Naming your child in another culture

[amitymama]

I know that mine and DH's cultures aren't radically different (I'm American, he's English) but there are enough differences in what is considered 'normal' for names that I'm having a really tough time coming up with ones we both like. He has certain associations with names that I don't, and vice versa. It is definitely more conservative here with names and I often hear adults say of those with unusual names that they sound "too American." :p Then there's the whole classism issue...it is still alive and well here and people have very firm ideas of which names are for posh/rich people, which are for the middle class, which are for the working class and which are just plain 'trashy'. I'm beginning to feel very dejected about naming my baby something that will either be considered 'weird' or naming him or her something I don't really LOVE just to fit in.

Has anyone else struggled with this?

[Mosaic]

DH and I struggled with some similar issues... We wanted a name that was easy to pronounce in both English and Spanish, had similar meanings in each language, etc. We also dealt with names that were too gringo, too Mexican (DH isn't Mexican), too hard to spell in one language, too common, "old lady" names in one language but up-and-coming in the other, etc., plus all the usual issues people have when choosing names (i.e., family tradition, bad memories of people with that name, etc.).

It was tricky, but we found a few (very few!) we both liked. The middle name was still up in the air when DD was born, so I don't love it but it's not at all bad, either. You can definitely find a compromise, but I wouldn't worry too much about picking something just to fit in... just pick something that works for your family!

[Turkish Kate]

We went through that as well. We had to find a Turkish name that Americans could pronounce and that didn't have any Turkish letters in it. Now we are debating on names for a possible next baby and not doing so well.

[DariusMom]

DH and I struggled with some similar issues... We wanted a name that was easy to pronounce in both English and Spanish, had similar meanings in each language, etc. We also dealt with names that were too gringo, too Mexican (DH isn't Mexican), too hard to spell in one language, too common, "old lady" names in one language but up-and-coming in the other, etc., plus all the usual issues people have when choosing names (i.e., family tradition, bad memories of people with that name, etc.).

It was tricky, but we found a few (very few!) we both liked. The middle name was still up in the air when DD was born, so I don't love it but it's not at all bad, either. You can definitely find a compromise, but I wouldn't worry too much about picking something just to fit in... just pick something that works for your family!

Exactly the same experience, except in Dutch. Sigh . ... It's enough to keep me from having a second! :)

[eepster]

DH's family is from Hongkong, where there is a custom of giving people both a Chinese name (b/c that was the languege spoken by the people) and an English name b/c that was the language spoken by the British administratores who couldn't be bothered to figure out how to pronounce Chinese names correctly. So, it was always assumed that DS would get an "english" name anyway (I use quotes b/c niether of DS's given names are actually English, but my ILs consider all European names "english.")

It still took us till a week after DS's birth to settle on a name.

Then DH filled out the birth certificate without help. DS's middle name is supposed to be Irish, but DH didn't realize that the Irish version and the Scottish version are spelled differently, so DS ended up with the Scottish version :irked:.

MIL simply provide the Chinese name without consulting DH or I :eyesroll. It's a completely unofficial name that never gets placed on any records anyway though.

[Alcyone]

Definitely! We wanted names that were pronouncable in both English and Danish, and names that wouldn't look/sound like the wrong gender in the "other" culture (e.g. Kim is a boy's name in Denmark, and a girl's name in America). DH has a thing against unusual spellings, so even though, for example, I came up with a new way to spell Evelyn so that Danes could get it right without also messing up Americans, he didn't go for it. There's definitely the old-fashioned-over-here/up-and-coming-over-there issue as well.

In the end, our girl name (Dagmar) is still said quite differently in each country, but we just decided we like it too much. Danes don't do middle names, so he gave me total free reign on them which is great too. ;) Our boy name (Ridley) isn't Danish at all, but people are getting more into international names here so I think it will be ok.

When we told our names to my in-laws, they even said that 5 years ago they wouldn't have liked them, but now they are good choices. Dagmar was an "old lady" name but a lot of older names are becoming fashionable again.

[east carolina]

We wanted to choose a name that was spelled the same in both languages, so it wouldn't have to be "translated". For example, I'm Caroline which in Czech is Karolina, and though it's practically the same name it's pronounced quite differently and spelled differently. We wanted to pick something that wouldn't change much from English to Czech.
We also have a taste for kind of unique names and we decided pretty early on Rufus for a boy and Zoe for a girl. OMG, my whole family flipped. Czech people are ultra conservative when it comes to names and there's even a list of names to choose from, and any name that's not on that list you have to petition a special board to accept it, and it it doesn't exist in the name dictionaries at their disposal they won't let you have it. It's ridiculous. Anyhoo, as you can tell from my sig, we have a Rufus and so far none of the nightmare scenarios that some people predicted for me came true. For alot of people, it's the first time they meet someone named Rufus, but everyone we've ever introduced out son to has only said positive things about his name. Even kids.

[Alcyone]

Denmark has an approved name list too, and if you pick a name that's not on it, the Church of Denmark has to decide to let you use it…

unless one of the parents is foreign-born. :D I win!

