[james19631994]

The 19-year-old poster below amused me, because I STILL make up lists of baby names, though not as often as I did 20 years ago, maybe because I despair of ever having kids at this point.

The thing is, I have very definite likes and dislikes in names and I'd really hate to have a kid of mine bearing a name I didn't like, even as a middle name. I tend to associate names I don't like with certain people I knew who had those names and with whom I had a bad experience.

Anyway, I know it's often frowned upon to change the names of older kids, but what if the name combination is just ridiculous and would make the kid a laughingstock? Something like "Hiroshi Rabinowitz" or "Mstislav Hartington" I have a very English surname and have considered mainly adopting from Russia, so this question has come up.

I know some people keep the original name while others Americanize it and still others change it completely, so you'll have a little girl of Cossack ancestry bearing a silly American yuppie name like "Bree" or "Kelsey."

But if the foreign name is just too foreign or hard to pronounce what is usually done--do you find a name that begins with the same letter or that has some of the same sounds in it?

One of my idiosyncracies is I would want to give my kids long strings of names, like Hispanic Catholics or royalty do. ;-) This is not so much out of pretention, though, as it is that there are quite a few names I really like and that are deeply meaningful for me, and I'd hate to be limited to two or four or six.

And yes, many names are meaningful for me---this isn't just a case of picking something out of a baby book that sounds kinda cool.

(Off topic, does it seem that it takes a really long time for stuff to load on this site? I have DSL, but the site is really slow.)

[alle_h]

me too!
I like really long Royal sounding names. Verry proper names.
I suppose it's because i got saddled with a common first name yet magical middle name that i wasn't allowed to go by.
Me being Leslie Marcella, I'd love to name my kids:
Mordecai Devidander Malon *lastname*
and
Magdelena Lillian Antionette *Lastname*

verry Royal Knightly sounding to me atleast. Names a kid can grow into.


But i'm thinking if you adopt internationally, and have a child with a difficult name that wouldn't go with your last name, if they're old enough have them help pick out a name they like or for babies, try and pick an easier name maybe from that same culture