it’s short and generally easy to pronounce (my maiden name was not). I’m proud of a lot of parts of his family… and while I have reconciled with mine, I could not WAIT to no longer be associated with my maiden name family. I also like my initials better now!
And honestly, I loved changing my name during a new season of life! I can totally understand the comment above about wanting one identity your whole life… but I’m personally the opposite. I love the idea that of mixing it up a bit, and always felt bad for men that they didn’t have the “new name, new season” marker that women often have. Of course now I know that they could if they wanted to…. but anyway, I’ve always loved the idea that one day I would hopefully get to change my name simply for the sake of changing it! Having one name my whole life feels.. boring for me personally? But I FULLY SUPPORT others who do not feel that way :) I also changed the nickname I introduced myself as in college. Ha, I promise I don’t have a deep-seated identity problem. I just love names so much that I think getting to change things up in one’s life is a cool/fun option!
This being said, I think i just regret that the patriarchal system exists. And that keep your name makes a Statement and changing it makes a Statement. Especially when we don’t intended any of those statements.
AJ, I am so fond of your comments! I feel an affinity perhaps because i was raised being called by the nickname “A.J.” and changed to the nickname “Alex” when I was in grad school in the early 2000’s because I felt I’d outgrown the childhood name. “Alex” is still the name I use today, although my husband and I recently moved across the country and I 100% considered introducing myself as yet something different in our new location. (But didn’t, ultimately.) Anyway, I get the re-christening oneself as a marker of growth or change! :)
My son goes by his middle name. That name was always his name. It is what I intended to call him all along. And instead of using it as a first name, I got worried because it was so unusual although a family name. And if I had reversed his name it would have sounded like Trapper John of the Trapper John MD show which most people don’t even remember.
Ooh, I have this same pre-regret (I don’t have any children yet) — we’ve agreed on the middle name John and I can’t for the life of me think of a first name that doesn’t sound choppy. The closest I’ve gotten is Oliver John, but well….
1) I regret changing my last name full stop. I actually wanted to keep it as a second middle name but when I got to the social security office, the lady told me having all 4 names was too long. I had to choose on the spot to either a) give up my middle name (an honor name for an aunt who I love dearly and decided not to have children), b) totally give up my last name in favor of my husbands, or c) not change my name at all. I chose b and it now makes me so sad as I cannot stand my in laws. Even the fact that I have two children with my husbands last name and the fact that I am totally happy with my actual marriage give me no comfort that I now have a name with which I do not identify.
For reference my first name has 6 letters, my middle name has 9, my maiden name has 8, and my husbands last name has 5 letters.
2) I love my son’s name and I think it pairs well with my daughter’s name but I think it sounds bad with the word “and.” Its like my kids names are Owen and Evelyn. The “-en” ending of Owen sounds redundant to my ear when “and” comes after it. I didn’t realize this until my oldest was nearly 4 which was obviously far too late to do anything about it!
I had the SAME social security office experience. I straight up cried in the office and I think I scared the man who told me I couldn’t have all 4 names. He gave me time to process and I went with making my birth middle name just an initial and then still including my maiden name as the second middle and then my husband’s last name as my new last name. It is honestly annoying to this day. I am happy the initial is there, because I didn’t want to get rid of my middle name (also an honor name after my grandma). I just don’t understand why there needs to be such an arbitrary limit? It was explained to me that first and middle have a certain number limit and then last has a limit – I can imagine that puts a lot of people in a bind and should be a bit more flexible. My first name has 5 letters, my birth middle had 9 letters, my maiden name has 8 letters and my now last name has 5 letters.
WHAT. I have all four names on my Social Security card! For reference, I have a total of 27 letters, only 1 fewer letter than yours. Elizabeth has THIRTY letters, and I think her card might have something cut off or shortened on the card itself (I haven’t seen it in ages, so I can’t remember) but they let me DO it. Because THAT WAS HER NAME. It’s not as if names are legally required to be shorter than a certain number of letters!
