Naming Traditions Quotes

My father didn't know his real name. My father got his name from his grandfather and he got his name from his grandfather and he got it from the slave master.

It's interesting, because I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her. All the survival stuff, too. And then the next album is 'Maya,' which is not my real name. It's fake.

A wife should no more take her husband's name than he should hers. My name is my identity and must not be lost.

I'm named after a horse. My mom's best friend had a horse named Brooke, so my dad suggested 'Brooklyn' as a more formal version, and it just stuck - and now I live in Brooklyn part-time, so go figure.

Parents often give middle names just so that later, when they're yelling at the kid, they can drag it out. Henry David Thoreau, you come in here this instant!

I always said if I had a son, I was going to give him a unique name.

People get burned out in big families, you can even see it in the naming of children. Like the first kid, "You were named after Grandma." The seventh kid, "You were named after a sandwich I had. Now get your brother, Reuben."

The worlds of maths and science have a long history of naming important objects after people.

I never hated my father. I would have named my child Usher regardless. I never hated myself because I carried his name, because I made it mean what I wanted it to mean.

If you go to any elementary school classroom in Texas, some kids in there are going to be named either Austin, Dallas or Houston.

I think for my parents it was like "A Boy Named Sue," the Johnny Cash song. A guy named Sue tries to track down his father to take it out on his father for naming him Sue. And his father says, "Look, I knew I wasn't going to be around. So I gave you the name so that you would grow up strong enough to take the hits and fight back." So I like to believe that's why my parents gave me this stupid name.

And one more thing. About my name — Artemis — you were right. In London, it is generally a female name, after the Greek goddess of archery. But every now and then a male comes along with such a talent for hunting that he earns the right to use the name. I am that male. Artemis the hunter. I hunted you.

I have a sister and her name is Mimsy, like from 'Alice in Wonderland,' so we've got some strange names in our family.

My mom, God rest her soul - she liked nicknames. In the womb she named me Skip. There was another black guy in Piedmont, W.Va., and his name was Skip. They called him Big Skip, and I was Little Skip.

My mother just liked the way the name Nipsey sounded.

Norah looked at her son’s tiny face, surprised, as always, by his name. he had not grown into it yet, he still wore it like a wrist band, something that might easily slip off and disappear. She had read about people – where? she could not remember this either – who refused to name their children for several weeks, feeling them to be not yet of the earth, suspended still between two worlds.

It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.

When I was born, my dad and my mom gave me names, but in Africa, when your child is born, especially close family members can suggest names they want to add on. Maybe your grandmom and your grandpop have something to add to the name of the child.

My name is Arsenio. That's a very unique name for a black man. In Greek, it means Leroy.

It is said that Indians were sometimes named for the first thing they saw when they were born. Makes you wonder why there aren't more Indians named Hairy Pussy, doesn't it?

There are four of us, and we were all born in different cities because my dad worked all around the place. We settled in Birmingham, so I spent most of my time growing up there. We were all given very Welsh names - Geraint, Owen, Rhiannon and Gwilym. My mum's called Cainwen, and my dad is somewhat disappointingly called Tom.

My oldest son's name is Oliver and my second son's name is Walter.

A name means a lot just by itself.

What does 'Ngaio' mean? I don't know. Like many Maori words, it has a number of meanings - clever, light on the water, a little bug - but I don't know which my parents had in mind.