Bates Family Part 10

[AnywhereButHere]

I always thought it was interesting that your name is something that gives the first impression of you to others and defines you  for your entire life, but you have absolutely no say in choosing it. Sure, I guess you can change it legally if you really wind up hating it or feel it doesn’t suit you, but how many people actually go through the bother?

 

I say this as someone who has never really liked mine all that much, although given that name popularity calculator above, I definitely got the best of the bunch!

I was on the phone today with AT&T trying to cancel phone service for an employee.  My last name is a bit of a mouthful, so I always say sure when they ask if they can call me Beth. Most of the time they also stick a Ms in front of it just to be polite. So we go through the process, and I explain that I need to cancel the service as the employee had passed away. I swear to god, the next sentence out of the representative’s mouth was “I’m so sorry to hear that Ms. Death”.  Ummm – thanks for the title bump?  

[Pretzel]

24 minutes ago, VaSportsMom said:

Hey now, my middle name is Lynn! I hate my first name but my mom wanted a name that wasn't in the family so she named me after the last girl my dad dated before marrying her.

Wow, seriously.  

I'm really not a fan of the new baby's name. I hate the spelling and it always reminds me of Casey Anthony. I'm not too big a fan of Bradley either, it sounds like a little boy's name not like that of a grown up. 

[boston2495]

1 hour ago, OyToTheVey said:

I think they call Joseph "Joe" and Josiah "Siah". Still weird to have 2 boys with the same name. But than again they have a Joy Anna and a Johanna. Which to me is the same name.

That has always bothered me! Here they have so many chances to name their kids, which is so rare, and they basically come up with the same name over and over again? I would even lump Josie in their with the other Joe names, and definitely think it's weird to have three daughters with the "Anna" sound in their names. But having a Johannah as your next daughter right after Joy-Anna is really kind of much. Both are lovely names, but just too close for sisters, IMO.

[19 cats and counting]

One last thing I'll say about the Duggar girl names.  Jennifer Danielle sounds like she was born in 1977 or 1987 instead of 2007.

I had about a dozen Jennifers in my school at any given time and I'm sure at least one was Jennifer Danielle.

[Eternalbluepearl]

15 minutes ago, Pretzel said:

I'm really not a fan of the new baby's name. I hate the spelling and it always reminds me of Casey Anthony. 

Me too. Not that I ever really liked the name Casey, but it's ruined now. 

[PennySycamore]

@singsingsing, my go-to option for naming things because I have more names that I like that kids has always been pets, but Sims is safer.  You actually have to take care of pets for years, if you're lucky.  We've had several dachshunds with German names. a Lab-pointer cross named after F Scott Fitzgerald's wife (and also from MAD magazine), a dog named Lucy and a cat named Ethel, a cat named after the mouse from The Rescuers, two cats with a name I love but my husband hated, gerbils with Shakesperean names and on and on.  Right now, I have only two dogs and only one of them has a human name.  I do spell Chloe with a "C" and not with a K though.

[Marilla-Cuthbert2013]

1 hour ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I have to admit my kids didn't look like any particular name when they were born.  They were adorable and I loved them but as newborns they just looked like generic babies to me - it wasn't until later that they started to resemble themselves, if that makes sense.

I think it's great that you put so much thought into it when you saw her - makes me feel like a crappy mom that I didn't think mine looked like any particular name.

I had my eldest son's name picked out since I was in 5th grade - fortunately his dad liked it, too.   My others I had their names locked long before they were born although we didn't tell people ahead of time.

Whenever someone is pregnant and tells me the names I always say something nice, no matter what I really think...because I've seen so many friends get very bummed when people criticize a name they love.  And the way I figure it no one would criticize to their faces after the baby was born and named so why chime in ahead of time?

Tbf none of my friends named their kids Spurgeon.  That could have tested my rule on this.  

I think Kaci Lynn is fine.  Kind of generic and I wouldn't have chosen it, but it's cute.  I know it's a southern thing, too, but I swear growing up in the Midwest in the 70's almost every girl I know had a middle name of Lynn, Ann, or Marie.  