I also have all four of my names on my Social Security card, and my driver’s license. Nobody said anything about it to me when I changed it. It seemed like no big deal to anyone. I would have cried too!
AHH this happened to me too and it’s such a lie! I dragged my week-old baby into the office with me and she told me I had to choose only one middle name so I panicked and kept my original and then the next day I dragged myself and my baby back to the office to change it to my maiden name as my middle and she just laughed at my angst and never once told me it would be totally fine and legal to keep both. I would have felt so much better about it all if I was just adding onto my name instead of taking away.
I’ll join in with most who have commented and say I very deeply regret taking my husband’s name. I also don’t particularly like that the other most obvious option was to keep a name from my dad’s side but I would prefer it. I always go by Ms. instead of Mrs., maybe as a way to show that I’m not just someone’s wife even though I share his name?
I have no regrets about my first daughter’s name, her first is an honor name and also happens to be my middle name. Her middle is my mother’s first name. I get a thrill saying her name every time.
I regret my second daughter’s name most days and I feel sad saying it because it doesn’t feel like her. I mostly choose my first daughter’s name so I felt I had to let my husband have more say the second time and he really strongly pushed for a name that I liked but didn’t feel like it was the one. We also agreed to use his mom’s name as her middle. I very badly wanted her to have my first name as her middle so both of my girls would have a part of my name but I think we decided two middles was too much. So often I think of her in my head as the first name choice that I really wanted to use, she even looks like it to me. I probably tell him every week that her name doesn’t feel like her name and I’m worried I’ll always think that and hope she never knows how much I love her sister’s name and not hers.
Hi Bette, I know this was a while back, but I’m curious if you ended up doing anything with regards to your second daughter’s name? Did you learn to like it? I’m having similar thoughts and he just turned 2 years old.
My daughter, now seven, was born 15 weeks early, so my regrets all have to do with me *not being done discussing* her name. Her birth was an emergency situation and I was unconscious. My (now ex)husband swears he asked me at one point if it was okay to announce the name we were thinking of, and I vaguely recall agreeing, nodding, trying to get him to leave me alone so I could go back to my hazy sleep. So she ended up with the name that was the frontrunner then, which was not coincidentally one he liked better than I did. Of course, NOW, the name she goes by totally suits her and I can’t imagine her with another.
But I still had doubts and unexpressed opinions and second thoughts. I wish I had argued harder for her last name to be mine. I planned on asking my friends who went by their middle names how much of a hassle it was. I thought her name might be too popular. In the days before she was born, I was mentally revisiting some of my favorites and trying new combinations. Now, when I think of her first name (she goes by her middle) I STILL think about how I would describe it as “Oh, it’s nice, it’s just not a name I would name my kid.” Except I did name my kid that! And now she is my only child and was my only chance for naming someone.
Mine are similar to yours, which is validating. I love my second kid’s name and I played it perfectly, based on the mistakes from my first kid.
She was premature and we didn’t have a name picked out and were freaked out about everything. Wish I had fought for my last name in there somewhere and my first name as well. I totally got bullied and gaslit the first time and the second time I picked first and middle.
Wish I hadn’t shared my ideas with my family who shot everything down, going so far to say that a perfectly normal classic name is the name of an ugly person! Well, the kids are 7 and 3 and it doesn’t matter anymore. Just hope they like their names!
Not my regret, but my mom’s. My dad insisted on naming my older sister after his grandmother. But my mom’s name is a version of the same name, with the same first syllable. She hates how often people think she named my sister for herself, when she didn’t.
Add to this the fact that after marriage my mom has the same first and last name as my dad’s mom, and it’s a whole lot of practically the same first and last name.
Hmmm, I regret not agreeing to the name Cordelia because I didn’t want anyone to think she was named after a Buffy character and I was worried it was going to become super popular. I really like the name!
Also, I gave one of my kids a recently deceased grandparents name as a middle which is not a tradition at all in my family and I like the name fine, but was disappointed that it got a neutral reaction.
I regret that we used the formal version of our kid’s name when we really like the shortened version (or I guess you could say nickname?). (Trying to explain this without saying the name is hard- but it’s like naming your kid Jacob but really preferring Jake.)
