When my mom was expecting me, she and my dad coud NOT agree on a name. She wanted a prissy cheerleader-sounding name like Jodi or Lisa, and my dad wanted an awful Germanic name like Gretchen or Ursula. So one day mom was glancing through the newpaper and came across the birth announcements, and one of a pair of twins born the day before had been named Kendra. They finally agreed on that.
Mom always gets mad when she meets someone else named Kendra - “That was supposed to be only YOUR name!”
“But Ma, you stole it from somebody else!”
“That doesn’t matter!”
I always hated my name (too modern-sounding, no family significance), but a few weeks ago my boyfriend’s Indian mother told me that Kendra is the name of a flower in Hindi. Pretty cool!
My first name is Cheryl. No real signifigance. My parents just liked it. My only complaint is that no one can either a)pronounce it (the “e” is there for a reason, people!) or b) spell it (“ly”? ly?)
My middle name is Christina. No real significance there, either, unless it was because my maternal grandpa was a preacher.
My last name, or so my father tells me, is German for “from the castle.” Haven’t checked the validity of that one yet.
My first name is “woman” or “lady” Italian. I was named after a wonderful woman who passed away about a year before I was born, she was my sister’s godmother. My middle name just sounded good with the first and my last name is a strong Dutch name (everyone comments on it) and apparently means, long ago, my family was wealthy nobility, too bad it was long gone by the time I came around!
Wierd thing is my father has a first name he hates, so they turned around and inflicted Kay on me because I seemed nice. And of course, because my first name is Kay, it shows up in all official documents and stuff. First name, middle initial. Also, real fun being a guy in a new school, and having the teacher call out Kay, and replying I go by Mark.
Now, no one ever knows my first name. I have yet to have someone guess it.
Needless to say, I did NOT do this to my daughter. The classic first name Jacqueline and a Chinese middle name that means Jade Sky.
My first and middle names are Alexander Williams. Alex is from Alex Johnson, a ball player with the Cleveland Indians when I was born. (Also the name of the main character in my father’s favorite book, A Clockwork Orange.) The Williams is my mother’s maiden name. (In my professional life I started abbreviating it as “Wms.” in the last year or so because the middle initial “W” became much less attractive than it had been.) I think it’s very unlikely I’ll name my child after myself, but if I do we’ll call him Wills. If I have a daughter I’d hoped to name her Portia because I think it’s just the prettiest name, but my last name begins with a “P,” and I think alleterative names don’t work very well. My wife’s grandmother is named Moon, so maybe we’d name our daughter that.
Craig Allan Kingsley here. The Allan is from my uncle Allan - my mother’s brother. Both families have a tradition of pulling names from the opposite side - ie, for a son, pull a name from the mother’s side, for a daughter, from the father’s.
The Kingsley is a very old English name - “dweller in the king’s field.”
I think the first name was actually something of an afterthought, but it flows nicely. “Craig” means, well, dweller in the crag. So apparently this is a really strange field.
Second choice for my first name: Cameron. Also a nice flow, but rather ambisexual.
[sub]I’m going to lose all my cool points with this…[/sub]
My real name is Tanya, pronounced Tahn-ya.
When my mother was about eight months pregnant with me, she was trying to find a girl’s name beginning with T that was unusual. She was watching the Lawrence Welk Show with my great-grandfather and saw the name in the credits.
I know my name is Russian in origin and means ‘fairy princess’.
::hangs head::
Although considering it was 1969 and my mother was a hardcore flower child, I think I got off easy. Could have been named Flower or Sunshine after all
My parents planned to name their first child Bryan, which was sorta after my father, who was named Bryce. Uh, not so fast–Victoria was the first-born. Then the next child was to be Bryan. Nope, Barbara. I was to be Bryan, too. By this time, my mom was not planning to try again for a Bryan, so she named me Brynda.