This is a fun calculator - takes your name and the year you were born and tells you what your name would be today by rank.  (Ie if your name was ranked 100 in your birth year it gives you today's 100th ranked name.  Glad I'm not born today - mine would be hideous.

http://time.com/3856405/baby-name-popularity/

And these are really cool - show the most popular names by decade, by state in a morphing graph - girls and boys.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/a-wondrous-gif-shows-the-most-popular-baby-names-for-girls-since-1960/280709/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/americas-most-popular-boys-names-since-1960-in-1-spectacular-gif/280852/

Thank you, but, I must confess it was pure vanity..... We ended up throwing out our two girl names.... Because I was told my entire life that I don't look like a "Rachel", which sucks when you're not very fond of your first name (even though you were named in honor of your Great Aunt who died when she was six). 

I may or may not have spent my lunch hour poking around the name calculator.

I do wonder if names like Maci and Kaci are a regional spelling? (maybe?) I am reminded of what my husband's German cousins told us a few years ago. After the  of what my husband's German relatives told us that 99% of the time if someone has a creatively spelled first name like: Candi, Cindi, Mandi, Maik (Mike) they were from East Germany. 

Does that make sense? 

 

[FormerlyFundyLite]

5 hours ago, 19 cats and counting said:

I have family members named after living family members.  My dad's first name is my late grandfather's first name (he recently passed, so it's not like he was not a part of my dad's life).  HOwever, he goes by his middle name (well a nickname of it).  I have a cousin who is named after both of her grandmothers (same name, but old-fashioned and definitely does not sound like a 16 yo's name) and she also goes by her middle name.

My fella's father is a Jr, brother is a III and nephew is a IV. Grandfather (the original) was the only one to go by his given name--which is pretty unique. Father goes by a nickname based on his last name, brother goes by Trey (for "three" or "third"--I've heard of other people doing it too), and the nephew goes by something almost entirely unrelated.

I'd like to name my firstborn daughter after the women in my family. Somehow (half intention and half just coincidence), all 4 of the sisters (myself included), plus both of my grandmothers, and a great aunt have at least 1 of 3 different names as part of each of our names. Each of the three names is short enough that they can be combined to create a compound first name (which, IMHO, still sounds pretty classic) and a "normal" middle name. I figure the baby's grandmothers can give their names to the second girl  Short of naming my first born son FathersMiddleName GrandfathersMiddleName, I'm stuck for boy names. I'm also no where near being "in the family way" though, so I guess it doesn't matter.

[feministxtian]

I had a girl's name all picked out when my daughter was born...problem was, she didn't much look like the name I had picked. I had Andrea Nicole picked out for a girl...but when she came out she looked like one of those Holly Hobbie dolls (she was born in 1982) When I saw her for the first time, the name that sprang to mind was Amanda Michele...so Amanda Michele she is. My boys are Joshua Thomas and Daniel Joseph. My granddaughters are Alexis Carolina and Kieran Trinity. 

[TuringMachine]

I actually kind of like Josiah as a name but I agree it's a little weird when they already have Joseph.  Jana, Johanna, and Joy anna are all too similar as well. And are Jed and Jer's middle names both Robert?

Weren't they originally gonna name Jackson Judah?

[violynn]

All my girls are named after relatives.  The first two were named after my grandmama's sisters, and were also Bible names, something that was important in my family at the time.  The second two were named after my grandpa's sisters, fifth girl was named after my mother and my husband's mother, yet we called her by a nickname of her middle name.  Only the youngest got a name all her own, I was out of names of family member's I liked, so named her after one of my favorite girlhood authors.

[GeoBQn]

My BIL and his girlfriend just had a baby boy.  We had absolutely no idea what they were going to name him.  Everyone in my husband's generation has a super-Hebrew name, but we assumed he wouldn't go that way.  He ended up giving the kid a name that, when I first heard it, made me think of a very short-lived and widely-criticized sitcom from the 1990's.

[withaj]

Almost everyone in my family has a family name and I love it that way, even if I might have picked slightly different ones.

I'm named after my paternal grandmother, whose First+Middle was Helen+MyName (4th most popular name in 1990). She was named after HER grandmother, Myname. My middle name is my mother's maiden name.