I also regret using one of my favorite boy names for our dog because I felt like it was “too weird” for an American kid. The name? Archie. :)
I wonder often about my mom and how it went naming her 4 kids….as the first born my name originally was Morgana Marie Natalie lastname. Yes, Morgana like King Arthur. Both grandmas had FITS that the long awaited first grandchild was saddled with that name and my parents changed it to Morgan. The Marie was honorary for both grandmas. The second middle name was for Natalie Wood who I guess my dad liked?! Looking from the lens of a parent I STILL don’t get how that all came about. It seems so random. My mom won out completely on my sister’s name (Elizabeth Theresa Susan – all family honor names). My dad snuck in on the last two babies (c-sections and my mom was tired) – Michael William Malachi and Andrew Frank Ishmael. INSERT BIG EYES as we are not a churchy crew….
I should ask my mom what names she had in the running that didn’t make the final cut.
1) I regret not pushing to name my middle DD in honor of my grandfather. We had already honored my grandmother (his wife) and I felt badly about playing favorites with one side. (They we’re favorites).
2) I regret not pushing more to make my youngest Violet. It’s funny because she calls herself that frequently and names dolls that, after I mentioned the name once as a possibility for her. She claims it’s her nn (it’s not like her name at all).
Growing up, I hated being at the end of the alphabet. I was nervous to take my turn reading aloud and never heard the other kids’ oral reports. I had more time to dread my turn. I was super shy. I decided I wanted to be in the top 5 of the alphabet. When my husband (a c last name) proposed, he was the first person I’d ever dated in the top 5. I joked that that was why I married him.
My 3 girls have very unusual names (not in the top 1000). I picked the first name and we used my mother’s first name as a middle name. My husband picked the second and she has my MIL’s first name as a middle name. With our last we decided my husband would name it if it were a boy and I would name it if it were a girl. That girl got another unusual first name and my first name as middle name.
I have two slight regrets:
1) my husband has a southern accent and we live in the Midwest. When he introduces middle kid, it sounds to midwesterners like he’s saying “Elephant.”
2) my first two daughters and I have 7 letters in our first names. My last daughter has a silent h in the traditional spelling of her name. I wanted us to all have 7 letter names, but my husband said we couldn’t give her an unusual name AND an unusual spelling and I agreed. I kind of wish I had left the h off.
I’m very happy all three kids have honorific middle names. I like the unusual first names (as a Melissa of the 80’s) unless we are shopping for personalized souvenirs.
Commenting because you said so on Twitter. I don’t regret my girls nes, although oldest goes by her middle (by design so her initials would not be JEW) and youngest has name often misheard as Olivia (without the O!). But they’re both the right names for them. They are 8 and 4, so I may change my mind with time.
1) I regret that my first daughter doesn’t have my grandmother’s first name, Helen, as her middle name. My husband wouldn’t even discuss baby names until the 9th month, so I blame my hormones. I really wanted to name her Helen nn Nell, but my husband didn’t like the name, and I thought we should both be on board but rather than suggest it as a middle name, I very dramatically removed it entirely from the discussion (apparently I was feeling very “all or nothing” that day). Years later (YEARS) I randomly paused and wondered why I had never even considered using it as a middle name, and I curse that thought because I’ve regretted it ever since and by that time my daughter knew and loved her name. We used honor names for our two other kids’ middle names and for our oldest, we just went with one that sounded nice, so my regret has increased with each child. But I’ll probably get over it. Maybe.
