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What’s in a Name?
What’s in a Name?
I mentioned last week that our family were getting together to go down south to the Margaret River wine region in Western Australia, for our annual family break away.
The general theme of these get togethers is to sample our favourite wines, taste new foods (we jump at the opportunity to indulge in a wine matched degustation or 3…) and generally just spend time chilling out together.
After one rather long day of wining and dining we were sitting around having a few drinks at the bar across from our room (luckily for us it’s within what we like to call “stumbling” distance, perfect to grab a couple of snacks and chill out with cheap drinks during happy hour after a long day of well… eating and drinking).
Sorry, I’m getting distracted (I blame the hazy memories of food and wine).
Anyway, we were sitting around chatting when the topic of baby names came up.
Sam and I have discussed potential baby names with our family numerous times and we’ve gone through phases of names we like and dis-like, but it has never really occurred to us before to check out what some of the meanings are for some of our favourite names.
While we never quite got around to deciding on any particular baby names we fancy, we thought it would be fun just to look up the names of our immediate family members to see what they mean.
We were seriously shocked (and rather amused) at some of the descriptions that came up, particularly the accuracy of some of them in describin gour personalities, which pretty much had all of us in stitches of laughter.
The names we looked up were:
Ron
April
Sam
Tarryn
Dominique
Peter
Sue
I’m going to share an excerpt of each the descriptions that we found, but I’m not going to say which was which…
We thought it would be kind of a fun game to share the descriptions with you and see if you can pick who is
who.
So, here goes:
Description 1:
“You like to control everyone with your influence, to shape things to your own liking. You are sensitive, affectionate, imaginative and cooperative, spiritually aware and prone to self-sacrifice. You can keep secrets and are a good diplomat.” Click here to read the full description.
Description 2:
“A very sweet and thoughtful guy… He can read others like a book and everyone looks to him for advice. He is dependable and looks out for those who are good friends to him. [He may] however, think too much and this gets [him] in trouble.” Click here to read the full description.
Description 3:
“Females of this name are from birth known to be very intelligent, funny, always on the go, great writers/storytellers and attractive…. If you are lucky enough to have made a friend named [this name], always remember that she has chosen you. Although they easily make friends, they are very picky with whom they share loyalty and true friendship.” Click here to read the full description.
Description 4:
“Stay on their good side. If you’re a man he can be your best friend or worst nightmare. If he is ambivalent towards you, embrace the fact that you are probably a loser. [This person] is powerful, charming, witty, honest and caring. Being family oriented, forward, clean, respectful and hardworking are some of the best things about [this person]. [This person] makes a great friend as they will tell you the truth whether you want it or not.” Click here to read the full description.
Description 5:
“Beautiful girl inside and out… shy at first, sometimes hard to get to know, great sense of humour, loves the finer things in life… master at everything she attempts, very creative, will rise above obstacles placed in her way, she is a find a way make a way kind of girl, she will surround herself with beautiful things.” Click here to read the full description.
Description 6:
“A really great guy who has many friends and many people love him. You can trust him with anything and everything! He is always there for his friends and can make you happy at the worst of times. He is one of those people that you can just get on with and easily spend a happy amount of time with.” Click here to read the full description.
Description 7:
“You are spiritually intense and can sting or charm. Your name brings love and new starts into life and attracts money. Emergencies may raise your intuitive abilities in order to resolve conflict or situation. You become very creative under the pressure, and have quite original ideas to make the best out of it. You desire to inspire and lead, to control other’s affairs. You are giving, courageous and bold, action oriented, energetic and strong willed.” Click here to read the full description.
How did you go? Did you manage to match up the name with the description?
If you’re interested in learning more about name meanings, or finding out the meaning of your own name check out urbandictionary.com and sevenreflections.com
Have you ever looked up the meaning of your own name? Did you check the meaning of your baby’s name before you chose it?
Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
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26 Replies to “What’s in a Name?”
hahaha… we also checked the meaning of the names Maya Filippa before we named our daughter and we’ve had some surprises as well… Sometimes the meaning is neither bad nor good so you kind of left with: “ha? What am I suppose to do with this info”. I think one of the meanings of her name was “running with horses”. Mhhhh, ok 🙂
I think description 1 is definitely Sue! Although let’s be honest this is so hard!