[Bayleesan]

our only real trouble in choosing hawaiian names is choosing something that doesn't look like it could be convberted to something gross is one of my red neck realatives in the south got cocky. like Ikaika, the name for stregnth, could so easily be Icki/Icky. when i sent out our first dd's borth announcement i included phonetic spellings and means of both her first and middle name. that seemed to help a lot. we also learned not to tell anyone before the kid is born and named, a lot less hassel that way!

[east carolina]

Wow, I wish they did that here too! Lucky you!

I would rather trust the Church of Denmark, here it's literally one woman on this board who decides, and if she don't like it, no way! Crazy!!!

And here, last names are ended in -a or -ova for women, and it was only recently that foreign women were "allowed" to not have -ova added to their last name. I had to petition the municipal office to change my name back on my marriage certificate. Instead of issuing us a new certificate, they added a note at the bottom to the effect of "the wife is using the masculine ending of the last name." :irked:

[cappuccinosmom]

Has anyone else struggled with this?

Yeah, but I gave up the struggle a long time ago.

Dh's and my cultures are *so* different that our kids names were going to be "wierd" to somebody, no matter what we called them.

So....since we're conservative and patriarchal :p we named them by dh's culture, and I picked their middle names, which are more "normal" to English ears. Although I was a little nervous about them having "odd" names, dh chose awesomely meaningful names for them, and they have really grown on me.:love

[Kapat]

We did have a hard time, but in the end we decided not to care. DH is English and i'm a whole Mediterranean mix Greek/Italian/Spanish/French (born in Greece)

DS1 is Leonardo, Leon or Leo for short. DD1 is Sophia, DD2 is Ingrid and DS2 is Otto. My family or DH's family don't have any trouble pronuncing DC name, we have Sophias' and Ingrids' too, that detail was not important to us.

My own name(Irina) is not even Greek or anything, it's Russian and i don't have anything to do with Russia =)

[maiaminna]

A bit new to these boards (actually returning), but I guess I'll jump in -- we set out to find names that "worked" in both Germany and the US. That meant no "th"s, no "j"s, no names or initials which have a bad meaning in either German or English --- gah. It actually wasn't to difficult to find several girls' names, since they overlap more and the German "pool" of girls' names is actually quite nice. Our top choice, for the time being, is Annika. Boys' names, on the other hand, were mostly too odd sounding in one country or the other. We ended up agreeing on only one - Nicolas - and even that is one I'd normally skip for being "too popular". We both liked Matthias, but that "th" means it's basically a different name in each language.

[ernalala]

We had some of a struggle for our second-born, about boys' names, could only make the choice of a veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery long list towards the end of pregnancy. Second name still had to be chosen from 3. And it WAS a boy (I did not want to know before birth) :-).

My husband is Turkish with Kurdish/Arab roots but when we were newly wed we had been fantasizing about names for our possible future children and he named a Kurdish one which could be used for either boy or girl which I just LOVED, also the meaning was nice. And I named a dutch one for a girl that he agreed on, too. So that was more or less decided long in advance and we've been still looking through long lists with names but kept sticking with those first ones.
Our second boy has a name that is both Kurdish and Dutch, with nice meaning in both languages, and very rare in both languages, but not weird.

Important was that the name would be relatively easy to pronounce and/or write down in Dutch, Turkish, Kurdish, English and preferably French. So no 'strange' letters or accents that wouldn't apply in any of the other languages mentioned above. We made sure that it could be used somewhat 'internationally'. We did not want any arab names which would not be very popular in my home country and some other western countries (unfortunately). And the names should fit family name as well, of course.
We also did use our veto when we really didn't like a name proposed by the other or when it could be pronounced wrongly in another language, or had a bad/funny/stupid/whatever meaning in another language. (eg 'Ezel' is a nice sounding girl's name in Turkish, but means 'donkey' in Dutch, 'Mert' either Turkish or Kurdish boyS2 name means m*rde ('sh*t') in French...)
Watch initials, that your child won't be W.C. or the like :-).
We found equally important that the names had a nice sound to them, that their first and middle name were a nice match, and last but not least that the names of both our children were matching somehow (not in a ridiculous way of course) too. And we succeeded to achieve all of these goals, eventually :-).
I am very happy with my boys' names and my husband is, too.

You may have to do a very big effort to go through long lists to find the perfect name, you may have to compromise in the worst case, but do choose a name you find AT LEAST acceptable, preferably beautiful.
Tip: we've also been looking through multicultural name lists. You may get some ideas from those as well?

:thumb

[BunniMummi]

Yeah about the same story here, we went for names that the family on both sides wouldn't have issues with pronouncing and that would sound (while perhaps not common) fairly "normal" in either place. In both cases the middle names are using the Norwegian spellings which doesn't change the sound for an English speaker but makes them look a little more local. For me at least it was also important that the general sound of the name didn't totally change, they aren't pronounced exactly the same in both places but they aren't radically different either.

But then of course as an American both my kids go by shortened forms day to day which is totally not the Norwegian way. :)

[Kitsune6]

we shied away from any names that my MIL and FIL would have a hard time pronouncing. That was about it. Every Japanese name I like got shot down since DH knew 'someone' with that name :eyesroll

When my MIL passed, my DH's Auntie asked me what the kids' Japanese names were. So I found two names that sort of sound like the kids names...I got my Japanese names after all :thumb

DH's Dad is half Guamanian and Japanese and all of his bros and sisters have 2 first names.

