I'm collecting stories of how parents picked the names of their children. I'd like to hear unique, touching, funny, etc. stories (not "he was named Bob because his dad's name is Bob"). For instance, I named my daughter Lila because it is a code word between my best friend and I for "love." If you have a story you'd like to share, please write me at lilabillium@yahoo.com. Thanks so much.

Lori Anderson
Freelance Editor/Writer

My name is Mike Heiter. I'm 58 years old. I live in Richardson, TX. I have two boys and five girls. The boys have two two-syllable names each. The girls have three-syllable first names and one-syllable middle names. All of them have at least one name from someone I know or knew. My wife's name starts with an A. The childrens names start with B, C, D, E, F, G, and J

My son's first name is my maternal grandmothers maiden name, and his middle name is the traditional name of the first born son of each generation on my maternal grandfather's side of the family, and he is the 7th generation to have it.

Jager Andrew

My son's name is the typical "keep it in the family" name. He is named after his great-grandfather that started the first hospital in our city. My daughter, well that's a whole other story. I wanted to name her Avonlea after my favorite stories as a child (Anne of Green Gables). My husband adamantly refused. He wanted to name her Lauren. I didn't like that name because I knew two students from my high school days who were "not nice" (You know, the B word).

My daughter ended up being born before we could decide on a name. She was a preemie and spent the first 48 hours being called "Baby " by the nurses. They finally told me I wasn't allowed to see her until I decided on a name. I relented and allowed her to be named Lauren. I added Ann Burns as her middle name after my great-grandmother. Hubby thought it was "stupid" to have two middle names and told the birth certificate office of the hospital to write down Lauren Ann.

Its a shame he's a smoker and was outside when the nurse came in and asked me to sign the birth certificate. Lauren definitely fits her as a first name, but I am keen on her middle name - Ann Burns!

My daughter's name is Kendra. When my husband and I were searching for names, we decided we didn't want to use any that were already in the family and it was a Catholic family so plenty of names were already used. One night near the end of my pregnancy I dreamed about the name "Kendra" and both her father and I agreed that was a great name.
Heather Larson
Tacoma, WA

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Heather

I had to reply when I saw your name, Lori.

Before our daughter was born, my husband and I couldn't agree on a name. If I liked it, he didn't; if he liked it-- see what I mean?

I finally told him I'd write down a list and he could pick one. On that list was the name Loni. I had chosen it from the song, "Sweet LeiLani, Heavenly Flower". Lei means 'flower' in Hawaiin, and Lani means 'sky' or heavenly'. He said he like Lani, but I changed the spelling to Loni, fearing that it would be mispronounced Laaani instead of Lawni (know what I mean?). But folks will find a way to mangle any name. People have pronounced it with a long O at times.

When we named her Loni with an O, I had never heard of Loni Anderson. She became famous because of WKRP in Cincinnatti soon after--and she spells her name with an O, too!

Kathy

Our first son is called Keegan. It's means little firey one in Irish. Our second son had to have a name that went with Keegan. We investigated Hayden and Aiden but neither had enough of a strong sound at the beginning to compliment Keegan. So one night I had a dream that I had a son and named him Cayden. We thought about this with a K but decided Cayden with a C was easier in the long run. We looked it up in a book of 10,000 baby names and it wasn't in there - yah!. The closest thing is Aiden which means little firey one in Celitic. They are close brothers and people have trouble saying Keegan and Cayden in the same sentence especially after they've had a few drinks but we like the names and they are special.

This is getting slightly off topic, since I don't have any children, but all this naming from dreams talk reminds me of a crazy ex who dreamed not just of the five children we never had, but their names as well!

Being pregnant makes one dream a bit more fertile for some reason!

My daughters middle name, Kendall, came from the place she was conceived--North Kendall Drive in Miami during a trip away. It was "too much information" for her to find that out!

I named my first daughter Ashley for no reason, but gave her my husband's middle name, Lee. He was not my husband at the time, (nor her biological father) and although we had dated in the past, we weren't dating when she was born. I think that I gave her his middle name in an attempt to bring us back together. Apparently, it worked. We had two more children and the first one we named after his mother's dad (Emil) and my mother's dad (Ray)--Emily Rae. Our second was a son that we named Samuel and gave him two middle names, of sorts. His name is Samuel J Michael. The J is for my husband and his father, whose names both start with J and the Michael is for my father, Michael and myself (I am named after my father), Michelle. The Samuel has no significance in our family, it just fit right with the two middle names and we both liked it.

I'm going to speak from the view of having a strange name. My parents called me Naomi, because it was the first name they managed to think of, that there were no obvious abbreviations for - they didn't want me to be an abbreviation (I think I've succeeded with that). Of course, within 30mins of having 'named' me officially, they were calling me Nomes! *sigh*

Now, problems with that have been numerous. For a start: no one can pronounce the name. It's supposed to be a roll of vowels, Neigherme (or thereabouts), but people seem to take either extreme: Nayohme, NayOHme or Nighohme. *sigh*

Then there's teh spelling: Ngeiome is one of the spellings I've had. People generally through unwanted g's, y's, i's and e's in the name. This also stems from teh fact that, since hte name is from the bible: there are versions in just about every language; in Spanish it's Noami (so I'm forever under the impression I spelt my own name wrong when people correct me there! :)), in Italian it's Neomi, in Japanese it's squiggles that don't come out here but basically Niomi.

THEN, (and this might be the worst), there's the mis-hearing, particularly on the telephone. So I say: "Hi, this is Naomi" and the response is "Hello Melanie". Or Mary. Or Leoni. Or Amy. Or Natalie. Sometimes, after they dont' get the name the third time, I relent and call myself something else. Isn't this illegal!?

So yeah.

Of course, my first born daughter is named Taya. I like names with y's in them - they sound pretty. And it's an abbreviation of Tracy that I only found out when I watched the wedding video of a friend of mine (named Taya) and the priest asked if Tracy would...

In New Zealand Naomi is a very common name and no problem to spell. I sympathise with you and I also like y names. My second son is Cayden and my daughter Jaymee. They both look nice written down.

My name is Victoria. It was such a long name to grow into as a child and then when I left school and got a job, they started calling me Vickie. Then when I got married, it didn't go with my surname, so I became Victoria again. Which is one reason why my kids have names that can't be properly shortened. My other son is Keegan.

When I was pregnant, I heard that old song "summer breeze" I think they are using for a GAP commercial now, and I was really enjoying it, and at the same time trying to think of a unique and pretty girls name, and exactly at the time the lyrics went "summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowin thru the jasmine in my mind..." I felt the baby move for the first time, and I realized that in that lyric, I had the perfect girls name, Jasmine. (which back in 1990 was a very unusual name, but since Disney remade Aladin, now it's the new Jennifer...sigh...)
My next two girls had names that I KNEW would never become overly popular here. Since my husband is Arabic, we named one Tahani loosely translated means "many wonderful wishes, or congratulations" and Lemiya, which means gazelle, but since Tahani couldn't say her little sister's name, she started calling her BabyDoll, and we still call her that, it just kinda stuck. She's almost three and if you ask her her name, she says Babydoll. (she'll probably hate us for that when she's in high school

It's a Greek tradition to name sons after previous fathers and grandfathers so I have a family full of Peters, Nics, Johns and Georges.

I broke with tradition and named my son Alex after Alexander the Great, the boy King of Greece.