Multicultural naming problems

[ani]

Naming our son is getting harder than I thought it would be.

We have some unusual problems... First of all, both us us kept our surnames when we got married so we need to decide which one the baby gets. But unusually, neither of us wants it to be our own name! We both have some family issues in our backgrounds and so don't feel thrilled about passing our names on.

I already agreed in the past that the baby can have my surname, but at that point DH was happy to go with a Finnish or international (I'm from Finland) first name. Now he is saying that it's only fair that if the surname is Finnish, the first name should be Italian (he's from Italy). This is fair enough, I agree. But the problem is, I'm not too happy about giving him my surname in the first place so if I don't get a say in the first name, I'll be really unhappy.

I'd be completely happy him having DH's Italian surname and then a Finnish or international first name.

But, we still have some time, and trying to find a solution that would make both of us happy, or at least make neither of us unhappy...

I do have some lovely Finnish first names picked out and DH kinda likes some of them...

 

[pepperflake]

Wow, I thought we were having name issues! Hope you two can work it out! Have you thought about making a new family surname for all three of you?

 

[Samo]

I say you both come up with names you both like, then work the last name out with it. If there are more bickering over it, there is always the middle name!!!!

I am Japanese and my brother and I both have an "american name" and "japanese name" and DH and i have agreed that our LO's middle name will be japanese.

Just have to compromise i hope you both can work together, but i know that in the end, your LO will have the perfect little name that you both love! It's just getting to that point that's hard

 

[marley2580]

I agree, come up with a third name. Kaya was given Barry's mum's maiden name - Hunter - so she has a different surname to both of us.

 

[ella170]

i think its really hard finding names to call a mixed baby too. dad is kenyan, im english so its the whole colour thing aswell as just different cultures. theres sterotypical "black" names and sterotypical "white" names so i dont know really where to draw the line

 

[BeckyBoo]

Hyphen the surname so he has both?

 

[Vickie]

Yikes! That is a tough one. In my case DH is Chinese, I'm Caucasian. We gave our LO an English first name, and an English middle name (let my mom choose the middle name). But we had his mom choose a second, Chinese middle name. So in total she will have 4 names! Not thrilled about that, but it was important to him (even though the baby will carry his last name) to have a Chinese middle name.

 

[tinkerbelll]

i think its really hard finding names to call a mixed baby too. dad is kenyan, im english so its the whole colour thing aswell as just different cultures. theres sterotypical "black" names and sterotypical "white" names so i dont know really where to draw the line

im mixed race and so is my babies father - but from a different race, so our baby will be a mix of english, jamacian and asian! if you look on some baby name sites they have alot of names in differnt catagories ie)african names ect, if you browes through them and note the ones you like youll notice that some of em come in the other catagries as well. for example kayla, comes under a few, arabic african and a few others. i just went for a name like that that was 'muliticultrial' and not just from one percific origin

 

[PitBullMommy]

We had the same issue. I'm Scottish, German and Italian...DH is English. We finally decided to just find names that we like and it doesn't matter where it's from. (Even though I did end up with the English last name cause he freaked when I said I didn't want to change it from my German one!)

 

[armychicmkm]

What Finnish names have you been considering? If you don't mind telling. Hubby is Finnish and wanted to give a Finnish first name but he only picked out 3 boys names and I wasn't crazy about either of them - Eino, Toivo, and Jalmer.

 

[ani]

Actually, I'd like to hear the opinion of English speakers as to how these sound, as we live in a very English speaking environment a lot of the time, but it's hard to try to imagine what Finnish words sound like to someone who does not speak the language:

*Valo (this is a vary unusual name, but a name nonetheless, it means 'light', which is why i like it)
* Ilmo (an ancient word meaning 'human' or 'person' originally, also the first half of my mum's maiden name)
* Okko

...haha, I made a long list but can't even remember them myself now! DH has the list as he's supposed to be considering them.

I like short names with lots of vowels, any good ideas anyone??