2) I worry I’ll have regret in four or five years with my 3rd child. This one might sound odd but I’m very apprehensive about how we spelled our youngest child’s name, and I wonder if I’ll experience regret when he gets to school. I nearly wrote to Swistle about my dilemma, but my husband was 100% certain, not budging an inch on the spelling, and I didn’t have a better alternative so it was either this spelling or a different name, and I LOVE the name we chose: Dashiell. We went with the traditional spelling (in the sense that it’s like the author Dashiell Hammett; we like literary names) because neither of us like invented spellings BUT I do wish the spelling and pronunciation lined up more (it’s pronounced dash-ul with vowel sounds like bashful or castle) but it looks like it’s pronounced da-SHEEL or da-SHELL. On the bright side, he goes pretty much exclusively by Dash, which is simple to spell and say. And we both love his name–I’m partly convinced he chose it himself because it seemed to float into my head out of nowhere. So I don’t think I’ll ever regret his name. I just wish I could’ve had my cake and eaten it too with an intuitive spelling that was also traditional and kept the literary connection. Alas.
3) Just because this thread seems to have gone off into a lot of last name regret, I’ll just pile on: I wish my last name and my husband’s last name weren’t so similar! Think Kitcher-Kircher. So hyphenating or using both were just impossibilities to me–it sounds ridiculous and no amount of sentiment could get me on board. I ultimately chose to have our children have my husband’s last name because his family needed the numbers frankly. His entire extended family is 7 people. I have 45 cousins one side. So whereas his family name would’ve died out with him, I have two brothers and many, many male cousins. It might sound silly, but it made me sad to think of his family name just disappearing at us. My husband had been open to anything I had been comfortable with, so I felt even more inclined to give him this win.
Otherwise I’m thrilled with our name choices and love them more everyday.
These are very very slight regrets, because I love love love love my daughters names and the meanings behind them all. I regret not being able to use all the honour names I wanted to for our 2 daughters. Daughter 1 has her first name after my grandfather (whose name also means the town that I grew up in), and her middle after my grandmother. Daughter 2 has her first after my dad, her 1st middle after a dear friend of mine, and her 2nd middle after my other grandmother. Both daughters have my partner’s last name, which I do not, and won’t ever. My other grandfather died before I was born, so really, the only person who missed out on an honour name is my mum. Which makes me sad for my mum. She has never mentioned it, and her being so understanding about it makes me even more sad. In hindsight, I should have used her name as a 2nd middle for my oldest daughter.
I also regret the oldest only have 1 middle name and the youngest having 2, it just doesn’t seem balanced to me.
Final slight regret is that daughter 2’s initials spell out a cool word (totally by accident) but it would have been cool if daughter 1 had that too.
But these are just slight regrets, and don’t keep me up at night at all.
I would also be interested in another post someday about the opposite – people who were really worried/hesitant about a name, and then it turned out to be fine down the road – meaning, spelling/pronunciation didn’t end up being an issue, or the SIL was fine with the “name theft”, or it was a mouthful but the kid embraced it, or there were no other Sophies in the entire town …
We’ve got that! Baby Name Issues That Weren’t Important in the Long Run
But it’s been awhile, and seems like it would be fun to do again!
I wish I had used my maiden name as a second middle or as a middle for at least one of my kids’ names.
I wish I had given more consideration to dropping my last name and taking my husband’s surname. I did not even consider not doing this and 10 years later I regret it. In hindsight I wish that my husband and I both would have changed our middle names to my surname. He hates his middle name anyway and my last name was “cool”. Then we could have given our children my surname as a middle then his last name. Seems like it would’ve been a great compromise. Our children both have family middle names – the oldest from his side the youngest from mine and I do like their names as a whole. I just gave zero thought to changing something that was part of my identity. I guess because I was in my 20s and I just thought it was what you did and what was expected of me.
We nixed the middle name I loved most for our firstborn (Alora) because I convinced myself it would run together with her first name (Wynne; rhymes with Lynn not Lenny) and sound weird (winnalora). Today, I don’t know what I was thinking. We had her middle name narrowed down to my maiden name (Bailey) and a name we just liked (Larue). We finally decided on the day we left the hospital, and I picked the wrong one. Why the heck was I fine with what is flagrantly a variant on Winnie the Pooh and not with the name I loved? Or a name that honored my family? Ah well. She has a not-froufy name and she is a not-froufy girl, so to paraphrase an episode of Winnie the Pooh, all’s well that ends well.