My sister is named after our maternal grandmother, whose name was a very unusual double name, the second half of which was Anna, so Unusual+Anna+Maiden. My sister's First+Middle is Anna+Maiden.

My mother was named for her father. He was James+Middle but went by a short form of his middle name or by his initials, and she is Jane+Middle, always called the full double name growing up and by the initials as an adult.

Dad is the lone man out. He was given a traditional name that was considered a family name in family lore, but wasn't actually, as it turns out. Then he was given an awful 1940s middle name. Same formula for both of his brothers, too.

[TuringMachine]

My brother is William MiddleName LastName IV. My mom hates it though. She really didn't want to name him that because 1: it's very not Jewish to name your kids that way and 2. she thought having two people with the same name in the same house was a dumb idea. Which I agree with considering my dad once had his license suspended for his dad's unpaid parking tickets. But when my parents had gotten married they made a deal that if my dad went with my mom on a trip to China she would let him name their son William IV. And, well, they went to China.

[season of life]

57 minutes ago, boston2495 said:

That has always bothered me! Here they have so many chances to name their kids, which is so rare, and they basically come up with the same name over and over again? I would even lump Josie in their with the other Joe names, and definitely think it's weird to have three daughters with the "Anna" sound in their names. But having a Johannah as your next daughter right after Joy-Anna is really kind of much. Both are lovely names, but just too close for sisters, IMO.

I've seen quite a few fundie families run into problems with similar names. In the Duggar family, we have Johannah and Joy-Anna, Jana, Jeremiah, Jedidiah, Josiah, and Joseph. And then in the Keller family, there's a daughter named Anna and her sister Susanna. Michael is also used a lot for middle names (Ben Seewald, Derick Dillard, Jason Duggar) and first names (Mike Keller and Josh's first son).

[withaj]

2 minutes ago, TuringMachine said:

My brother is William MiddleName LastName IV. My mom hates it though. She really didn't want to name him that because 1: it's very not Jewish to name your kids that way and 2. she thought having two people with the same name in the same house was a dumb idea. Which I agree with considering my dad once had his license suspended for his dad's unpaid parking tickets. But when my parents had gotten married they made a deal that if my dad went with my mom on a trip to China she would let him name their son William IV. And, well, they went to China.

I love the horse trading that goes on with naming kids. So funny. My parents did some of that too.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

7 minutes ago, TuringMachine said:

My brother is William MiddleName LastName IV. My mom hates it though. She really didn't want to name him that because 1: it's very not Jewish to name your kids that way and 2. she thought having two people with the same name in the same house was a dumb idea. Which I agree with considering my dad once had his license suspended for his dad's unpaid parking tickets. But when my parents had gotten married they made a deal that if my dad went with my mom on a trip to China she would let him name their son William IV. And, well, they went to China.

I could be totally wrong on this, but somewhere in the back of my head the idea that it's against Jewish tradition to name a child after a living relative?  And something about using same initials, but not exact same name or something?  

And I think a lot of people are named what they are due to marital bartering.   My dad insisted on naming my brother and promised my mom she could name the next one whatever she wanted.  Well like 8 years passed and I think my dad thought he won because it looked like my brother was going to be the last kid....until me.  

He hated my name but she held him to the deal.  He was able to veto Priscilla - which was her #1 choice - but she went with something he disliked almost as much.  Priscilla would have been much better.

[Georgiana]

In my friend's family, all of the men go by their middle names.  Because there are 7 generations to use the same first name.

And that name is Manville.  

[nastyhobbitses]

Just now, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I could be totally wrong on this, but somewhere in the back of my head the idea that it's against Jewish tradition to name a child after a living relative?  And something about using same initials, but not exact same name or something?  

And I think a lot of people are named what they are due to marital bartering.   My dad insisted on naming my brother and promised my mom she could name the next one whatever she wanted.  Well like 8 years past and I think my dad thought he won because it looked like my brother was going to be the last kid....until me.  

