How do you choose a child’s name?
It’s a big decision isn’t it. After all, they’re going to be stuck with whatever name you give them for the whole of their lives. It’s one thing that you’ll do for your child that you know will have lifelong significance.
As Cathy and I chose our boys’ names, we felt this weight of responsibility.
So how do you go about picking a name for a child? Here are some ideas if you’re looking for a name, or just some thoughts if you’re interested in the topic.
It seems to us that there are a few different factors that can play into the choice.
* We originally wrote this post in 2016 including photographs and the names of our children in it. Since then we have decided to take down photographs of our children from our website and we don’t refer to them by name on our blog anymore. Click here if you would like to read our reasoning why.
This blog post still has some helpful ideas for naming children though, so we’ve kept it on the blog. We are now expecting our third child, so we are going through the name-picking process all over again!*
The Accent Test
If you saw our recent thank you video, you may have spotted Scott’s regional accent (it’s hard to miss). Cathy has a generic but mild northern English accent, but Scott’s is a fairly broad Hartlepool accent. His accent means that various vowel sounds are… let’s say unusual. As such, Cathy requires all potential names to go through the “Scott’s accent test”. Many lovely names have hit the cutting room floor after this ruthless test!
Popularity
When choosing names, some go for what’s popular at the time. In case you’re interested, here are the top 10 most popular boys names in the UK in 2016 so far:
- Alfie
- Oscar
- Teddy
- Harry
- Jack
- Arlo
- Noah
- Charlie
- Jacob
- Archie
Yes you read that correctly – number 6 is Arlo! We’ve literally never even heard of that name. We must be living in a bubble.
The top 10 UK girls names in 2016 so far, if you were wondering, are:
- Isla
- Amelia
- Ava
- Freya
- Evie
- Olivia
- Esme
- Elsie
- Mia
- Ellie
So popularity is one way to go when picking a name. Others go to the other extreme and try to go for something obscure. It’s a way of ensuring there won’t be 10 other children in the playground with the same name as your little one.
Family Names
There are other options too. Family names. We’ve gone for this with middle names. Our eldest’s middle name is taken from Cathy’s dad’s middle name. Our youngest boy’s middle name was Scott’s late Grandfather’s middle name.
We think it’s lovely for our children to have a sense of rootedness and connection to their biological family. Obviously their surname naturally does this, but we liked including a Christian family name too. Inheriting the surname is inevitable, but choosing to give your child the name of a family member can be a touching gesture for the family member you’ve chosen and for those who are closest to them.
A Virtue
Some friends of ours have chosen to include a virtue as one of their children’s names for each of their three children. We think this is a lovely idea. To take a virtue that you’d love for your child to display or to appreciate and make it part of their name is great idea. So our friends have ‘Joy’, ‘Hope’ and ‘Mercy’ as part of their children’s names. There’s so many more you could go for…
The Name’s Meaning
Another popular option for choosing your children’s names is to base it on the meaning of the name. This was how Cathy received her name. Cathy’s mum had a difficult pregnancy with Cathy, almost losing her and having to have a lot of bed rest. All babies are precious, but of course this heightened Cathy’s parent’s sense of how precious she was to them. As such they gave her the name “Catherine Amy”, meaning “beloved and precious” (although google says it means “pure”).
Our Name Choices
As we’ve already mentioned, we chose for our boys to have family names as their middle names.
But for their first names we decided to go for names of people from the Bible.
How did we choose which characters to go for?
Well it was partly people with names we liked – but that’s a given.
Beyond that though, we looked for two things. We looked for people with character traits that we hoped our boys would emulate. And we looked for people who pointed to Jesus in a way that made our hearts sing.
How we chose our eldest’s name
Our eldest is named after a protective big brother (given the fact he’s a big brother!) – he was protective even when his brothers didn’t deserve it, a trait we hope he’ll have. The character he’s named after had lots of reasons to throw his sibling under the bus. But as a protective older brother he stood up for his younger sibling, shielding him.
We pray that our son may well be the same – willing to lay aside his claim to getting what he feels he deserves when his siblings wrong him – willing to stand up for his siblings (and others around him) even when they don’t deserve it. Willing to control his anger and desire for revenge, willing to absorb that hurt in himself for the good of others, and willing to forgive those who wrong him.
And of course this beautifully reminds us of Jesus – the one who went to the greatest lengths to rescue us. In our sin we have wronged Jesus far more than anyone else has been wronged. Despite this, Jesus did all that was necessary to protect us from the far more just punishment that was coming our way. Jesus actually took our place. Jesus, the true older brother, died in our place so that he could rescue us and take us back to our Father. How wonderful!
Why We Chose Our Other Boys’ Name
Our second son is named after a really wonderful character.
This Bible character is a man of integrity. In a world where women were very often exploited and mistreated, he chose to care for a woman who was about as vulnerable as you could get. He chose to care for and graciously provide for her. Despite her weak position and despite the fact that she wasn’t even one of God’s people and had nothing to offer him, he lavishly provided for her and redeemed her.
We would love our son to emulate this. We live in a world where it’s so easy to care about yourself at the expense of others: to look down on those in need; to disparage the plight of the refugee; to make consumer choices that exploit the poorest and most needy. We pray that our son won’t just do the easy thing. We pray that, like his namesake, he will stand out from the crowd by fighting for the most needy in this world. We pray that he would seek to protect the vulnerable, to stand against injustice and to honour those who most will dishonour.
And once again, what’s most wonderful about this character is not his achievements and character, but the achievements and the character of the one he points us to. We too were in a desperate plight – in need of a redeemer who would lift us out of the poverty of our sin. We needed a protector and provider when we’re not just spiritually vulnerable, but spiritually bankrupt. And that’s exactly what Jesus, the great, great, great… great grandson of this character did. Jesus is the one who this character pointed to, who will never exploit the needy, but instead allowed himself to be exploited for our sake’s.
So there we have it. What names did you choose for your children, and why? We’d love to hear your story in the comments.