[Merilin]

Every Japanese name I like got shot down since DH knew 'someone' with that name :eyesroll


Oh, I have heard that one before... or the Japanese name is too strange or too outdated. *sigh* He'd prefer names, that sound Japanese, but are not Japanese. Besides that, people in Germany and English speaking countries should be able to pronounce it. I personally like the old German names, but they are totally unpopular in Germany right now. On the other hand, does it really matter that much? We don't even know where we will live in 10 years from now (Japan, English speaking country or somewhere in Europe), better picking a meaningful name, one likes, than investing so much time considering pronunciation or spelling issues.

[Needle in the Hay]

My DS has a French name and an American shortened form (for example Guillaume/Will or Benoît/Ben). This has worked so well I would happily do this again if we have another child (if we had a boy, anyway, our no. 1 girl name is Spanish).

ETA: I used to know an American married to a Greek man and her two boys both had really long Greek names and they went by American shortened forms too. Like Tommy and Nick or something but their full names were really beautiful and were used by all their Greek family.

[kateena]

We had a hard time finding a name, too. We both agreed it should be a name that could be pronounced in 4 different languages, the ones most current in our families, that spelling shouldn't be too much of an issue in any of those languages and that the meaning is very important to us. Needless to say we didn't come up with a long list of options ;)

As a matter of fact when my daughter was born we were only sure about her second name, which is in Suahili (neither of the four languages that are important in our family), and we had two possibilities for first names. One I liked and my husband didn't, one he liked and I didn't. THe first thing I thought when I saw her was that her name would have to be the second option.


We named her officially four days later, which is kind of the way they do it in Ruanda- Except that there the whole family gets to suggest names (we let them do that beforehand ;)) and they do the naming even later, and it took us so long because we were disorganized.


I can't think of a better name for my daughter, and I'm glad we waited until she was born to give her that name. Actually, the Ruandese way makes more sense to me now. I have difficulties imagining a name for a child I have never seen, it makes more sense to me that you would have to get to know the baby first.

[emmasmommy]

We had a hard time finding names that fit in English and Swedish. In the end we named dd1 Emma and dd2 Annika. For some reason it was harder to agree on boy's names, so for that reason I'm glad we ended up with girls!!

[MamaEli]

Yeah, we have to go back and forth, and this baby coming in a couple of months still is somewhat nameless. DS we knew right away, as it was a Biblical name, popular in both of our countries.
Typically, the child would get an English name, a tribal name, and then take the father's middle name as the last name. (My husband's middle name, which is his tribal name, is my last name.)
With DS, we gave him an English first name, my husband's father's English first name as a middle name, and then my husband's last name. It's still family oriented, and totally made sense to my family. His family was okay as it still passed down names, but I don't think they pronounce DS's first name in the American fashion. It's kind of sad now that we didn't give him a true tribal name, and we regret it.
For DD, we took my husband's grandmother's English name as her first name, a traditional tribal name as her middle name, and my husband's last name as her last name, so both kids have the same last name. This is working well, as relatives on his side love to call her by her tribal name, and the first name is one my family can say, although it's very unusual. I did some searching, and found that is was infrequently used in Prussia/Romania, which is where my family comes from, so that has some roots to it as well.
For Baby3, who knows? We're still working on it. DD wasn't actually named until the next day because we needed to feel out her personality. I think it wil be the same with this one, only we need a list of boy's and girl's names because we don't know the gender.
And yes, we did run into some language issue.
I loved Gwendolyn, unfortunately, gwen means chicken in DH's native tongue. I loved Malaya, but it means prost!tude in his second language. Definitely a no go there! There were some others, but those stand out the most.

[FondestBianca]

My mother's side of the fam is so wide ranged in different Europen heritage that nothing is of large percentage or very traceable. Unfortunatly, I didn't want to give the typical Brittany, Ashley, Meagan, or Stephanie (although I like all of those names). I wanted my daughter to have a name that no one else in her group of friends or classes at school would have. I wanted to give her a name from my heritage (being white and typical American I don't know jack about my background) I thought it would be a good starting point to find a name uncommon in Americans but, still not too 'weird'.

So I asked around my dad's side of the fam and they all seemed to give me one major answer. So I thought, well this must be the biggest percentage I have in me so I'll pick a name from that language. SO I did, and I like the name as does my hubby. But, it's the traditional spelling and people have no idea how to pronounce it. Even when I slowly tell them they stare at me and try (without secess) to pronounce it. I nor my husband think it's a difficult name but, everyone else seems to have issues with it. Even much of our family STILL cannot say it properly and she is 2 1/2!

Also, it happens to be a Russian name (fairly popular I guess) although spelled differently. There is a big Russian stigma where I live so often times when I tell people the name they repeat it back with sour face and say something like, "hmmm, thats an.... interesting name." and turn away.

Geez people! Usually people seem to like the name when they finally get it right but, it's rather annoying that it's so difficult for people.

To make matters worse about a year after my daughter was born my dad's fam starting claiming a different heritage and said we actually aren't ANY of the other! I think I threw my arms up at that point. But we still love her name all the same. I also gave her the name because of it's meaning, so it still has valid reasoning.