Also we have a goofy last name, and now that I’m divorced, it’s especially empty laughing with people when they hear it or trying to make fun of it before they can. Shouting that I married into it and kept the name for the kids is the name equivalent of “thanks it has pockets!”
What a fun discussion! Part of me regrets changing my last name to my husband’s when we got married. Like you, I still don’t have an alternative that makes me happy though. I would still like to have the same last name as my children, and there’s just no good solution without one person making the huge sacrifice of changing their whole last name.
We gave our first son my maiden name as his middle and I immediately regretted not doing that with my older girls. I didn’t think of it with my oldest because she was getting a first and middle honor name from my side of the family already, and I then felt obligated to use an honor name from husband’s side on our next child. But using my maiden name as my son’s middle made me so happy that I was bummed I hadn’t thought of giving it to all of them that way.
My third regret is using an honor name after a living person. They constantly bring it up and make a huge deal about that child being like them and named for them and their special namesake, and as the years have gone on we’ve had more and more issues in general with said person and I just really, really wish my darling child didn’t share a name with someone I dislike so much. If we end up having more children honor names will ONLY be selected from dead relatives.
The thing I am saddest about is breaking the chain of a family honor name – it’s my middle name, and the name of my aunt, grandma, and great-grandma. It would have been so logical to make it my daughter’s middle name, and I DIDN’T. I didn’t even THINK about it until later, which makes me feel even worse.
Honestly, Swistle,had I not been reading your blog for years I probably wouldn’t have this regret but I also regret not using my maiden name for the kids middle names or at the very least using it as my middle name. It’s kind of an awkward surname, think common piece of family room furniture where you sit with 2 other people, and 20 years ago I was glad to be rid of it and honestly thought my sister sort of odd for using it as her son’s middle name, but now I miss it and the connection it gave me to my family.
I only have one toddler-age kid, but my tiny regret is not giving him an honor name. I love so many things about his name: the sound of it, the nerdy middle name that has a connection to my childhood, the hyphenated last name that is my husbands name and then mine, the initials that spell a word… but my parents followed and old country tradition of naming kids after grandparents, and we just used a name we liked. But!! We have names picked for a future boy or girl that honor women on both sides (it helps that my mom and mother-in-law have almost the same name). I get all excited when I think of them.
So reading through all these comments has cemented to me that it I’d ever stayed with my (not garbage, but a Very Bad Fit for me) long term ex and had kids, I would have absolutely and completely regretted giving up my name. He was baffled and offended by the idea that I wouldn’t or that any kids might not have his unadulterated name. Luckily my husband didn’t want me to give up my name – although he also wouldn’t contemplate giving up his own – and double barrelling the kids, while it comes with its own set of regrets I mentioned above, at least doesn’t feel like I’ve given away a chunk of my own identity.
I think I might have been down with the second middle compromise – except my surname is a VERY common male first name. Think John or George… then keep running through the Beatles ;) and it would have been so odd on a baby girl, which is what we had first.
I wish I had fought harder to use my grandfather’s first name for my son. Never knew that grandfather and his name was Kiva (pronounced kee-vah). I love it! My husband said it sounded Scandinavian and feminine! It is Hebrew! A variant of Akiva which is the Aramaic version of Jacob.
I don’t regret my son’s name but I do sorta which it was Kiva…. Maybe a grandchild….
For the longest time I regretted wimping out and not giving my 11 year old the name we’d long planned for a girl, Auden. Now that it’s the name of Target’s underwear line, I’m feeling a lot less regret! She says she prefers her boring, traditional name to being named for underwear, although she goes by a nickname from her middle name.
I do somewhat regret giving my oldest honor names. The first name is a variant of my name, and the middle name honored both grandmothers. Twenty years on, the child identifies as gender-fluid and doesn’t use the birth name, although they haven’t changed it legally yet. I wish I had saved the honor name for one of the other girls, particularly the middle name. Using it was really important to me and I’ll be sad to see it go.
I wish I had kept my maiden name as a hyphenated last name.
