I’ve got a great group chat going on What’s app. It’s a handful of local moms and I, all around the same age, living in the same town, all with 13 year old daughters. The convos vary drastically. Sometimes it’s quiet for a few days, other times, there are 6 different conversations that happen while I’ve been busy on meetings. This amazing, brilliant, funny group of women do not hold back. And we’re so lucky to have each other to talk about the annoyances of phones (for kids), first bras and who has their period (again, the kids).
The other day it was about how we named our kids. Being that this is a very international group, of course it was pretty interesting!
I am a Jen. I’ve tried my best to go by Jenny, but I always end up as a Jen amongst family and friends. Growing up, every Jen I knew (there were a lot of us), had to go by their last name or else nobody knew who anyone was talking about. This annoying lack of unique-ness is exactly why all of us Jens went in the opposite direction with our kids names.
When I was having my daughter, I wanted something that was easy to pronounce, worked if pronounced in different languages and had good meaning. Luisa means warrior. It rings Italian, Spanish, English. It’s classic (there are many old Italian aunts we’re told about) but uncommon (nobody yet in Luisa’s school has had the same name). Yes we do get some confusion as to the spelling (thanks to Louisa May Alcott, which I am totally fine with). And the movie Encanto messed us up a little when they made it more popular by naming the cousin Luisa. But, and most importantly, it is NOT on the top 10 (or even top 100) most popular baby names list.
Back to the mom group….one morning, the name question came up. The conversation really shared a lot of what was behind each of the girls’ names. It was amazing to hear the back stories!
Mom 1: I was 5 months pregnant when we visited Riviera Maya, and decided on the name Maya while there. After our unusual sounding names (to Americans), we were clear that our girls needed easy and universal names.
Mom 2: After my LONG name I was determined to give them short names because our last name is also so long (11 letters).
Mom 3: For our daughter, I looked for an Arabic Muslim Name.
Mom 4: Mine have middle names, I don’t have one and I thought it would be nice to have a middle name, though they never use them. One is Biricik, which means unique and one is Renk, which means color.
Mom 5: Senal means leader and Nayli means numerous sources of light (she lives up to the name and never switches off a light when she leaves the room).
Mom 6: In Russia, your middle name is your father’s name conjugated into the appropriate sex.
Mom 7: Jewish people pick names for kids starting with the letter of the name of someone who died, so my grandmother really wanted Ella’s name to start with an M.
Me: Luisa means warrior. And I gave her my last name as a middle so at least it seems like we’re related since she shares her dad’s last name.
Mom 8: In the Philippines, the middle name is the mother’s maiden name. So with those with 2 names, she ended up with 4 total.
Mom 9: In our culture, when a baby is born, we send the birth date, time and exact location to the astrologer who then calculates the good letters to name that baby and which letters to avoid. Both my kids have names according to that calculation. For example, Sa was bad but Se was good.
How did you pick your kids’ names?
We’d love to hear the story that brought you here.
I’m just glad to see there are no Jens in the generation, even the most common names (Olivia, Sophia and Emma for example), seem much more classic than your 70’s Jen.
