Keeping It In The Family

What do you use as inspiration for your baby name? A favourite character in a book or film? An influential person from history, perhaps? I have to wonder whether family names come into the deciding process more than we realise. When you ask people about the names in their family, you can almost be sure that one name will come up again and again. It might be that your middle name is actually the first name of your parent or that you share the same name as one or more of your relatives.

If you’re expecting, you might find inspiration for your little one’s names from looking into your family tree. Did your great grandpa fight in WWII? Is your long lost Aunty famous for inventing something? Giving your child a name of someone related to you is a nice way of strengthening family bonds and when they are old enough to ask that lovely question of ‘Mummy, why am I called this?’ you’ll have a nice story to tell. It could also help to re-establish their place within the family.

Funnily enough, in Chinese culture it is frowned upon to name a baby after a family member or somebody famous as it can be presumptuous. In other cultures it is seen as bad luck to name a baby after somebody living. But you have to do what feels right to you and your culture.

But before you decide to call your baby Nana Ethel, you might want to consider starting up your own legacy. Giving your baby a strong name you can see carrying through the generations might mean that you can introduce your favourite name to your family circle, and that hundreds of years down the line your great, great grandniece will have inherited their name from the baby you’re carrying right now!

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