Namesake Names: Honoring family and friends

Namesake Names: Honoring family and friends

The question of the week: How would you go about honoring a namesake?

In choosing a name, there’s nothing more meaningful than paying tribute to a beloved family member, ancestor or friend.  Namesake names can connect your child to her heritage, and convey the essence of a loved one, bestowing their most admirable qualities on your child.  Personal heroes of the past or present can form the basis of worthy namesake names as well.

Would you approach this by:

  • Using the name verbatim as a first name?

  • Modernizing or modifying it in some way?  Changing Mildred to Millicent of Millie, for example?  Finding another name with a similar meaning?

  • Using it as a middle name?

  • Considering the honoree’s middle or last name if you didn’t love their first?

  • Would you ever consider making your son a Junior or a II or a III?

  • Would you use the name of an ancestor you never knew?

  • Would you consider the name of a personal hero?

  • So have you honored a namesake in your child’s name–or would you in the future?

    About the Author

    Linda Rosenkrantz

    Linda Rosenkrantz

    Linda Rosenkrantz is the co-founder of Nameberry, and co-author with Pamela Redmond of the ten baby naming books acknowledged to have revolutionized American baby naming. You can follow her personally at InstagramTwitter and Facebook. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed New York Review Books Classics novel Talk and a number of other books.