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Monday, January 24, 2011

The importance of a middle name

When we were picking names for Kaitlyn we decided 2 things....

1) we would pick a name that we would always call her - so our intention was to call her Kaitlyn and not Katie

2) we wouldn't give her a middle name because we both thought they were kind of pointless as neither of us ever used ours.

What idiots we were.....

1) We started calling her Katie the day we brought her home from the hospital - I think it's inevitable to shorten names especially when they are cute and little and want to add a Y to the end of their name.

2) We realized later on that middle names are important for identity theft prevention (which was not even close to being on our radar during the naming process)

AND

3) THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WE LEARNED ABOUT MIDDLE NAMES
You need a middle name to pull out when your kid is doing something and you are angry with them. I don't care how hip you think you are - or how "above" you think you are pulling out the middle name, because I am sure we all hated it when it was done to us growing up.
Trust me, you will do it

When Katie is jumping on the couch and laughing when we tell her to stop - there is an emptiness when all I can yell at her is KAITLYN STOP THAT... It would feel more complete if it was Kaitlyn ________ Stop that.

Sometimes, I spit out Kaitlyn Metcalfe - but it doesn't have the same satisfaction for me that I think a middle name would add when disciplining.

So... for all you preggos out there trying to pick out names - take it from me - pick a middle name and don't settle for some name that you feel obligated to use because it's a family name or something like that - it has to feel good rolling off the tongue - so practice yelling out whatever your top choices are with STOP THAT after it - once it feels right - that's the name for your kid

:)

3 comments:

  1. I couldn't agree more! 1. JC knows that when Joseph Christopher comes out of my mouth momma means business.
    2. It is important for the name to flow. Now my first is after my mom's favorite male cousin Christopher but my middle name is after a waitress my parents had one night when they were out. Her name was spelt Lynn so at the top of her lungs in the middle of the restaurant my mother yelled "CHRISTINE LYNN" and decided it worked. Now they did change the spelling to Lynne so I wouldn't really be named after some ramdom waitress but either way she always got a kick out of telling me the story every birthday.

    Maybe you can see what flows well with Kaitlyn and just give her a middle name- she can always add it to her birth certificate later.

    Good luck with baby naming.

    Christine

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  2. haha love this post. so true with Y nicknames. when I was pregnant with Jake someone said "oh you can call him Jakey" and I said "no way". guess who is the only person who does call him Jakey? and I balked at the idea of using both the first and middle name as reinforcement for discipline but whipping out the "Jacob Thomas" definitely gives me that satisfaction that he knows I mean business.

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  3. Or you could give them a middle name that you regret later on and never use it again! Jack was the only name both myself and my husband could agree on when I was pregnant with him. Just like you guys, it would be Jack not John. That's what we were going to call him and that's what his name would be. At the time, I still hadn't changed my name to my married name. Being one of 5, people always called me by my last name and I wasn't ready to give that up. So I was going to use my last name as my middle name just as my mother had and take his name. The problem is I have a fabulous middle name and didn't want to give that up either! So as a compromise (because he didn't want me to hyphenate) We gave Jack my middle name. Now his Name is Jack Power and when you say just the 2 names without the last, it sounds dirty and just wrong. So I have to pull out the whole name when I'm mad as opposed to Peyton who gets called Peyton Julia when I'm mad and it doesn't sound like a porn name.

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