How Did You Pick Your Child’s Middle Name?

My daughter’s first name is Lilly and our last name starts with an L. I jokingly said, what if we named her Lilly Isabelle so her initials would be LIL. My husband and I both laughed and then stopped and realized we actually really liked the name.

Our daughter was born in Mongolia and we gave her the middle name Darikhuu after a dear friend who is like a mother to me. It means « gunpowder boy » which even in a country of unusual names is unique.

My son has five names. First name, two middle names and a double barrel surname (my husbands surname and my surname). Family thought we were mad, and filling out paperwork is a pain but every name is special. He has his own traditional Welsh first name and the his middle names are Hanif after his paternal grandfather and George after his maternal great-grandfather. We wanted to honour two amazing men in our lives. My son knows he’s really in trouble when all the names are used!

My daughter’s middle name is Sofia. I named her Sofia after Sofia Coppola during that time I absolutely adored her. As she got older I worried she would hate it, until one day she mentioned how much she loved Sofia Coppola movies and that was when I told her. She was kinda psyched! I’m so happy we share the same film aesthetic and DNA ! She’s 18 now so we made it !

As the biracial daughter of a refugee, I am so glad my parents gave me a Vietnamese middle name. At times when I struggle with my identity, it has made me feel connected to my culture, especially to my late grandma, who mainly spoke Vietnamese, and always called me by my middle name, Quynh.

As soon as I became pregnant with my daughter we stumbled upon a first name we just loved (Sinclaire), but never could find a middle name that we liked to go with it. Since I never took my husband’s last name and I run my family’s business (which is also our last name) we used that as her middle name. Her full name is basically three last names which sounds like a law firm, but we love it and it suits her perfectly. :)

Several weeks after we gave our first son the middle name Wolf, just because we liked it, we were walking out the door past a poster we’d had framed from our favourite Toronto brewery, Bellwoods Brewery, to remind us of a lovely summer we spent there – the penny dropped that we’d actually done was name our son after a beer, Wizard Wolf. For our next son we thought carefully in advance about how we would tell the story of his name.

My oldest is named after both of our grandmothers (lucky they shared a name). For our youngest, we wrestled with middle names for 7+ months. We knew her first name but everything we put with her first name just didn’t feel right. We were literally filling out the birth certificate application and my man spouted out a name that we had never considered and after a quick google search (gotta make sure we’re not naming her after a porn star or something) we declared that was the name. Her middle name is sooo perfect for her and I chuckle every time i think about us coming up with it last second

My dear father, George, passed away in February and he was adored by everyone in our family. Over the years it’s become a bit of a tradition to name his grandkids and great-grandkids after him. So far we have Edward (Ned) George, James George, Lenny George, Huey George and Thomas George. (Lenny and Huey are even brothers).

I regret not naming any of my children after myself. They have my husband’s last name, but nothing in their names comes from me! I would have loved to give one of my kids my own middle name, but I never even thought of this option…

The timing of this post is perfect. We made one child’s name my beloved grandmothers’s name and for the other we carried on a family practice of making the middle name a virtue (mine if Faith). But my very spirited 6-year old just informed this past weekend that she would like to change her middle name from “Grace” to “Domination” (she is very confident in her prowess in tag and Connect 4.)

After our daughter Anastasia was born, we hadn’t yet picked a middle name, and so we spent those 2 sleepless nights in the hospital calling out what seemed like every single name in existence, but nothing had the right ring. In my somewhat delirious state, I said to my husband, “Winter! Anastasia Winter!” She was, after all, born on December 27th and she felt like our winter princess.

I agree with previous posters that middle names are a fun way to use a little more creative name. Our first son is kind of named after my husband’s great-uncle, but mostly because we liked the sound and wanted to honor his Dutch heritage (mn is Zaeger; uncle spelled it differently).

For our daughter, we tossed around a lot of ideas, but then I heard someone calling for their daughter “Clara” on the playground and it was perfect (plus I loved the meaning!).

For our second boy (last baby!) my husband found the name Calder, which is a place name in our favorite spot in Maine. It also means “rocky water,” which is funny because his first name is a type of tree and our last name means “green field” in Dutch, so technically he’s Tree Rocky Water Green Field. He does love nature!

We invited our three daughters to pick their own!

My second boy was born almost one year ago and I knew it would be our last child. My firstborn is the 3rd, after my husband and his father. My husband asked if it is a boy, could we name him Charles, after his grandfather. I agreed because I was SURE it was a girl and guess what- it was a boy. I panicked, knowing this was my last chance to squeeze in “my” side of the family and wrote down two middle names on his birth certificate. Now “my side” is well represented, family-name-wise and little Charles has one mean, four-letter monogram!

My daughter’s first name is Lola (after my paternal grandmother) and funnily enough she is the spitting image of her…Lola has got two middle names, Jane (after her big step sister) and Elizabeth (after her maternal grandmother). We really struggled with names for our twin boys and we ended up with Arlo Robert (after his paternal grandfather) Jules (after his father) and Luca Alexander (after me as my name is Aleksandra).

Our daughter is named Sara after a grandmother and great-grandmother. Choosing a middle name was a leap of faith: I am a green-eyed redhead and my husband is on the fair side (blue eyes) so we knew there was a chance (albeit small) she might be a redhead too. Her middle name is Rowan, Celtic for redhead (I am unsurprisingly of Irish and Scottish descent). We got lucky….she came out a blue-eyed redhead! Whew…as we didn’t have a backup plan…

My best friend, Beth, had a suggestion for our daughter’s middle name. Her own name! Of course, it was perfect in every way, and we still laugh about it. Anna Elizabeth.

My middle name is “Pacis.” My whole name comes from my mom’s Catholic School back in Vietnam “Regina Pacis” which means “Queen of Peace” in Latin.

My son’s middle name is “Bishop” after my mother-in-law’s maiden name.

My middle name is Pacis. I’m the youngest of five girls. After having four girls my parents said they were done trying for a boy, but six years later I worked my way through. My parents were so sure I was the miracle boy they’d been waiting for so they only had a boy’s name picked: David Anthony. Much to their surprise (“disappointment”) I was born and wasn’t named for a week. They finally settled on the name of my mom’s Catholic private school in Vietnam “Regina Pacis,” which means “Queen of Peace” in Latin. Don’t worry, my parents love me, their bonus daughter.

When my husband and I were dating we went on a trip to Iceland with my family, but hit a tough spot and broke up for a day. While we were “broken up,” stuck on opposite sides of the backseat with my mom in between, someone in my family mentioned the name “Jacob” and both my husband and I thought to ourselves that we loved the name, and would try to use it for a son someday. When we got back together we discovered each other’s love for the name and would talk about wanting to be together and have our Jacob someday. Lo and behold, when we got pregnant in 2012, we discovered that Jacob had been the #1 boys name in America for OVER TEN YEARS RUNNING. As a Sarah and a Tyler, that was not good news. So we named him Asher and made his middle name Jacob.