I want to talk today about name regret, but not quite in the way we usually would on a baby-naming blog. Today I would like the subject to be about regrets we still have many years later: not fresh postpartum regrets, or regrets about a name we used two or three years ago that is making things difficult with a current baby, but things we still wish we’d done differently long afterward—even if we don’t necessarily regret the names we actually used, and even if we don’t necessarily know what we would have done instead, and even if we think if we had it to do over we’d probably end up doing it the same way, and even if it’s a mild regret that doesn’t bug us much or often. (Though also if we do and we do and we don’t and it does.)<\/p>\n
And this can include anything, small or large: regretting a spelling, regretting using one honor name instead of another, regretting not using a name for a reason that turned out not to matter, regretting a whole naming philosophy—whatever. Feel free to go on at considerable length; I’m planning to.<\/p>\n
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1. I regret using my own family’s surname as only a second middle name. I can defend the decision in part by saying that 21 years ago, and with both of us coming from conservative Christian families, using my surname in any way at all seemed pretty huge and tradition-breaking. I can also defend it in part by saying that I STILL don’t know exactly what I would have wanted to do differently. Do I wish we’d hyphenated? Do I wish we’d used my surname for the kids? Do I wish we’d used a double surname? I don’t know, not really, I just spin through the possible options I didn’t want when I theoretically had the option to choose them.<\/p>\n
I guess what I wish is that I hadn’t thought of “second middle name” (not even “middle name” but SECOND middle name, the one that gets left off by default) as such a huge ask (not that Paul made it seem that way, just that to me it seemed like a lot to ask for), and such a huge stance. I guess what I further wish is that we didn’t have a patriarchal naming system that means, for heterosexual couples, that using the father’s surname isn’t even viewed as the giant, enormous concession by the mother it is, but instead is considered the default, the automatic, the not-really-worth-discussing-except-theoretically, the thing many mothers don’t even consider a factor in whether they should get more say in the other names. I am happy every time I see an example of a family where this is not the case.<\/p>\n
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2. I regret not even CONSIDERING using my own first name as my daughter’s middle name, even though I love her actual middle name. But I didn’t even CONSIDER using my name, and I regret that. We considered using Paul’s name as a middle name for the boys, but rejected it because (1) the kids were already getting his surname and (2) my mother-in-law kept “subtly” suggesting it, which turned my heart against it. But we never even DISCUSSED using my first name as a middle name for Elizabeth. It makes me a little weepy to think that she could have had my birth first\/last names as her two middles. Furthermore, my mother and I have had many, many, many discussions about how our first names, both of which have the rhythm of my name (Kristen), just don’t WORK as middle names because of the rhythm: that emphasis on the first syllable just makes them really obviously FIRST names, and unworkable as middles. But think about some REALLY REALLY COMMON male middle names that have the same rhythm: Joseph. Michael. Robert. Edward. Andrew. Daniel. David. William. Thomas. Stephen. It’s not the rhythm. The rhythm is not the issue. ALL OF MY BOYS HAVE MIDDLE NAMES WITH THAT RHYTHM. But somehow my name just doesn’t work for some reason, some completely mystifying and absolutely-not-because-it’s-a-girl-name reason, I guess we’ll never know.<\/p>\n
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What are some of your regrets?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I want to talk today about name regret, but not quite in the way we usually would on a baby-naming blog. Today I would like the subject to be about regrets we still have many years later: not fresh postpartum regrets, or regrets about a name we used two or three years ago that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reference"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-3R0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14818"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14828,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14818\/revisions\/14828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}