[frontierpsych]

Our girls name we have picked out is English, the boys name is Irish. I'm hoping both sides of the family will just be happy the granola freaks didn't name their kid in Klingon.

[Miss 1928]

Like most of the PPs we wanted a name that would sound the same in both of our languages. -- I love the name Elizabeth, but it becomes Elizabetta in Italian which I'm really not so fond of, and the Italian pronunciation for Claudia is so pretty in Italian, but just kind of lumpy in English. You get the idea.

Then Dh and I had the added problem of not being able to agree upon a name. In the end we had a very short list of only 2 options; Valentina and Eloisa. I wanted to wait until after the birth to finalize DD's name. (My mom wanted to name me Willow Serina, then she met me and, fortunately, completely changed that Idea.) I'm actually glad that DD seemed to be more of an Eloisa than a Valentina, because, as much as I love it, it is a pretty common name here in Italy. I think it's in the top 20, so actually maybe DD was fated to be Eloisa all along. :love

I made a hybrid of our mothers' names for her middle name, and so it's neither American nor Italian, it's simply pretty IMO. (Although I found out later that it's Hebrew, but with a different pronunciation.) But here the laws have recently changed so now the Middle Name is attached to the First Name. You used to be able to separate them with a comma and then it made the Middle Name optional, but now on all documents the complete full name must be used, no using just the initial or leaving it off altogether like in the USA.

DH liked my made up middle name, but thinks it will be a hassle for DD, having an extra name. I don't care, Eloisa's middle name is very important to me. DH has no Middle Name. (My brother asked; "Well, when he was a kid, how did he know when his mother was mad at him, with no middle name?" :lol )

[umsami]

Yes, DH is Egyptian and Muslim. I'm American...and a Muslim convert... but to be honest, a lot of the Muslim names still seem strange to me. So, we tried to pick names that worked in both settings... were easy to pronounce, etc.

When our second son Ali was born, my parents thought his name was Ollie (short for Oliver) for a few days until they saw it written. :lol

The bigger issue for me was the Arabic naming standard... whereas it's first name husband's name grandfather's name great-grandfather's name etc. I did not like the fact that all of our kids (male or female) have my husband's name as their middle name. It seems very strange to me. However, there's a chance that we would live in the ME, and if that were to happen, DD having a female middle name would be seen as very strange, as her middle name would be her last name in most things.

[amma_mama]

We also struggled with this. I am American and my husband is South Asian (Sri Lankan). We decided on a Sri Lankan first name for our daughter, but had trouble finding one that we could both agree on. Like many PPs, other family members had to be able to pronounce it. It needed to sound "pretty" to me, needed to have a meaning (other than something flowery) for my husband, and could not be too "old" (i.e. like a grandmother or old aunt). Since it was hard for me to determine the last one, since it is culture-specific, we went through lists and lists and lists of names that ended up on the "cutting room floor". We finally bought a book of Sanskrit names. After going through it a few times, we were still undecided (though we had some short-listed). I decided to give it one more look and found one name that had a nice meaning and sounded pretty, and for some reason just sounded "right" to me, though I had apparently overlooked the first dozen times that I flipped through the book. When I mentioned the name to my husband, a bit matter-of-factly as I did not want to be disappointed, his eyes lit up - we both knew that we found the right name for our daughter. My parents were surprised that we were choosing a South Asian name (not sure why since we are bi-cultural), but loved it immediately as well.

[velochic]

We dealt with this issue. Dh is Armenian, but was born and raised in Turkey. Because the Turks committed genocide against the Armenians, there is bad blood there, so some of the prettier Turkish names I liked were vetoed. Armenian uses a completely different script and alphabet, so there were some Armenian names that simply couldn't be pronounced in English. In the end, I told dh that since I had the pleasure of carrying our dd in my womb, he could have the pleasure of naming her. From a list of Armenian names his sister sent from Istanbul, he picked a very, very pretty French first name (very well-known in France and used as a nickname in modern Armenian) and a pretty Armenian middle name that transliterates in to English easily. He did a great job of naming her and it fits her to a T.

[Needle in the Hay]

DH liked my made up middle name, but thinks it will be a hassle for DD, having an extra name. I don't care, Eloisa's middle name is very important to me. DH has no Middle Name. (My brother asked; "Well, when he was a kid, how did he know when his mother was mad at him, with no middle name?" :lol )

That's funny since I got a bit of flak from my French in-laws for only giving my DS one middle name. My DH has 2 (and a double first name) and I think my FIL has 4 middle names! I think part of it is because it's very easy in France to legally go by one of your middle names. You don't have to go through an official name-changing process. I guess I'd figured it was similar in Italy. BTW I love the name Eloisa, it's so pretty.

[ewe+lamb]

My dd is Freya Alice - we both agreed on this name - funny we never even mentioned a boys name even though we didn't know that she was a girl, but it's not easy for the french; ds is Kian and was the only name we agreed on at all, then the day after he was born dh broke his leg and didn't have the opportunity to tell me the name he really wanted to call him (Zac) which I love so I had to go with Kian (we only have 3 days to name our babies here in France so I was under pressure and in the neonatal unit) and although he really suits his name now I had a difficulty in calling him that for the first while! :o

[~sweet pea~]

Like most of the PPs we wanted a name that would sound the same in both of our languages. -- I love the name Elizabeth, but it becomes Elizabetta in Italian which I'm really not so fond of, and the Italian pronunciation for Claudia is so pretty in Italian, but just kind of lumpy in English. You get the idea.