I am ambivalent about my name. Brenda is the most boring of all boring names (sorry, my fellow Brendas, but it is true). The spelling spices it up a bit, but I get tired of spelling it all the time, plus it should prolly be pronounced differently than Brenda (it isn’t, btw). I also tend to dislike odd spellings and worry that it is a bit cutesy. On the other hand, it sounds really good when said with a Yorkshire accent–and doesn’t make for a bad sig.
Presumably that’s a Norwegian variant, as my mother’s family is of that descent. Relatively recently IIRC - around the turn of the century (the 20th, I mean). And in Minnesota, you’re pretty much doomed to be Norwegian. Uff-da!
By the way, I asked my parents why Craig? Mom & Dad said they just liked it, no particular reason. And it flowed well.
It’s scary, how much I’m starting to think like my parents!
I’m William Rudolf, and I’m a junior. Thing is, my middle name is spelled differently from my father’s, William Rudolph. At the time of my birth, my father was off getting his drink on, for the whole week. They had agreed that I’d be a Jr., but my mom didn’t know exactly how to spell my fathers middle name, so she guessed. She guessed wrong.
This is how after 30 years my mother learned where her name came from
From what i gather my grandmother ( I never met her she died when i was 2 months old ) was under sedation since it was a very rough birth and when they asked my grandfather he said charlene may
No one ever understood where he came up wiht it He always said it just popped in and sounded nice
Well fast forward a decade or 3 and hes out for a visit and were talking about names and he finally admits that
He named my mother after his girlfriend that he was seeing at the time and just mever told anyone
Whats worse is the said woman was a good friend of the family and even she never knew since my mom had the nickname of “sherry” ( yes she hated the song )
Today years after my moms death its still a family scandal
The origin of my name is quite simple… I was named after both my Grandmothers (Ruth Claire) and my brother was named after our Great Grandfathers (James Adam) I wonder how they would have combined Hugh John and Arthur if they had decided to name James after our Grandfathers…
Uhhhh, I went to school with a girl named Kendra. In Michigan. Like you. What year did you graduate? [sub]please please please don’t be that girl…[/sub]
**and now, for something completely mundane **
I was named after my grandparents: Mustafa and Lizzie.No, just kidding. Joe and Florence. Joan Florence. Ain’t that one of those names that you’d never ever want to go on a blind date with?
My mom toyed with the idea of naming me “Mary Patricia” making me “Mary Pat”
Either way, I was screwed. I had no choice but to become a smart ass.
My first name is James. My mother never gave any reason for choosing that name except that it has the same initial as my older brothers’ names. And yes, I think George Carlin’s comment on that is funny.
My middle name is Gregory and it’s from the saint whose feast day I was born on.
My name IRL is Anastasia. Everyone always asks if there’s some special reasons why, but my mom says that she just liked it ever since she was a teenager, she decided that it would be what she named her first daughter.
BTW, many people in my family (immediate family and aunts and cousins on my father’s side) all have uncommon names - not necessarily strange, but not too common.
Anastasia
Natalie (getting more common now)
Simon
Emery
Leona
Cynthie
Julietta
Bernitta
Karma
Gabriel
Raven
Akron
Piper
Shaman
I don’t know why that is, but it should be pointed out that the last four on the list are all siblings, and their father is Metis. Shaman’s full name is something like “Shaman Standing Bear Pumaway something, something, something”. They couldn’t decide on a name so they gave him seven (or eight - no one really remembers except his parents, but even they might need to check his birth certificate).
William Joseph here. Father is Joseph Augustine, III. Mom’s dad, brother, and nephew are Joseph Francis Sr., Jr., and III. I had two other older male relatives by marriage named Joseph, so no way in HELL was I going to be Joseph. Too confusing. If you asked for Uncle Joe, you had to be WAY more specific, so we had “Cotton-Pickin’ Joe”, “Big Daddy”, “Poppop”, “Jeffie”, “Tio Joe”, and Joe Gannon (his real name) to keep everyone straight.
First name after an Uncle Bill of mine (no relation to my screen name, actually), and middle name as a nod to the multitudes of Josephs out there.