Part of me feels a sadness, though, that even if I had, it would be my father’s name: and my mother’s maiden name is her father’s name and so on. I have a great relationship with my father, but it does really bum me out that essentially we have our fathers name or our husbands, and it’s the same for our mothers and grandmothers. We have a patriarchal naming system EVEN when we are being progressive and honoring who we are.
Great topic, and I have three regrets!
1. We were applying for passport, and I decided that THIS WAS THE TIME to add my maiden name as my 2 year old daughter’s second middle. (Thanks so much Swistle! I am so very glad that I did this! It was absolutely worth the hassle to do a name change!! It is such joy seeing her name in print, filling out doctor’s office forms, etc.! My children’s school posts class lists every year, INCLUDING MIDDLE NAMES, and I am so pleased that one day it will be her glorious second middle posted there as well!) My regret is that I didn’t do this right at her birth, as her birth announcements would have reflected this name too.
2. Related to this – by the time I gave my daughter an additional middle name, my sons were 5 and 8. I gave them the CHOICE if they too wanted this name added, and they sadly declined. Of course I regret that I didn’t do this when they were babies, and it just would have been DONE.
3. Another regret with my daughter’s name. Her middle is Elise (after my SIL), and I have a bit of regret not choosing “Annelise”. It would have honoured both of her grandmothers as well. It’s funny that I considered this name for my second (had he been a girl) and I DIDN’T EVEN THINK OF IT when it came time to name my daughter!
Okay I am coming back with another low-key regret.
I LOVE my daughter’s name and it is a family name but it is much more popular than I anticipated (was 135 on the Social Security list when we chose it but was in low 30s as of latest data), and which turns out to bother me more than I thought it would. So I sometimes musingly fantasize about having named her Eloise (my very-close second choice) or Edith (which I came to love after she was born and named). If we were to have another girl, I would press hard for Edith.
I just named my daughter Edith in December and I would highly recommend it ;) I had to work on my husband but now it fits our little girl just right and weve gotten nothing but positive reactions to it (at least to our faces!)
My Grandmother, mother, and I all share the same middle name. I wanted to give my one and only daughter the same middle name, even though it is not fashionable, to continue this. My husband would not even consider it. Or even a different name, with the same INITIAL, to honor the tradition. He said he didn’t like it.
My regret is that I didn’t insist on it. I should have fought for it. I should have cried. Especially since he chose the first name, AND she has his last name. Why was I so passive!?!?
I have no baby name regrets (yet) but just chiming in to say that my middle name is my mother’s name and I FREAKING LOVE THAT. I’ve always loved it, even though it was an out-of-fashion name when I was young. But the connection for me is so meaningful I can hardly put it into words. So of course when, after 3 boys, I had a girl, you better believe that I gave her that same name! I did consider my first name, but in the end wanted the longer matriarchal line to keep going. Also, my mom is the absolute BEST and everyone should name their kids after her. Ha!
And as an aside, I think my older sister, with totally non-honor names for both first and middle, has always been jealous that I got my mom’s name.
SO. Women, name your daughter’s after you! It’s a GIFT.
I totally agree! I have a middle name that goes back several generations as a first or middle and I love it. You bet it was absolutely going to be my daughter’s middle name as well. Now, I have a daughter and she has it as her first name (my husband wouldn’t consider any other names) and I LOVE IT. It gives me a thrill every time I say it or write it and it is extra special to me when people say they love it (especially now she is no longer a baby).
It makes me want to name any future girls I may have after the women in my family as well.
So, another vote to naming girls after yourself/your mother/the significant women in your life. I am so, so glad I did.
I wish I would’ve “went for it” with the lesser used but family names I love. One being Philomena, I put it as the middle name but what a show stopper for a first name.
I wouldn’t change anything, but I sometimes struggle with BOTH the fact that we haven’t used some of the quirky names or even name style I love best (e.g. Mariel or Rosemary) AND that we used such an unusual name for our first. We have Hilaria and Katherine, which are both historic, full of feminine strength, elegant, and perfect for the girls. And to be fair, I have loved both for decades. But they don’t reflect my First Choice Style, and they don’t match. I wanted Margaret Hilaria, but my husband was convinced Margaret is an old lady name. I cannot tell you how many we meet at the playground.