Ha! I only guessed one right! I never looked up meanings for my daughter’s name, but her name does have special meaning for us. I chose her first name based on a person I felt embodied the traits I wanted her to have and her middle name is a family name that now spans four generations. I always love looking up the meanings of other names though, especially when I’m coming up with character names, sometimes the descriptions really fit!
What a fun game! It’s harder than it looks though! We chose our son’s name simply because we liked how it sounded.
I wish we had taken the time to look up name meanings. We had settled on a boy’s name (I swore I was having a boy), but when we found out the opposite we struggled. There was only one name, only one girl’s name that we could agree upon. Funny in hindsight, but frustrating at the time.
I don’t know how they found my name and also what is the story behind . But based on the meaning of Ada – Yasa . Ada mean exist and yasa is Yoga or meditation . As I know they ( my parent ) was waiting to have children until almost 7 years . I believe that the name that given to me is the way how they ( my parent ( thanks to God of his blessing for the children .
Interested with infertility topic . We married almost 6 years but no children yet .
I did this with my best friend before she had her not-a-raptor last year, and the problem we found was that different sources don’t agree on meanings for any given name. So you can pick a name you like and your book says it means “wonderful person who pays bills promptly and can be trusted to split the check” but someone’s going to come along and say “oh, no, you can’t name him THAT! It means ‘covered in burrs’ and my uncle’s friend who had that name died right after he went bald at 19.” And they’ll have a book to prove them right, because that’s one of the fundamental laws of our universe.
Better to pick a name because you like it, and if people ask what it means you can honestly tell them, “It means we finally picked a name.”
I love reading origins of names–and I loved the description of yours! So nice to see the deeper meaning (I didn’t actually realize there was a significance to the name April and it’s one I always thought was really beautiful). Thanks for sharing!!!
I didn’t guess any of them right! I was also hoping the ‘Sam’ description would be a cross gender description so my name would be featured. I’ll have to look it Samantha, but I might save it for after a few wines!
I love looking up the meanings of names. I wonder what name we would have picked it we could
This is so fun! I didn’t get any right. 🙂 Now I want to go look up a bunch of names.
I am not good with guessing and got all of these wrong lol. We have Logan, Landon, Liam, Lucas, and Leliana as our kids names. We looked them up and printed out the meanings and framed them for their rooms. My name means wealthy I do believe. It is fun seeing the meaning of names.
It was so fun how interactive this was! My name never shows up in any Urban Dictionary definitions, but this made me wonder a little bit on what it would say haha, great post!
This was a fun post! I definitely enjoyed looking up my name! Urban Dictionary was pretty accurate, so that was entertaining! Thanks for sharing 🙂
I’ve never really liked my name or middle name. I think the my name has a boring meaning. Whitney means white island. I like the Urban Dictionary definition of my name better hahah
I love looking up names. I think it’s so cool to find out what they mean and where the name came from.
Lol. I remember that me and my siblings names all starts with the same letter. That’s how my mom wants it. But what is means, I have to find soon.
a very fun post – i only wish i didn’t look up my name lol its starts off so well and then my goodness – the description ends so so badly..
What a fun post. It inspired me to look up my name. Here it is. The name Kimberly is an English baby name. In English the meaning of the name Kimberly is: From the wood of the royal forest. From the royal fortress meadow. A surname and place name that can be used for both genders, although it is more commonly used as a girl’s name.
Interesting
My mom just named me after her lol ! But I most see myself doing research on my future babies name as well .
I was surprised you were able to find the meaning of all the names you listed. Made up modern names tend to have no definite meaning. This was a fun guessing game.
I love the meaning of names. I chose all of my children’s names based not only on the sound of their name but the meaning too.
My mother named me after her favourite actress Lindsay Wagner, bionic woman lol! Glad she went with that as my gran wanted to call me Carol!
Loved reading this! Was fun guessing and seeing how some of your characters matched up with your names.
That was a fun read. I know many times, friends or relatives having children, picking up names and when the baby was born, they felt the name wouldn`t suit the baby. So they would choose a name that day, being inspired by what you feel. I know it sounds crazy but sometimes being spontaneous help 😀
I loved reading your post. I did look up the meaning of my name. When I chose names for my children, I had to look up their meaning because I wanted to be sure that it had a positive meaning.