People often ask me how MuddlePuddle got its name. It was born as a website back in the olden days of the internet when domain names didn’t need to have relevancy or be easy for search engines to find – in fact, most of the ways of searching we used back then don’t even exist now!
It came from an amalgamation of two of the aliases I used for my eldest daughters at the time – Pud and Moo. Casting about for a title, I rolled the two words around in my head and eventually came up with a word that really wasn’t being used anywhere else on the www at all at the time. It has – like nearly every other word – since found itself into book titles, similar sounding shops and various other things but on this little corner of the net, it came about like that.
How Fran and Maddy became Pud and Moo is a different story – the first was a nickname shortening my dad gave Fran (from Pudding I would imagine) while MaddyMoo is used by countless owners of Maddies. By the time I got further along in having children the nicknames got even less inventive but nicknames – like domain names that don’t rely on visibility – don’t need to be original or inventive.
Real names of course are quite different. We agonised for hours over all 6 of our kids’ names to make sure we had ones we really loved and perfectly suited both the character written on their face at birth and our vision for them in the future. Picking names is tricky – how do you make sure the name will suit them and not harry them with unfortunate nicknames, double meanings or future uses of their name by awkward organisations? Believe me there is no fun in being called Merry if you get depression or Grace if you are a stout, uncoordinated type!
Two of our children ended up with names that became more popular than we might have chosen – Amelie has the honour of being one of the oldest of many with her name in England now (but most definitely led the way!) while Freddie was sadly rather popular just around when he was born which cane be painful at times given he is no longer with us. But the others have managed to hang on to names they can make their own – you don’t meet too many Frances or Josephines on a daily basis. They aren’t hampered by famous celebrities to share with but fortunately they all like their names and can carve out a future using them as a badge that is likely to stay unique to them and whatever they choose to do in whatever pond the swim in. Much as I grumbled about being a Meredith as a child, I like that I have only met 3 or 4 others in my life and you don’t get too many Merrys for a pound!
One way of avoiding awkward associations might be to use something like this name checker to see who in history or current affairs is sporting your chosen name for your new baby. It’s a bit of fun but it comes with some alternative ideas too and might just be the perfect way to set them on the path to greatness!
This is a collaborative post.