Miss 1928: I'm trying to come up with names that sound appropriate in both English and Italian. I'm finding that girl names are infinitely easier because names ending in "-a" are fairly mainstream here in the States, but boy names that end in an "-o" seem to say "I am ethnic."

I'm curious, did you have boy name choices and if so, what were they?

[Miss 1928]

Miss 1928: I'm trying to come up with names that sound appropriate in both English and Italian. I'm finding that girl names are infinitely easier because names ending in "-a" are fairly mainstream here in the States, but boy names that end in an "-o" seem to say "I am ethnic."

I'm curious, did you have boy name choices and if so, what were they?

Hi, Sweet Pea,

No, we didn't really have any boy names picked. I was superstitious and I didn't want to even think about names until after the amneosentisis (sp?) so we really didn't consider about any names before that, and then we knew DD was going to be a girl, so pretty much there was no point in looking at boy names.

I think you're right, Girl names are easier, and I think that may be the case with many languages, not just Italian.

I did like the name Carlo though. (Vetoed by DH)
My friend (she's American with an Italian DH) named their first son Luca and second son Hugo, after her DH's dad, Ugo.
Right now Leonardo seems to be a really popular choice here in Italy. I know at least 3 born in the last 2 years. It's a lovely name, but that may seem like you're too much of a fan of Leonardo Decaprio, unofrtunately

Here are some Baby Name Websites I found while I was preggers, maybe this will help a little.

Names

http://www.italianames.com/1600_italian_names_tuv.php

http://www.italianames.com/top30italy2004.php

http://www.20000-names.com/female_a_names_3.htm

http://www.behindthename.com/

http://www.my-baby-names.com/italian_baby_names.html

Good luck!

[superstella]

My dh is Greek and very into following the Greek tradition as far as names are concerned. For this reason, naming the 2 I have with him was very easy! Firstborn son (for dh, I have 3 from first marriage), named for father's father. Christos, same in both languages, very easy. Second born son, named for mother's father. Homer/Omiros ... The Greek version (especially with our last name) is a challenge for people here in small town America so we usually just say "Homer." However, dh's family (all still in Greece) all use Omiros.

The challenge would have been if Christos had been a girl... Because although dh has a sister with a child that *should* have been named for their dad, she chose instead to "save" that name for dh because HE is a firstborn son and it's important for HIS firstborn son to carry on the name. Had firstborn been a girl, he could have chosen to either use the female version (Christina) or save the name and hope for a boy next time (in which case we would have used my mother's name). It would have been a tough choice because I wasn't so sure we'd have another, and of course there's no guarantee that the next one would be a boy either!

Anyway I can kind of relate to some of the stories about trying to find something that fits in both cultures even though it was kind of predetermined in our case. I wouldn't have named this one Homer probably (because of the Homer Simpson reference), but I'm glad we did!

[bronxmom]

My ex - father of my daughter - is Egyptian and living here in the US with me. His family are all in Egypt. From the get go, I wanted and Arabic name - both to connect her to that part of her culture (which is obviously not the dominant one here) and as a connection/to honor her family over there, which has had to see their son move and build a family in a whole other country. My only concern was that it be easily pronouncable here. We went with Nadya, the name of her grandmother in Egypt - pronounced with a flat "a" as in apple. People often pronounce it more like the Russian with the broad a, which I did not anticipate. But I'm pretty happy with it. My friends who are also an American/Arab couple are also giving their kid an Arabic name.

[siobhang]

DH is English and Welsh and I am Irish and American (with a dash of German from a my grandparents). Should be easy, right?

Not really. Too many options, too many opinions. So we decided to pick from a really limited pool, and only pick family names. Both DH and I also very big on names having meaning - we were both named after people in our families so we wanted to have that connection.

So we named one son after my dh's grandfather (Anthony) and my father (Robert) and the other after my grandfather (Liam) and dh's father (John).

The only change is that my grandfather was Wilhelm (German for William) and we preferred the Irish version - Liam.

The other change is that on the UK side of the pond, Anthony is pronounced "An-tony" and on the US side "Anthony" (with a th sound). My dad pronounces his name "An-tony", which I don't mind.

We decided to let it be both. We call him Anthony, but don't correct anyone. His nickname is Ant (not Tony), though.

What I find weird are all the people here in the US who assume that Anthony is an Italian name. Um, it is a biblical name - all the Christian European countries have it, and Anthony (vs Antonio) is the English/Welsh version.

If we have a third, and she is a girl, we may break with our tradition, because I love the name Penelope and we don't have any Penelope's in our families. I also sort of want to name a child after my mom, but frankly, never liked either her first or middle names. Ugh.

The other name I love but cannot use is Eileen (my grandmother's name) - because it rhymes with our last name... Double ugh.

I have friends who also give their kids the obligatory name as the first name, and then the name they intend to call their kids as the middle. Both a friend from Quebec and a friend from the deep south told me their families have this tradition.

