What's In A Name?

When William Shakespeare said, “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet,” he probably wasn’t thinking of how children’s names seem to reflect their personalities.  At least in my case, they are true to form.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, we had already decided her name was going to be Phoebe because people used to tell me I resembled an actress with the same name.  (Of course, I was a lot thinner back then.)  Around that same time, Del and I became fans of a show called, “Felicity,” and the more I heard the name while watching the show, the more it grabbed at me.  It had taken me a year and a half to get pregnant, and the more I thought of the meaning of the name (“happiness”), the more appropriate it seemed because I was so happy to be having a child.  As she grew older, people always commented to us how she was such a happy child, so the name was a perfect match for her.  When I look at her, there is no other name that fits.  She is Felicity.

When I was pregnant with Felicity, the name she would have been given if she was a boy was Joshua, so I just assumed that would be the name we would give our son if we ever had one.  That was the plan at least until Felicity’s first day of preschool, and there were three Joshua’s in her class.  That was the end of Joshua as a prospect.  I wanted a unique name for him.  This from the woman who didn’t like having a different name growing up and swore all her kids would be given “common” names.  I looked at first names, last names, city names, names from other countries, you name it, I considered it.  Then one day I just happened to be driving past Chase Street, and that was it.  And chase is what I do, because he is such an active boy. 

When it came to naming Nick, we took the more traditional route.  Nick was named after two of his great-grandfathers.  He seems to have a little of both personalities.  One great-grandfather has an adventurous past, and the other was a bit of a troublemaker himself.  The stories he used to tell me about things he did as a child are things I could see my little Nick doing today.

How about some of you moms out there?  How did you decide on your child’s name and what made you decide to give your child that name?  Was it planned out in advance before you got pregnant, like my name was (my mother chose it when she was a child), or was it more like a friend of mine who let the nurse decide which name she gave her son?  How does the name fit his/her personality?