Should We Use Two Middle Names to Keep the Peace?

Compromising mom------I recently went through your exact experience with the birth of our 3rd boy in July. Both of our other boys had very "interesting" names for their new brother.Some were actually reasonable choices....some absolutely hilarious (our 3 yr. old loves doughnuts...need I say more!) My husband and I came up with the solution to make a list of @ 3 names we had agreed on as choices and then read them to the boys and make a family choice together. Whatever ya'll decide I wish you the best of luck and just remind your boys that their opinions are valued no matter what the situation.

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why not combine the two names that your sons have come up with and make one unique name. i have a friend whose name is kwynn and her bf name is adam and they name there kid adynn bc they said he came from both of them so she gave them both of their names combined ... great idea.

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My brother and I are NOT named after any relatives. Our mother deliberately did that so as to not show any preference for either side of the family. Trouble is both sides were pissed, thinking we were named for someone on the other side. Children should have their own identities, which includes their names, and not be a shadow or reflection of some relative. I'm thankful for what my mother did when naming us, and sorry the rest of my idiot family put her through grief for it.

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For people who have difficulty with two middle names, just drop one. I don't think you have to do anything legally. If you do, it should be a simple matter.

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My husband and I used a combination of our first names to come up with our daughters middle name. When we had a son this year, we were having trouble coming up with a middle name for him since all of our unique/combination names sounded too girly. We wanted to pay tribute to someone but nothing ever came out right or we could not agree on one. While waiting to go home from the hospital, the vital stats person said we had to come up with something now or pay later. So we decided to ask our 6 year old daughter. She came up with William. I asked how she came up with that and she said from her friend at school. We decided to take her advice, but little did she know that is her Dad's middle name.

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My husband and I could not agree on a middle name. I wanted her to have my grandmother middle name and he wanted her to have his grandmothers name so yes she is stuck with 2 middle names.

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If you're going to use two middle names, I would suggest making them short, so the full name doesn't appear long-winded and awkward. I have two middle names that are both 8 characters long - when combined with my 7 character first and last names, my full name is THIRTY characters long! I'm lucky it fits on anything or that any of my friends remember both middle names! Just to make things easier, I go by the above shortening of my first name and dropped the more generic middle name (Jennifer). I'm left envying my friends who have two short middle names and don't have to change or drop anything for people to remember or to fit it on documents. Please don't make your child go through the same thing!

And for that matter, don't make multiple children go through it - my siblings' names are 24 characters, 27 characters, and 28 characters respectively, and all of them have had to drop one middle name to keep things from getting complicated. In their cases, it was the unusual middle name (Fraser? Lindsay? Margaret? Come ON, mom!).

So in short, if you're going to use 2 middle names, make them short, and make them something your child is going to actually want! Don't saddle them with unecessarily long and ugly-looking middle names (or first names!). Good luck, moms-to-be.

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Our family has a really neat tradition. The father's first name becomes the first son's middle name. This has continued for six generations in our family - since the early 1800s!

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Here we go again, the name the baby problem. I suggest that parents grow backbones and pick the names of their children and tell the family to go blow bubbles. Before my older son was born, my husband and I picked out the names but could not agree on the order of them. I finally took his hat and wrote both names down on slips of paper and got a third party to pull one name out...that was the first name, remaining name was middle name. My father-in-law asked me how we decided and when I told him he laughed and said...well glad that the size of hat did not end up in the pile or his name would have been 7 1/2. I also have an adoptive daughter and when we named her, we gave her a first name that we liked and we kept her full birth name. She uses initials for her "middle name" on legal documents. Come on people, it is not rocket science and the baby is yours to name so leave the rest of hte family out of decisions. Oh yes, my older daughter wanted to name her brother Winnie the Pooh as she was on that kick when he was born.........would that have been the right way to go?

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As a mother of 3, it was hard coming up with names for my children that my husband and I could agree on. My husband is a Jr. and has no middle name, so when our 3rd child (our first son) was born, we decided to use my husband's name as his middle name and choose our own first name. With our daughters, we chose middle names that were from other family members and meant something to us. When my parents named my sister and I they combined our grandparents names and came up with our middle names - have you thought about that? Could you combine the names that your sons have chosen into a common name? Sometimes if you take 2 letters from each name, you will find that there is a common name there - that is one way to solve this problem.

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I see no problem with children having input in naming their new sibling. I think it helps them accept the new child in the long run. As far as having 2 middle names, the second name could be an initial for legal documents and other uses to keep things simple. Ex: Henry Allen George Smith (Henry Allen G. Smith) Saves space on documents with limited space. Just a thought.

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I think 1 middle name is enough. My husband and I both chose the names for each child. He picked the 1st and I the 2nd or vice versa. If you want the kids to participate, let them vote on your choices. You could possibly combine parts of the 2 middle names into 1, if they make sense or sound good. Then it would be unique and you would get credit for being creative.

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