And I know many people who "changed" their names - suddenly started going by their middle name or a nickname in junior high or later. I like the idea of giving a kid that option.

[expat-mama]

Wow, it's so great reading all the different cultures and backgrounds people come from- I fit right in here! My mother is Belgian/French and my father is Zimbabwean (xhosa), DH parents are Ukrainian/Polish and English. My parents seemed to come to a compromise with my sister's and my names- we both have Zimbabwean (xhosa) first names and french middle names. My husband has very english first and middles names and a Ukrainian last name.

So with all of our cultural backgrounds, one of the first things our families are asking us now that we are TTC is, of course, "What are you going to name it?" (and everytime we call- "are you pregnant yet!?!? :) )This question follows with multiple suggestions from all sides.:eyesroll

We feel like we have a lot of "cultural" names to choose from, which is a good and bad thing- I'm afraid we'll never decide! But we're also not exactly the traditional type and have been thinking of other names we like from OTHER cultures and pretty words in our shared language and culture, (Canadian) English. So we'll see, we are just at the start of our multi-cultural family journey and name choosing is a definitely a fun part of it. :D

[vbactivist]

DH is English and Welsh and I am Irish and American (with a dash of German from a my grandparents). Should be easy, right?

Not really. Too many options, too many opinions. So we decided to pick from a really limited pool, and only pick family names. Both DH and I also very big on names having meaning - we were both named after people in our families so we wanted to have that connection.

So we named one son after my dh's grandfather (Anthony) and my father (Robert) and the other after my grandfather (Liam) and dh's father (John).

The only change is that my grandfather was Wilhelm (German for William) and we preferred the Irish version - Liam.

The other change is that on the UK side of the pond, Anthony is pronounced "An-tony" and on the US side "Anthony" (with a th sound). My dad pronounces his name "An-tony", which I don't mind.

We decided to let it be both. We call him Anthony, but don't correct anyone. His nickname is Ant (not Tony), though.

What I find weird are all the people here in the US who assume that Anthony is an Italian name. Um, it is a biblical name - all the Christian European countries have it, and Anthony (vs Antonio) is the English/Welsh version.
If we have a third, and she is a girl, we may break with our tradition, because I love the name Penelope and we don't have any Penelope's in our families. I also sort of want to name a child after my mom, but frankly, never liked either her first or middle names. Ugh.

The other name I love but cannot use is Eileen (my grandmother's name) - because it rhymes with our last name... Double ugh.

I have friends who also give their kids the obligatory name as the first name, and then the name they intend to call their kids as the middle. Both a friend from Quebec and a friend from the deep south told me their families have this tradition.

And I know many people who "changed" their names - suddenly started going by their middle name or a nickname in junior high or later. I like the idea of giving a kid that option.


Not being snarky, but where is Anthony in the bible? Do you mean a Christian name (ie a saint)?

[dessismama]

We gave our kids Bulgarian first names and Chinese middle names. Poor kids... but at least their names are unique and reflect their heritage!

[KellyKA23]

Oh we are having such a hard time!!!! We are going through the same things with wanting both cultures represented but names being to hard in one, or old fashioned in another. The other problem is my MIL who doesnt speak english and just wont pronouce certain american names. ( im thinking the less she likes them the harder they become for her to say) but ohwell.... hopefully we will settle on somthing soon. Luckily alot of names we both like overlap my german/american and his spanish culteral.....

[lisac77]

We also wanted names that were easy to pronouce/spell in both languages despite the disparity in alphabets (DH is Iranian) and reflected his dual heritage. We ended up naming him after both grandfathers - David for my dad and Ali for DH's dad. He goes by Ali. Easy to spell/pronounce (although David bacomes Davud) but reflective of both cultures.

The only issue I've had is that Ali is a common nickname for girls names like Alison and Alicia, so if people just see his name written they think he is a girl! :p

[Sonnenwende]

We couldn't really find names we liked in German or English. Eventually, we decided to go with names used commonly in Sweden and Norway.

[umsami]

The only issue I've had is that Ali is a common nickname for girls names like Alison and Alicia, so if people just see his name written they think he is a girl! :p

I face that with both of my boys. DS1 is Sami so people think it's short for Samantha until they meet him. DS2 is Ali. So same issues regarding Allison. DD lucked out... no issues with her name (Sara).

[summermay]

We did a lot of brainstorming. We have different nationalities and expect to be transferred a couple of times in the next years, so we made sure that the names are ok not just in European and American, but also Latin-roman and Chinese/Japanese cultures.
It was like finding an universal brand name.

We ended with the names of our favourite feminist philosophers though, which I intended in the first place. But good to know they are adequate in other cultures, too. And hubby was happy to have found such international names.

[rabbitmum]

But then of course as an American both my kids go by shortened forms day to day which is totally not the Norwegian way. :)

We had this consideration too. Knowing that there was a high probability that English friends and relatives would shorten our son's name, we had to find a name that didn't turn into a name that sounded bad in Norwegian when shortened (Alexander -> Alex, for instance, sounds "rough" in Norwegian).

