I know a woman named Iona Dick. Go on – say it out loud. The kicker is she took her husband’s surname when she married so actually decided to become Mrs. Iona Dick.
I have a friend whose little boy is named Owen Vary. Nice name, lovely kid. Two weeks ago, Owen’s poor mama got hit with the realization that his first initial with last name makes the word “ovary”. We’re hoping his teenage years are tolerable.
It’s fair to say that we Mabel mamas are mildly obsessed with baby naming. It’s a bit of a sport around the office. We get irrationally excited by names and you can often hear squealing in the Mabel’s Labels production area when someone comes across a new or unique name.
My last pregnancy went very quickly and a fast pregnancy qualifies as a good one. The only drawback was that I kept thinking I had loads of time to come up with a fun and clever name. It’s tricky business to name a baby when you’re in the baby name business. It also doesn’t help when you’ve already named a handful of your own kiddos.
I was not confident that I’d come up with a sixth name that I liked as much as the others. It has now been four weeks since the arrival of our little boy and I’m pretty happy with what we settled on: “Finian Aloysius”.
Daddy-o and I fancy ourselves both funny and clever because wee Finian’s name shortens to become a very cool rapper name (think J.Lo or K.Fed). Confused? Well, take the first part of both names and you get “Fin Al”. Yep, you got it – FINAL, as in last one, done, no more babies! I figured with a rapper name like that I would be immune to any future temptation to go for baby #7. I’ll let you know how that works out for me.
Have you got a funny baby name story? How did you name your kid?
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I’m looking forward to your stories! If you don’t have a funny story about naming your kid, tell us about that guy at high school named Mike Hunt. Contest wraps up June 1st, so get on it!
**Big thanks to Nicole for the awesome Finian image above that went on the cool cards she sent me. Check her stuff out: http://NSCcards.com
**Comments are now closed. Thanks for all the entries & Congratulation’s to Emma on winning the Camp Pack!**
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Well we both knew we wanted Daniel for our son’s first name, but spent weeks tossing around middle names that just didn’t seem to fit. Then one of us, I actually forget which, jokingly said “Let’s call him Daniel Amos”. Now nobody will get that reference, but Daniel Amos is the name of a 70s-80s quirky Christian folk-rock-alternative band, that hubby and I both happened to be fans of. Well, by the time Daniel had arrived, we’d decided that he absolutely HAD to be called Daniel Amos – it just felt right. So yes, that’s right, I named my son after a band.
Interesting follow-up: When Daniel was 5 months old, we drove to Bushnell, Illinois for Cornerstone 2001 – a Christian music festival – which happened to be featuring a lot of old 80s bands that year. So we actually have a picture of our Daniel Amos with Terry Scott Taylor – the lead singer from Daniel Amos the band!
So glad you liked Finian’s notecards! Thanks for the mention.
Very clever naming you two!
My high school music teacher’s name was “Dick Dickenson”. I always wondered why he didn’t insist on being called “Richard”???
With both of our children (Maxwell Hunter & Cameron Elizabeth) we decided to go with first names that we liked, but weren’t attached to anyone in particular. Hunter is in honour of Hunter S. Thompson, my hubby’s favourite writer. Elizabeth is in honour of my mother. If Cameron had been a boy, she would have been named Benjamin…not sure about the middle name??
My due date was October 30th but I jinxed myself by deciding to name my baby Poppy if it was a girl. So of course she waited until Remembrance Day to arrive. 12 days late – the longest 12 days of my life!
Our first child was born January 10, 2009. My husband was dead set on naming her Hannah but our ast name also begins with ‘Ha’, the more and more I said the names together it sounded like some perky female newscaster and weather forecaster and we changed it ( after much convincing on my end towards hubby) and her name is Addison. Hubby came up with that also!
We don’t have any interesting stories behind the names we choose for our two children. Our daughter’s name was chosen while my husband and I were watching tv (celebrity gossip show- please don’t judge), and we both liked the name of the celebrity reporter. Our son is named after my father. I know, **yawn**, boring stories.
I do have a funny name story about a boy in my elementary school. His name was William Loney. He went by the name Bill. Bill Loney- yup, like Bologne.
convinced we were having a boy, my hubby and i didn’t even think of any girl’s names until about month 8 when i said…”what happens if it is a girl?” both of us are teachers and many names are tainted by memories of students we have taught (we will NEVER have a child names aidan, matthew or nicholas …the terapist’s bills would be too much!!)with that said, we spent the remaining few weeks pondering girls’ names. we finally settled on Isla, scottish for island, and since were living in Bermuda we thought it was perfect. when “isla” arrived (at a wopping 10 lbs 14 oz i might add!) we shared the good news with our families. i was very excited to let my mum know that we decided to honour her scottish heritage (she was born in glasgow and sounds like she just got off the boat despite living in canada for over 40 years!) by naming her first grandchild “isla”. imagine my surprise over the next 2-3 days when good ol’ grandma kept asking “what’s the wee ones name? how do you say it??” hmmmm…this is not good. if granny can’t master the name we may be in trouble, would isla’s classmates struggle with it, would the mc muddle it up during the graduation ceremony at harvard…..?
so by day 4 we decided that isla would be devin…a name we both liked and figured was easy for all involved. we kept isla as her middle name (although grandpa kept calling her isla for at least 3 weeks!)and have all decided that yup, she is definetly a devin.
our second child, also a girl, is called deirann hayden….but the story behind that name needs a whole blog entry on its own!
