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What's in a name?
Feb. 26th, 2014 08:15 amI was asked in a comment on another entry why we chose the names we did for our girls, and I started replying there but realized it might make for an interesting post for general consumption. So here we are. :)
Our goal with names was always to choose something uncommon, but hopefully not outright weird--things the average person should at least have heard of, and hopefully be able to spell. We definitely wanted to stay away from all the trendy names of the day (I imagine every elementary school class these days has a handful each of Emma's, Olivia's and Sophia's). Parents who take a relatively normal name and mangle the spelling, or just make up something unpronounceable out of whole cloth, thereby dooming their child to a lifetime of spelling it out when introducing themselves, are imho terrible people. :) We also like to choose names with meaning and history, and for no particular reason we stuck with names of Greek origin--neither of us has any Greek heritage that we know of. But some of my favorite philosophers were Greeks, so there's that. ;)
So for our oldest we went with Hermione, which is not unusual in the UK but (so far) quite rare here in the US, and something most people (thanks to Harry Potter) should at least recognize. We're Harry Potter fans now, but we actually hadn't yet gotten into it at the time--we just adored the name and knew it from Shakespeare and a couple old British actresses we like. We were cognizant of the HP connection, of course, but it didn't really factor in either way (though it did probably help us finally get around to watching the first couple movies and jumping into the books from there). Her middle name is Melissa--something more common that she could switch to if she wanted, I suppose. And it makes her initials the same as her mother, which was sort of a bonus. Hermione means 'earthy' and Melissa means 'honeybee', which both seem appropriate--she's a big nature lover and outdoors person for sure, and she's always pausing to stick her nose in the flowers. :)
Hallie's actual name is Halcyon Marissa. Halcyon means a lot of things: calm, tranquil, prosperous, carefree, and it's also a type of bird (kingfisher). Marissa relates to the sea. So taken as a whole, it basically means tranquil seas. So far it's been a bit of a misnomer, as we've more often found her seas to be rather stormy. :) But she's gotten better as she's grown, so maybe she'll grow into her name after all. We pretty much called her Hallie rather than Halcyon from the start, maybe because even though Halcyon isn't a completely unusual word, it's unusual for a name and Hallie is more recognizable (and shorter to say anyway). Some friends brought up the drug Halcion when we were contemplating the name, but we weren't too worried about that--it's just a sleeping pill, anyway, and the drug's name comes from the word, not the other way around. As you see, she also shares her initials with Heather and Hermione.
And Amy is short for Amaryllis, which is a flower but also means 'sparkling', and I would definitely say she is that, for better or worse. :) Obviously we abandoned the H.M. initials theme with Amy, mainly because we couldn't come up with anything else we liked that fit. Besides, for her middle name we wanted to go with Stefanie, which is Heather's sister's name and also happens to be Greek. We knew the flower, of course, but I think we first came across Amaryllis as a name from the little girl in The Music Man, which we like, and it stuck with us--especially in the newer version with Matthew Broderick, where the little boy cutely says Amaryllith with a lisp. :) We've called her Amy from the start as well, and again probably because it's more familiar (and shorter) than Amaryllis. So for two of our kids, at least, you can say we named them things that we then proceeded to not call them by. But I don't think that's too uncommon, at least for boys--I'm sure there are still lots of Bobby's and Teddy's and Jonny's out there, right?
And that's that! No boys, so we had no chance to try our hand at a boy's name. There's a tradition in my family that the son gets the father's first name as their middle name. My first name is Kelly, which I'm not too fond of. But if I'd passed it down to a son, and we'd otherwise stuck with the Greek theme, I probably would have gone with my favorite constellation, Orion. So Orion Kelly. O.K. Good idea/bad idea? We'll probably never know. :)
Our goal with names was always to choose something uncommon, but hopefully not outright weird--things the average person should at least have heard of, and hopefully be able to spell. We definitely wanted to stay away from all the trendy names of the day (I imagine every elementary school class these days has a handful each of Emma's, Olivia's and Sophia's). Parents who take a relatively normal name and mangle the spelling, or just make up something unpronounceable out of whole cloth, thereby dooming their child to a lifetime of spelling it out when introducing themselves, are imho terrible people. :) We also like to choose names with meaning and history, and for no particular reason we stuck with names of Greek origin--neither of us has any Greek heritage that we know of. But some of my favorite philosophers were Greeks, so there's that. ;)
So for our oldest we went with Hermione, which is not unusual in the UK but (so far) quite rare here in the US, and something most people (thanks to Harry Potter) should at least recognize. We're Harry Potter fans now, but we actually hadn't yet gotten into it at the time--we just adored the name and knew it from Shakespeare and a couple old British actresses we like. We were cognizant of the HP connection, of course, but it didn't really factor in either way (though it did probably help us finally get around to watching the first couple movies and jumping into the books from there). Her middle name is Melissa--something more common that she could switch to if she wanted, I suppose. And it makes her initials the same as her mother, which was sort of a bonus. Hermione means 'earthy' and Melissa means 'honeybee', which both seem appropriate--she's a big nature lover and outdoors person for sure, and she's always pausing to stick her nose in the flowers. :)
Hallie's actual name is Halcyon Marissa. Halcyon means a lot of things: calm, tranquil, prosperous, carefree, and it's also a type of bird (kingfisher). Marissa relates to the sea. So taken as a whole, it basically means tranquil seas. So far it's been a bit of a misnomer, as we've more often found her seas to be rather stormy. :) But she's gotten better as she's grown, so maybe she'll grow into her name after all. We pretty much called her Hallie rather than Halcyon from the start, maybe because even though Halcyon isn't a completely unusual word, it's unusual for a name and Hallie is more recognizable (and shorter to say anyway). Some friends brought up the drug Halcion when we were contemplating the name, but we weren't too worried about that--it's just a sleeping pill, anyway, and the drug's name comes from the word, not the other way around. As you see, she also shares her initials with Heather and Hermione.
And Amy is short for Amaryllis, which is a flower but also means 'sparkling', and I would definitely say she is that, for better or worse. :) Obviously we abandoned the H.M. initials theme with Amy, mainly because we couldn't come up with anything else we liked that fit. Besides, for her middle name we wanted to go with Stefanie, which is Heather's sister's name and also happens to be Greek. We knew the flower, of course, but I think we first came across Amaryllis as a name from the little girl in The Music Man, which we like, and it stuck with us--especially in the newer version with Matthew Broderick, where the little boy cutely says Amaryllith with a lisp. :) We've called her Amy from the start as well, and again probably because it's more familiar (and shorter) than Amaryllis. So for two of our kids, at least, you can say we named them things that we then proceeded to not call them by. But I don't think that's too uncommon, at least for boys--I'm sure there are still lots of Bobby's and Teddy's and Jonny's out there, right?
And that's that! No boys, so we had no chance to try our hand at a boy's name. There's a tradition in my family that the son gets the father's first name as their middle name. My first name is Kelly, which I'm not too fond of. But if I'd passed it down to a son, and we'd otherwise stuck with the Greek theme, I probably would have gone with my favorite constellation, Orion. So Orion Kelly. O.K. Good idea/bad idea? We'll probably never know. :)