But actually it turned out that people have been rather good at respecting that his name is the name we gave him - even though I'm sure they don't understand why we're so fussy.:o

[Datura]

Yep, we get the response of "wow, THAT'S an American name!" for DS1 ALL the time. So annoying. We settled upon it together. DS2 has a very old English name which seems to placate people here. :p It's funny all the ways that culture pops up, even when it's just a colonial vs British difference. (I'm an American married to a Kiwi, btw)

[bdoody11]

My friend (she's American with an Italian DH) named their first son Luca and second son Hugo, after her DH's dad, Ugo.

Luca is our boy name (if we ever have a boy)! I admit we got it from watching The Godfather :bag: I figure it's OK, my namesake is a character in a movie that practices the world's oldest profession. Being named after a fictional gangster couldn't be much worse. :p

DH and I definitely agreed we wanted a traditionally Hispanic name for our DD (I'm White, DH is Hispanic). He has a very traditional Hispanic last name and we really wanted her first and last name to match, so to speak. Her first name is Ana (a very popular name in both Latin America and Spain-- DH's two heritages) Carolina (my DH's mother's and grandmother's name-- pronounced Car-o-leena. My mother's name is Karol so it's a tribute to her as well). We love it and it fits her perfectly. The only issue we have is with pronunciation. Ana is often pronounced Anna instead of Ah-nah. Strangers don't use her middle name much, but I did have receptionist pronounce her full name "Anna Carolina" (like the state). Oh boy.

The issue now is coming up with another girl name for #2. We had one we agreed on and it's been used. If we don't get a boy the next time around we're in trouble. :)

[Cyann]

We're in the opposite boat -- if we don't have a girl next time (assuming there is a next time), we are going to be so very lost for names. It took us until just a few days before he was born to come up with our son's name. We wanted a name that "worked" in both cultures (I'm generic American; my husband is from southern India), but there's a pretty limited selection in that category, and either he or I hated all of them. We finally settled on Arjun, an Indian name we both liked and that hasn't given us too much trouble in the US so far with regards to spelling, pronunciation, and so forth.

Of course, neither of our families were 100% happy with it. But what can you do? We appeased them with the middle names. :D

[EVC]

Dh and I couldn't agree on any American sounding names, so we went Slavic. Dd's name is a very old (pre-Christian) name common to many Slavic speaking countries, but we used Ukrainian transliteration (dh is Ukrainian). It's not a name that is difficult to pronounce in English, but the spelling really seems to throw people off. Guess we should have thought that through a little more :wink We did give her an English sounding middle name, though.

[TessJoon]

My husband is Iranian and I knew I wanted a Persian name when we found out we were pregnant so I started poring over the lists online and asking him about the meaning and cultural and SOCIAL significance of the names I liked.
It was funny because so many of the names that 'sounded' good to me he would tell me were considered 'cheap' or similar in Iran...
We discovered we were having a little girl and I again hit the lists until one day he and I were going over lists together and the name Noushafarin caused him to pause with tears in his eyes...it was his maternal grandmother's name and he loved her SO SO much. That was it for me and I decided right that second we'd call her Noushafarin. Nou for short ;)

We have a heck of a time explaining the name and nickname but I couldn't care less and actually welcome the opportunity to open the dialog that invariably results when people find out the name is Persian....

[lisac77]

My husband is Iranian and I knew I wanted a Persian name when we found out we were pregnant so I started poring over the lists online and asking him about the meaning and cultural and SOCIAL significance of the names I liked.
It was funny because so many of the names that 'sounded' good to me he would tell me were considered 'cheap' or similar in Iran...
We discovered we were having a little girl and I again hit the lists until one day he and I were going over lists together and the name Noushafarin caused him to pause with tears in his eyes...it was his maternal grandmother's name and he loved her SO SO much. That was it for me and I decided right that second we'd call her Noushafarin. Nou for short ;)

We have a heck of a time explaining the name and nickname but I couldn't care less and actually welcome the opportunity to open the dialog that invariably results when people find out the name is Persian....

That's a great name... you picked a "real" Persian name, but we cheated and used an Arabic name that is also common in Iran (Ali).

If we'd had a girl, I fell in love with the Persian name Sholeh, although the lack of an easy nickname might hold me up.

[b-girl]

Hi :wave

I'm pretty new on the boards, but my husband and I are planning to TTC in the next couple of months, and since we may have had an oopsie this month we've started to talk about names.

We've agreed we want a first name that is pronounceable in both English as well as Spanish. Also his middle name is Taino as are his siblings, so we will give our children Taino middle names! I think that might be the hardest part, I've already done a little internet searching and it's difficult to find Taino names, especially ones that are pronounceable by my American family. Our one other minor bump in the road is that I was born and raised Jewish and it is cultural to use the first letter of a deceased relative to name the new child. So we also have limited letters to use when picking a name.

As another member mentioned, when we do get pregnant we plan to keep the name to ourselves until the child is born and officially named.

Well thanks for letting me share. I look forward to joining this little community :treehugger:

[MommyJoia]

The bigger issue for me was the Arabic naming standard... whereas it's first name husband's name grandfather's name great-grandfather's name etc. I did not like the fact that all of our kids (male or female) have my husband's name as their middle name. It seems very strange to me. However, there's a chance that we would live in the ME, and if that were to happen, DD having a female middle name would be seen as very strange, as her middle name would be her last name in most things.