Bologne!
LOL. Poor kid.
I have a good friend (she’s on FB so she can confirm this). Her friend’s name is Timmothy. She was telling me a story about him one day….Timmothy this, Timmothy that. THEN she says his last name….Mato. I start howling…She’s like ‘what’s so funny?’. I’m like ‘Your friend’s name is TIM MATO?’. She goes ‘no wonder he goes by Timmothy’.
Sheesh, does ANYONE sound their kids’ names out first?
Oh, and my maiden name was Dyck…..good times, since I had a crush on Harrison Ford and wanted to use the name Harrison if I ever had a boy. Good thing I didn’t keep my maiden name!
I don’t have any babies myself (and no plans to…a big thank you to Julie for making sure the planet remains populated), but my mom was very picky about our names.
She decided that she could not would not be given first names that could be shortened in any way to a nickname. No Jennifer becoming Jen, or Robert becoming Bobby. So what did we end up with?
Sarah and Kyle. BORING!
When I was epecting my first child we actually picked out two sets of girls names and two sets of boys names, as we did not know the sex of the baby. We waited until we met our son and then we decided what his name would be.
The second time around, we did the same thing, although this time we knew it was another boy.
As our last name starts with “O”, we were very concious about what all of the initials would spell out, and I think we came up with two very nice names, Michael and Jonathan.
We’re a little obsessed about names too.
My hairdresser told me a story about her teenage son’s friend whose name is Robin Hood. He got stopped by the police one day and the officer asked what his name was and he replied proudly (as if always waiting for the moment),”It’s Robin Hood, officer”. The police officer was not impressed, thinking he was playing games…then he asked to see ID and to the officers surprise his name actually was Robin Hood! Funny…I like Iona Dick better though – good one!
My ex’s friend is named Lyam (rhymes with Siam). When his mom was preggers, she read a book in which the main character was named Liam. She had never heard the name before, and in her mind it was pronounced Lie-am, not the usual Lee-um. She liked the name, so she named him accordingly. Since other people were familiar with the name Liam she had to constantly correct everyone’s pronunciation of her son’s name. She got so fed up that when he was 8 years old she had his name legally changed to Lyam!
Our first daughter was a very calm and quiet baby. I said “This is easy!” Which prompted us have another 19 months later. Daughter #2…well they are total opposites. It didn’t take us long to realize her initials are perfect. KOS…yep chaos:)
Ok, Finian is too cute to begin with and Fin Al is a great little inside joke for the family
My DD was originally going to be “Star” but I eventually went with a unique name that’s not quite so hippie but still unique: Harmony. Which is cool now that she’s older and plays guitar.
Initials are HMC so we’ve started calling her “Her Majesty C*”, especially when she’s not being very harmonious.
DS is Avery Ryan. We had lots of fun with this one, including using Avery labels in cute ways.
Also like that his 1st name has the last two letters “Ry” like his middle name. Made up a song about “Avery Ryan the baby lion”. And some have suggested we should’ve used a, adjective for his middle name to imply he was “A *very* (adjective)” C*.
Non-child-related funny story: there’s a local real estate agent here whose name is “Annita Hoare”. Which was bad enough until we saw a sign with her real estate partner and husband, Chris Hoare, which implied she had a *choice* about the matter.
As someone whose hubby took *her* last name, it baffles me why women would marry into a horribly unintentionally-inappropriate name!
~Krismom~
My husband’s last name is Berger which some pronounce “burger” so we had to be cautious with naming our child. Names like Harry could become “hairy”, “candance” to “Candy”, etc.
Ever since I was in high school I have always loved the name Reese (knew a guy named Reese and 20 years ago it was unique). I loved it because it was unusual and I thought cute so when we had our second son we named him Reese. This was only a few years ago so I funkier names were all over the place. Well I tell you I got so sick of people asking me where I came up with that name, I finally started telling people that I love Reese’s peanut butter cups so I named him after them. Some people actually said wow really?…ahh NO!
Then we named our third and only girl Greer and the first time her 18 month old brother said the name he said beer (with no prompting from us) let’s just say Daddy like that named better but we decided to stick with Greer.
Our daughter’s name is Evie Elizabeth. Our lastname starts with an L so she’s definitely going to curse my husband and I when writing her initials:
E.E.L. – that’s right, eel =D
When expecting our first ( and only ) child I was totally convinced that we were having a Boy, see the 3 other grandchildren were girls and my Husband was the last chance for the family name to be carried on. I was in charge of the boy’s names and I put my Husband in charge of coming up with a girl’s names. ( being SO sure that we would not need it anyway)
Well I had totally fallen in love with the name “OWEN” and was so sure that everyone else would love it as well, as I ran it past a few friends before I sprung it on my Husband I got a few strange looks but no real negative comments.
