If you decide to give your child more than one name, take notice of the first letters. What do the
initials spell? Deborah Undine Marie Barstone (D.U.M.B.) or Hank Andrew Gilbert (H.A.G.) are not
the best choice. And the same goes for Paige Ianna Gibbon (P.I.G.), Richard Isaac Preston (R.I.P.) or
Oliver John Simpson (O.J. Simpson), for instance.
Francis Adam Tembrook (F.A.T.), not one of the slimmest people, knows what we’re talking about.
Throughout school he was teased because he was overweight and thus lived up to his name.
It’s definitely worth it to give your child’s initials a second thought.
Another thing to watch out for is giving your child the same initial(s) as that of another member of the family. Before you know it, son George opens his dad Greg’s mail because it’s addressed to G. Baker. Giving siblings the same initials could cause confusion, also (with vaccination and enrollment papers, for instance). This will definitely be the case if they go to the same school.
Have you ever heard the story about the ‘unpaid telephone bill?’ Two brothers were living in the same house in Scottsdale, Arizona. One day they received a bill for the use of a cell phone. It was addressed to P. Keane. Paul thought the bill was meant for his brother Peter. Peter thought the opposite. Eventually, Peter was taken to court because he never paid the bill!
Our advice:
Consider the initials of both the first and last names. See to it that these don’t form
any awkward combinations. It’s usually not that hard to avoid combinations with
a negative connotation by replacing a name with one that’s similar to it. Finally, to avoid
misunderstand ings, don’t choose names for your children that start with the same letter.
Why Max?
“We think Max is a cool name for a cool boy; but just one name was not enough for us. That’s why
we gave him three names, with the initials spelling M.A.X. again: Max Alec Xenos. When I got
pregnant again and we learned that it was going to be a girl, we wanted to give her fun initials, too.
We came up with: Sierra Utina Naomi (S.U.N.) and, yes, she’s our little sunshine. We call her Sierra,
after my aunt.”""
Caroline Freeman
Why Sam?
“My wife and I had a hard time agreeing on a name or names for our daughter. I wanted a short and
snappy name, whereas my wife preferred one that would sound more melodic and romantic. We both
wanted a name that would have some meaning to it. And we wanted our girl to feel comfortable with
her name. Also, the name we like now might not be one that she’ll like in the future. With all that in
mind we came up with Sam, which are the initials of Samantha Annette May. If it turns out later that
she’s not happy with Sam she can always pick one of the other names.”
