Whenever anyone asks my name, I never say ‘my name is Fran.’ For whatever reason, I always say ‘I’m Fran.’ It’s my name, though it’s also who I am. When I was younger I didn’t much care for my name. It’s longer than Fran and most people, back then, couldn’t spell it and there would be some weird and wonderful ways of spelling my full name that had never occurred to me! I also didn’t like that my Grandfather was Frank, in more ways than one, and my Mother’s name was an extension of that, and my name is an extension of her name. It doesn’t help that she now calls herself Fran, much to my annoyance, and I feel like the Highlander in that ‘there can be only one’ though I draw the line at chopping off her head with a sword…

My initials are the same as my Mother’s and my name, almost the same. The same for my brother and our Father, and many a time our mail was opened by our parents who had the exact same initials. I used to quietly suspect this was the very reason they had show total lack of imagination in naming us!

My two sisters have quite different names, though including our Mother, three of us share a slight variation of a middle name. I guess there’s only so many ways one can change the name Mary.

My husband from the 80’s had the same initials as his Father, and one name the same. My partner (my son’s Father) had the middle name the same as his Father’s first name; John. Wow, didn’t our parents lack imagination back then? Or maybe it’s a way of feeling eternal; you die but your name lives on?

When I was pregnant I was determined that my child would not have the same name as either parent. I was convinced the baby was a girl and I was going to call her Poppy. My Grandmother and an Aunt both had flower names which I think is pretty, so I chose Poppy with a more ‘normal’ middle name. At a scan, I asked the baby’s gender because I was so convinced it was a girl that I hadn’t even entertained the idea of a boy. Imagine my shock when they said it was most definitely a boy! A name had to be thought of, quickly, and I thought back to an actor that I used to like who had a minor part in Dallas. I wanted to call our son by his name, though my partner wasn’t happy with the second name, so it was changed slightly, though still the same initial.

My son is often grateful he wasn’t a girl as he doesn’t like the name I chose lol. He did used to complain about his names which unbeknown to me at the time, are both Hebrew – I was raised Catholic. Once I explained the genesis of his name, and he was able to Google the actor, he was slightly mollified. The actor in question died within a day of my son’s 21st Birthday. How weird is that?

It wasn’t until one day, whilst booking a holiday when my son was a few years old, that I had to write down our names on a list that I noted that my son’s initials are the same initials as my middle name, and his Father’s middle name. This wasn’t done deliberately, at least not consciously, but it did make me laugh. He toyed, briefly, with changing his name though he does like that it’s not too common. Besides, it suits him :)

I’d be interested to know; how was your name chosen?