That night I came home and told my Hubby and after a very short pause he said “ABSOLUTLY NOT!!….but why? I asked.
He proceeded to say Owen plus our last name and I still did not get the problem…( now let me just say that our last name sounds like a piece of change – 5 cents to be exact) He did not want our son to be running around school being teased for having an name that sounded like he was “OWEN” money.
Needles to say we did end up having a girl and to my surprise my Husband came up with a beautiful and unique name that suits her to a tee.
KYLA.
Both of my kids got British names because I met my husband in England and I wanted to reflect our heritage.
We didn’t necessarily think through all the potential pitfalls with their names, but I am slightly worried that the oldest is going to end up being called Oily Willy on the playground. (He’s Oliver)
And when a friend was told of my seconds’ name on the phone, she heard it as Alan (it’s Callum). I had to laugh; I can not imagine a baby named Alan. It’s such a 40 year old man’s name, not a little baby’s moniker.
I can haz some extra entries?? I subscribe to the Mabelhood blog on my google reader, I follow Mabel on Twitter (I’m @ewiller)and I just became Mabel’s Facebook friend.
We only had two major naming criteria: must pass my mother’s pronunciation test (her first language is NOT English), and initials must not spell out anything rude or embarrassing (we have friends who named their son Sean Thomas — beautiful name, except their last name started with a “D” so Sean’s initials are STD!).
In the end, we named our son Dexter Gordon. Not only did it score well on the above criteria, Dexter happened to be his grandfather’s name, and Gordon just seemed to fit — we also happen to like jazz. So far, so good. He is now two and I can’t imagine him as anything but a Dexter. We think he is even going to be right-handed!
We have four children. With our first son we named him Williston, after looking over the family tree. We thought that it was a great name it was unique and we have never heard it as a first name. We say that he is the kid with three last names Williston Craig Goodfellow. With our third child we where trying to come up with names and yes Julie it gets harder as you have more. My husband said what about Hope Lesley. I thought what a great name till he said Hope Less well let just say that I was happy that child number three was a boy that we named after grandpas.
The most interesting story I have has to do with my son’s name. I think my husband & I had our childrens’ names picked out while we were still dating, and it worked out that he had a boy’s name picked out that he had liked for many years. The name he liked was Blair. I was a little reluctant to name a boy Blair, but after I did a little research I became more and more attached to it. Blair was 5 weeks old when I realized his name had the exact same letters as our last name: Abril. It is now something he considers to be very unique, but I still can’t believe it took us so long to realize it.
The name game is a hard one especially if you are a teacher.
You want the perfect name for your little one but it can not be one that remindes you of past studnets that you maybe do not really want to be reminded about all of the time.
We really wanted names that would be original or at least not to common.
For our little girl we wanted a one that was cute and confident sounding at the smae time and for our little man we wanted one that sounded strong and sweet, but not too sweet.
I think we did a good job for both.
The middle name was one that wereally wanted to have big meaning for us. For our daughter she has ny grandmothers name, a strong women that she was able to have be part of her life for the first 2 years. My little guy’s middle name is after my grandfather who he never met but was a sweet friendly little man that everyone loved. I love having their middle names be so meaningful to people that have been big parts of my life.
The name game is a hard one, your little one will make the name a special one forever and bacuse of that wow what an awesome game it is. Even more special it is not a game everyone gets to play so we should always feel honoured to be able ot have been part of the game.
Too right Melanie – we are lucky to be playing the game!
I have been SOOO entertained by these comments!
one more from me about highschool. There were two guys in high school who were friends and their names were Rich Little and Jesse James (no kidding). So of course one night they’re cruising around and get pulled over. The cop asks their names, and upon responding they immediately get taken downtown to the station.
Had noted my story on Weewelcome last week…here it is for you guys to read.
Mon, 05/25/2009 – 15:07 — Alessia
For our youngest, I wanted to name her Maya but my husband was not fond of that name at all. Him and his family were fixated on the name Alessandra. For no real reason but for the fact they when they were younger, all the siblings had said that the first to have a girl, would have the right to that name. (Silly I thought!!! lol)I liked that name but it was not my first or second or even third choice as it was rather common. Now, my husband has 2 sisters that, just so happened, to be pregnant at the same time as me. What are the odds…??? Two of us were due in mid October and the other in early Aug. I had found out that I was having a girl (great!) and my sister-in-laws opted for the surprise. All the while, I was finding ways to convince my husband that we should shock the world and name our daughter anything but Alessandra.
To make a long story short, my first sister-in-law ended up having a boy on Aug 7th and named him Anthony.
My other sister-in-law also had a boy on Sept 29th and named him Alexandro (ooohhh my husband was fuming…while I was so thankful) We had our precious girl on Oct 5th and names her Alessia! The sibling promise got broken along the way but in the end, we came up with a winner name and the most beautiful little princess.