My DH is Lebanese and Druze. I would not bend on this issue at all. I said that in America, My DDs will have girl's names. If and when we register them in Lebanon, I have no problem with "Najib" being their middle name in Lebanon, but in America, they have middle names. My husband picked my DD#1's first name because he is a big Duran Duran fan and he said that if he ever had a daughter, he'd name her Rio. I thought that was cool so I agreed and picked the middle name Rayne (pronounced 'rain') and we went back and forth over the name for DD#2. We finally settled on Yesmeen (we spell it phonetically how it is pronounced in Lebanon). I really wanted matching names. I was really into the name Kai, which means ocean and I thought it would be cool to have an ocean and a river, but my husband hated the name. "Yesmeen" was on and off the table several times until I saw an interview with Miss Universe from Japan and her name was Riyo (pronounced 'Rio') and she said her name means 'Jasmine'... So there was my match. Yesmeen was Arabic for Jasmine and Rio was Japanese for jasmine. I picked her middle name too. Her middle name is Sky. So that matches too, with the three letter thing. It's obscure, but it's good enough for me. My DH's father thinks that they have the names Rio Najib and Yesmeen Najib and as far as I'm concerned, that's fine by me...

The one thing that irritated me was when Rio was first born, my husband had to go there for business and people all over the place were telling him that "Rio" was incorrect and that because she's a girl her name should be "Ria" and every time he would talk about her whoever he was talking to would say, "you mean 'Ria'"... eventually my DH gave up and just stopped debating it.

Even now some people will ask, "how's Ria?"

Of course, if we had a boy, I totally agreed to name him after my FIL... It's tradition.

[eilonwy]

our only real trouble in choosing hawaiian names is choosing something that doesn't look like it could be convberted to something gross is one of my red neck realatives in the south got cocky. like Ikaika, the name for stregnth, could so easily be Icki/Icky.

:o My mother grew up with an uncle Icky (short for Isidore, I believe); I'm pretty sure that was just the Yiddishified version of his name. I totally wanted to name a kid "Icky." :)

Miss 1928: I'm trying to come up with names that sound appropriate in both English and Italian. I'm finding that girl names are infinitely easier because names ending in "-a" are fairly mainstream here in the States, but boy names that end in an "-o" seem to say "I am ethnic."

I'm curious, did you have boy name choices and if so, what were they?

Not Italian, but I've always loved the name Giovanni, and I"m pretty sure that's a boy's name... right? :o

Anyway, yes, we went through this as well. I'm Jewish by birth, and wanted the kids to have Hebrew names. Said names had to be easy to pronounce and explain to the ILs, and not sound too weird to Mike the Master of All Things Boring. :eyesroll I wanted them to have English names that were not obscenely dull as well, while Mike preferred boring names. It was difficult, especially for the boys, but we finally agreed. :dizzy: Insanity.

[JacquelineR]

DS1 is Aristotle. I'm not Greek, nor is his father. I liked the name and it's meaning- and it fit since I craved Greek food all through my pregnancy with him. :wink The owners of the restaurant I frequented while pregnant (it was a haunt long before I was pregnant also, so I knew them fairly well) were absolutely tickled to find out I'd given him a Greek name. They didn't like me too much before he was born, but every time I came in after he was born, they came out to see him and stuff. :joy: That was cool because I really liked them. :)

[KnitterMama]

We went through that as well. We had to find a Turkish name that Americans could pronounce and that didn't have any Turkish letters in it. Now we are debating on names for a possible next baby and not doing so well.

Since we named DS after DH's brother, there was little to be done on this issue. We named him Altuğ Gabriel. DH played with the idea of dropping the soft g, I would have no part of that! I felt really strongly about that, because it feels like so much of DH's culture is subjugated here that I cling to things we can choose to keep. He also wanted to call DS by his middle name, which I also objected to. Apparently, I'm a cultural hardass. :lol

DH has 2 Turkish names I love - Selim and Altay.

[morganeldi]

How great to find a thread about this. My husband and I struggled with this a lot, and will for the next one too (we're already thinking about it and not even ttc #2 quite yet)

My dh is from Panama, and we have a long, spanish last name...Also his family does not speak English at all and live in Panama so the names we chose must be easily pronounced in both Spanish and English., plus we are working with a set middle name for boys after their Grandfathers who have passed on.

We pretty easily came up with Gabriel for ds1 which is works well in both languages, with his middle name and last name. My only beef about it is that its sort of common but not a huge deal. It's actually been nice to tell people his name in both countries and not have anyone say "what???" can you spell that???" etc. My dh has a very uncommon name and its always been a problem for him both here and there.

But as for the next one I'm sort of at a loss! There are quite a few girl names that would work more or less but boys I'm having a problem coming up with ones that work for all the criteria AND that we both love enough to use!

[Liquesce]

My DH is Lebanese and Druze. I would not bend on this issue at all. I said that in America, My DDs will have girl's names.

:o If we stay in the U.S. my daughter will probably never forgive me on this front ... so my kids and their father share a same last name we decided to give our kids his name and his father's as joint middle names, so my daughter has not one but two boys' names for middle names. I ws shy about having just one growing up, and mine is pretty gender ambiguous sounding at that.