He hated my name but she held him to the deal.  He was able to veto Priscilla - which was her #1 choice - but she went with something he disliked almost as much.  Priscilla would have been much better.

From my understanding (read: my mom talking about how she chose my and my sister's names), it's Jewish tradition to name children for relatives who have died. So naming a child after a living relative is a bit like saying "I hope you die soon".

[MissBitters]

I've always loved more old-fashioned names, probably due to my love of Jane Austen. I gave my daughter a very traditional name with her first being in honor of a book character and two historical women I've always admired. Her middle fit well with the first name and can also be connected to a book character and someone from history. In other words, I am a complete nerd. Luckily, my nerdness was geared towards a more "normal" name instead of something like Cersei, which is pretty but maybe not the best role model for your daughter!

[HerNameIsBuffy]

Just now, Georgiana said:

In my friend's family, all of the men go by their middle names.  Because there are 7 generations to use the same first name.

And that name is Manville.  

This is an old German tradition as well.  In my family tree there are whole families where all the men are named Johann MiddleName and the women Anna MiddleName and they go by their middlenames - they seemed to have stopped doing this in the early 1800s (in my family, at least).  Something in folklore about the angel of death and if he came for a kid and didn't know which one it was he'd leave without taking anyone.  Apparently the angel of death's datasheet didn't include middle names or other identifying factors.

A lot of people in my family still go by their middle names, but just a preference and not because of duplicate first names.  we are not the Foreman's.  

[TuringMachine]

2 minutes ago, nastyhobbitses said:

From my understanding (read: my mom talking about how she chose my and my sister's names), it's Jewish tradition to name children for relatives who have died. So naming a child after a living relative is a bit like saying "I hope you die soon".

Yeah that's what I heard too.

[chris]

What I don't get is why Jim Bob goes by that nickname. James Robert (his legal name) is tremendously fine, especially for a politician (example, who are you more likely to vote for: State Rep. James Robert Duggar vs State Rep. Jim Bob Duggar?) Or hell, he could even go by the initials "J.B. Duggar" and still be good

[VelociRapture]

40 minutes ago, FormerlyFundyLite said:

My fella's father is a Jr, brother is a III and nephew is a IV. Grandfather (the original) was the only one to go by his given name--which is pretty unique. Father goes by a nickname based on his last name, brother goes by Trey (for "three" or "third"--I've heard of other people doing it too), and the nephew goes by something almost entirely unrelated.

I'd like to name my firstborn daughter after the women in my family. Somehow (half intention and half just coincidence), all 4 of the sisters (myself included), plus both of my grandmothers, and a great aunt have at least 1 of 3 different names as part of each of our names. Each of the three names is short enough that they can be combined to create a compound first name (which, IMHO, still sounds pretty classic) and a "normal" middle name. I figure the baby's grandmothers can give their names to the second girl  Short of naming my first born son FathersMiddleName GrandfathersMiddleName, I'm stuck for boy names. I'm also no where near being "in the family way" though, so I guess it doesn't matter.

We're naming our baby after family as well. Apparently it's a family thing - my sister and her husband just gave their son family names too! 

If it's a girl she'll have the same middle name as my dad's favorite Aunt, which is also a variant of the middle name I share with my mom. Her middle name would be the same middle name as my mom's late sister, my only biological Aunt.

If the baby is a boy his first name will be from the same ethnic group (Celtic) and start with the same two letters as my dad and sister's husband's  first names (they share the same name.) His middle name will be the first name of my father-in-law and my husband's older brother.

Finding ways to honor our families is important to us both - we just lucked out that we love a lot of the names in our families already. 

[Jana814]

19 minutes ago, TuringMachine said:

My brother is William MiddleName LastName IV. My mom hates it though. She really didn't want to name him that because 1: it's very not Jewish to name your kids that way and 2. she thought having two people with the same name in the same house was a dumb idea. Which I agree with considering my dad once had his license suspended for his dad's unpaid parking tickets. But when my parents had gotten married they made a deal that if my dad went with my mom on a trip to China she would let him name their son William IV. And, well, they went to China.

My mother's assistant son is named William. I agree that's not very Jewish but he was named after her father who's name was William.