I did insist they and all kids have my maiden as a second middle. No regrets. While he hasn’t changed it, when he doodles the family initials to amuse the girls, my husband writes an S for Sharp for himself too.
1) I love my daughter’s name. I like my son’s name, but don’t love it the way I love my daughter’s name.
2) I occasionally wish my last name was my kids’ 2nd middle. But my last name is a mouthful and neither kids name sounds good with my last name inserted.
I have a nagging regret with my son’s name. I had a favorite boy’s name since I was 12 and always hoped to use it one day. I saved that name for years, avoiding the temptation to use it for pets, even talked about with my husband when we started dating. When I was pregnant with my oldest, we didn’t find out what we were having, and it was our boy name choice. We had a girl the first time, but when we found out our second (and last) child was a boy, I was so excited I was finally going to use my dream name.
He’s 5 years old now and I could never, ever tell anyone since I talked about this name for literally 23 years before using it, but I’m not sure I really love the name in use. Maybe it’s all the years of built-up expectations, but sometimes it sounds weird to my ears. I don’t picture him as anything else though, and I do still love his full name.
I kind of wish we’d used a different middle name for our daughter. She was our first child and it was so hard to decide on a first name and when we did it was one syllable and common as a middle name. So any middle name sounded weird with it and I figured we needed 3 syllables. We picked her name after she was born, so that was the main decision and her middle was more of an after thought.
We picked Abigail, which I do like that it means father’s joy and her middle initial matches my husband’s middle initial. But when we went on to give our second child – a boy – a family name in the middle from my husband’s side, it made me wish we had picked a family name or something more significant for our first. Rather than “needed something with 3 syllables” and it felt like we were in a time crunch.
I’ve thought something like Genevieve would have been nice – which would have been a little nod to my first name of Jennie. Or Edith would have been good – even though the rhythm didn’t sound great, but it was my mother’s middle name and her mother’s middle name and her mother’s first name. It skipped me because my Mum wasn’t keen on it but it would have been nice to have brought it back for my daughter.
My daughter’s name is a more common variant of my mom’s name, and her middle is my grandfather’s middle name (Frances—which had been passed down the female line of his family, and then as the third and youngest son in his family, he got to carry on the tradition! I absolutely loved reviving that). I also love that we honored my wonderful mom in our only child’s name, even though having two close but just slightly different names in the family can be confusing (my cousin’s new wife called my mom by my daughter’s name for a while), and the name itself isn’t exactly stylish right now (I love it, and I think it’s more on its way in than out, but we got two or three unfortunate reactions early on).
My regret is that I didn’t add a second (or even third!) middle name that was unusual and multisyllabic and quirky. I am a longtime name nerd, and yet my daughter’s name is all straightlaced family tradition. At the time I felt like a second middle name was too pretentious for an American family with no tradition of multiple middle names, but who cares! I wish I had held back on the arbitrary judginess and let myself play with her name a bit more and add something that just brought me joy. Alastrina, Cordelia, Apollonia, Damaris…? Hyacinth is an old family name that I would have added except for the (truly) unfortunate initials that resulted. But I wish I had prioritized my own fun a little more, and come up with another quirky #3 option, and then I think I’d *truly* be in love with her name.
Reading through comments like this, I’m cementing more and more that my future kids should (1) have my last name as a second middle* and (2) naming a kid after myself is something fun and funky and cool to do! Although my name sounds a lot like many names that are popular, so I should make sure I have a good, distinct nickname lined up, just in case! I already turn my head at random kids in the store, I don’t want to be responding to someone calling my own child!
*I know Swistle wishes she had done something more than a second middle, but I happen to aesthetically like the look of just my partner’s surname, and my actual surname is not in any danger of dying out. But it’s a name with a history of being a given, so maybe I should give them a variation, instead…good thing I’ve got time to ponder! :P