swissmiss -when naming DD, my mother was very judgemental about the top name I liked. She said she would absolutely refuse to call her that and would call her a completely different name! Needless to say, that started a VERY heated argument. I really couldn't believe how childish she was acting about it! My child, my name I get to choose! DSp and I ended up changing our minds and going with a variation of the name that we liked better, so I never got to see if my mother would have actually called her whatever she felt like DD's name should be.
Dakipode -our baby will be 1/2 Asian too (I am as white as white can be, DSp (Dear Spouse) is 1/2 Asian and we used a full Asian as our sperm donor.) I also feel like there should be some cultural representation in a name. Heritage and culture is very important to who a person is, and what is more personal than someone's name?! I think that being American, it is okay to have an American name, though. In the Philippines, a lot of parents name their babies popular American names. They are often the really simple, "older/traditional" names. Personally, I wouldn't want to copy an American name and would want my baby's name to be 100% the cultural that I am and live in. But, other countries it seems idealizes the American culture.
Since our baby will be Asian-American, we have decided to go with an American first name and first-middle name. The baby's second-middle name will be a family name from DSp's Filipino side. We did the same thing with DD. In the Philippines, all children receive their mother's maiden name as their middle name. Also, for women, when they marry, their last name (maiden name) becomes their middle name and they drop their mother's maiden name as their middle name. So women and their children will have the same middle name. We won't follow that tradition exactly, but we think that the family name is very important, so for DD, we chose an American name for her first name and first-middle name, Lillian Avery, and chose my mother-in-law's maiden name, which is DSp's middle name too and DSp's grandmother's last name, as her second-middle name, so Lillian Avery Tapalla. For this baby, if it's a boy, we will likely choose Levi Thomas as the American names, and Meyheni as his second-middle name, so Levi Thomas Meyheni. Meyheni was DSp's great-grandfather's name. I very much wanted for this baby's name to be representative of part of it's culture, so I pushed very hard and had an hour long conversation with my mother-in-law going through ALL of the family names she could think of to find the perfect one! A lot of the family names sounded like english/american words that would be very easy to be the subject of bullying. If the baby is a girl, we will go with a variation of DSp's grandfather's name, which DSp's brother's middle name too (Rosalino). Rosalie as a first name, haven't come up with a first-middle name, and possibly use Tapalla again as the second-middle name.
Haha, just read over all of that and it's seems very confusing! But the point is, I feel like cultural/heritage should be preserved in a child's name...
Edited by esenbee2 - 3/1/13 at 9:53am
we are thinking of Emilio but calling him Leo. I tend to shy away from Mexican and Brazilian names just because they aren't my style. Emilio is a compromise with my husband because he would really like his son (if this baby is a boy) to have some heritage in his name. We'll see.
( we call him Em for short).
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