Enquiring Minds Want to Know (15)

Each week Dollycas's Thoughts hosts the meme "Enquiring Minds Want to Know." She posts questions for us to answer each week in order for us bloggers and readers to get to know each other beyond our books.  Check out her's and others answers here.

1. Author Jessica Park commented this week on Facebook that "Naming characters takes me almost as long as it does to write the book." which led me to start thinking about names. Is there a story behind your first name?

As most of you probably know, my name is Hannah Marie.  Um, I'm not sure how my parents decided on my name.  But I do know that my name (well both of my pre-birth names) were picked from the Bible.  My parents did not find out whether they were having a boy or girl (with both of their "born" children - two adopted siblings... they already knew their genders).  So my names were Hannah or Samuel.  Interestingly, (or an old family story) my Christmas stocking was made by my grandmother before I was born, so it has two sides - Hannah and Sam.  I don't honestly know where Marie came from...

2. Do you think parents today give more thought to the names they give their children than our parents did?

oh, time out...  Isn't that an adorable picture I found?  I found it on a mother's blog.  I love it!  

Anyway....  I'm not sure it's so much that parents give more thought to the names as that they attempt/want a more original name.  My sister works in the NICU and my mom's a teacher, so I hear all kinds of stories of crazy names.  Maybe it's because I'm not a parent, but seriously, there are what, like 7 billion people in the world.  The chances that your kid will have an original, unique name are like slim-to-none.  So, when I pick out my kids names, I hope to find something pretty and something that will not make my kids hate me.  I love the idea of family names, but I'm attempting to be a good "future wife" and not pick out my names while I'm single and have no prospects for marriage/kids anytime soon (as opposed to my sister, who has at least four names picked out... uh, don't tell my brother-in-law).  :)  Mostly I just don't want my kids to hate their name.  I mean, I have a generally common name - Hannah.  There were three Hannahs and one Anna in my kindergarten class - so I became Hannah Marie.  No harm, no foul...  The only thing I hate about the name - having an association with Hannah Montana (just because I am 22 guys... don't really want to be compared to a child celebrity).

3. What is the most unusual child's name you have noticed recently?

So, probably not the most unusual name but the one that stuck out for me was: Nevaeh (heaven spelled backwards).  I think it's pretty, but I have a hard time associating it with anything other than an attempt to be unique, which bugs me.  Maybe if it becomes more popular, I'll jump on the bandwagen.  However, moving to a new area of the country has introduced me to many names that I'd never heard of (but I was kindly informed that they were VERY common here):  Luella, Imogen, Jada, oh I had a long list and now I can't think of any others......  Anyway, you get the picture.