Comments on: A Babe by Any Other Name

By: Meredyth

Meredyth — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:01:28 +0000

I took my partner’s name after we got married so that our children would have the same name. There was no way I could deal with hyphenating.
I’m Mommy, she’s Ommi (aka ‘other Mommy’).

By: FosterAbba

FosterAbba — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:47:23 +0000

Our kid (older foster child) calls us by our first names.

By: J

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:36:16 +0000

That’s interesting. “Baba” means “Daddy” in Arabic, so we weren’t going to touch that one (and it’s what I call my Dad.) So I’m Mommy or Uma and my partner is Mama (with spanish accent on the last ‘a’.) And we have an very long, double hyphenated Mexican-al-Arab last name. Poor little girl. She will have a hard time learning to spell it all.

By: DivaJean

DivaJean — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:06:53 +0000

Thirteen years ago, I began living with my assumed name- ie hubby’s last name so that when we had kids, we would be of one surname. I eventually got everything changed over- even my social security- but this was before 9/11.

My children are all namesakes for the grandparents- which was a tradition we started to help the grands deal with foster/adopted grandkids, kids of color. They came around without any need for that, but we wanted to be sure– hence my daughter being named after my mom, my son named in an Italian name like his grandfather, etc.

By: Renee

Renee — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:02:40 +0000

We go with Ima (Hebrew for Mom) and Mama. There have been a million variations on those – including Ami, Ama, Mima, etc… but we know who she means!

By: Liza

Liza — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:54:37 +0000

We did a legal name change to hyphenated after our wedding; our son shares our last name.

For us, the decision was rooted in wanting to be instantly recognizable as a family. Yes, sometimes at the airport we’ve been asked if we were sisters, which is not ideal, but better than being perceived as “just friends.”

Incidentally, our name change process, which we did ourselves, was expensive and time consuming. It cost a total of a little over $1200 (most for the publication of the announcement) and took 1.5 days off work, running around the court house where we lived at the time, and the Social Security Administration office.

By: hw

hw — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:44:02 +0000

Well, our kids already came with names, so we didn’t have much a say on that.

When they asked for parental names, we tried to set up Mom-Mama. In reality, we’re “Mom” and “No, not you, the OTHER Mom.”

By: Paula The Surf Mom

Paula The Surf Mom — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:30:33 +0000

My twin totters have LEGAL Names… but right now one thinks her name is ‘HEY Stop that’ and the other thinks her name is ‘No No’.