Baby Name Question

[mrsp813]

Hey all! We are expecting #5 shortly and if we have a boy, we love the name John Paul. I was wondering if we should hyphenate it and give him a middle name as well, or if it should be his first and middle name? Last name begins with P.

I've posted on secular name boards and mostly just get bashed for choosing an "awful" name.

Thanks so much.

Pax Christi

[Mary Gail 36]

How do you want baby to be referred as?

Without a hyphen people will pobably just call him John.

[mrsp813]

I'm not fussy about that. John, John-Paul and JP are all fine with me.

[Leegal]

Originally Posted by mrsp813

Hey all! We are expecting #5 shortly and if we have a boy, we love the name John Paul. I was wondering if we should hyphenate it and give him a middle name as well, or if it should be his first and middle name? Last name begins with P.

I've posted on secular name boards and mostly just get bashed for choosing an "awful" name.

Thanks so much.

Pax Christi

If you are going to wind up calling him John anyway, then why not Paul as the middle name? If you want to call him John-Paul, the John-Paul it is. It's how you think of him -- as a John or a John-Paul?

God Bless.

[grasscutter]

I have a cousin named John-Paul, hyphenated. I think it's a lovely choice. Congratulations on the upcoming birth of your 5th child!

[Elisabeth51]

Originally Posted by mrsp813

Hey all! We are expecting #5 shortly and if we have a boy, we love the name John Paul. I was wondering if we should hyphenate it and give him a middle name as well, or if it should be his first and middle name? Last name begins with P.

I've posted on secular name boards and mostly just get bashed for choosing an "awful" name.

Thanks so much.

Pax Christi

Congratulations! I agree with what others have said, it sounds good either way, and depends on if you want him called John or John-Paul....or if you live in the Southern US, you can do it without the hyphen and still have a John Paul because that is how you call him.

[Agape Thom]

This is really unrelated, but the question about names brought back a memory.
Many, many years ago, when I was a student in a parochial school, about 4th or 5th grade, the teacher, a member of the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph, mentioned that all Catholic children, when baptised, must be given the name of a saint. She then looked directly at one boy in the class who was named Garret. She went on to say that there was a problem because there was no St. Garret!.
Now, let me state a couple of things right up front. My memory may be clouded by the more than 50 nyears that have passed. Also, this was the statement of one person, that nun.
So...two questions: was her statement about every Catholic child needing to be named after a saint true? And is there a Saint Garret?

[Ladygem]

My understanding is that a baptized Catholic child does have to be named after a saint, but it could be as a middle name. So Garret is ok, as long as his middle name was that of a saint. I am not aware of a St. Garret, but I could be wrong. Anyway, since there are plenty of St. Johns and St. Pauls to chose from, and Pope John Paul II is a Blessed, (which I'm pretty sure is also ok, at least for Confirmation names, because my friend took Kateri as hers) the OP should be fine. Congratulations!

[CDB1718]

Originally Posted by Ladygem

My understanding is that a baptized Catholic child does have to be named after a saint, but it could be as a middle name. So Garret is ok, as long as his middle name was that of a saint. I am not aware of a St. Garret, but I could be wrong. Anyway, since there are plenty of St. Johns and St. Pauls to chose from, and Pope John Paul II is a Blessed, (which I'm pretty sure is also ok, at least for Confirmation names, because my friend took Kateri as hers) the OP should be fine. Congratulations!

FWIW, Nancy is a variant of Anna, which means grace. Garrett is a variant of Gerard, which is the Anglicized version of Gerhard. It means spear, brave. There are many St. Gerards. Both Nancy and Garrett are appropriate Christian baptismal names in the positive and negative naming guidelines.

http://canonlawblog.blogspot.com/201...ens-names.html

The pope on children's names (Canon Law perspective)
In the light of the law ^ | 1/11/11 | Edward Peters

No, the pope didn’t “rail” against giving un-Christian names to babies, but he did point out, calmly and correctly, that names are important, and that the choice of a child’s name should not be left to whim or fancy. There is, though—as is so often the case with news stories about the Church—a canonical aspect to this issue.

Canon 855 of the 1983 Code states that “Parents, sponsors, and the pastor are to take care that a name foreign to Christian sensibility is not given.” The obligation here is “negative” in that there is a duty to avoid names antithetical to Christian values.

The 1917 Code, however, read differently. Canon 761 thereof stated that “Pastors should take care that a Christian name is given to those whom they baptize; but if they are not able to bring this about, they will add to the name given by the parents the name of some Saint and record both names in the book of baptisms.” The obligation there was “positive” in that a name consistent with Christian tradition needed to be sought.

The law was taken at face value. My mother, named Nancy, loved telling how for one day in her life she was called Mary in deference to the pastor who, baptizing her in the 1923, insisted that “Nancy” was not a Christian name, but that Mary surely was. Interestingly, though called Nancy all her life, my mom’s devotion to Mary was a hallmark of her spiritual life. Hmmm.

Personally, I think that either formulation of the law provides sufficient guidance in the choice of names for Christians of good will, and that neither formulation is adequate to prevent parents from abusing their responsibilities in the naming of their children. But I will say this: more than once over the years, when people hear the names of our children (Thomas, Charles, Catherine, Robert, Margaret, and Theresa) they can’t help but to say, “Gee, what lovely Catholic names they have!”

And they do.

[domandcarols]

Ahh, that is the most adorable name!!!! I would just call him John Paul whether or not you hyphenate it. God bless you.

[Gordon Sims]

Originally Posted by mrsp813

Hey all! We are expecting #5 shortly and if we have a boy, we love the name John Paul. I was wondering if we should hyphenate it and give him a middle name as well, or if it should be his first and middle name? Last name begins with P.

I've posted on secular name boards and mostly just get bashed for choosing an "awful" name.

Thanks so much.

Pax Christi

Congratulations! We're also expecting number 5 (number 6, actually, but we had one miscarriage). I knew from the start that she was a girl, but my wife insisted we come up with boy names as well, and one name I picked was John-Paul. Had the unthinkable happened and I actually turned out to be wrong, it was in our top three boy names, and had a good chance of ending up as the name we picked. I would have gone with the hyphen, and would have gone with the name of a family member as a middle name. It's a wonderful name and I think it's great that you're considering it.

As far as saints names go, while it's no longer mandatory, I know people who have been told otherwise by their priests. I've read the old stories about priests who changed or added to middle names right there on the altar, and at least one person I know had a priest cite a couple of these stories as an option he'd possibly take if the parents picked a name that was too out there. Although our priest would never do that, very few of the names we even considered this time around weren't saint names, so we're covered.

[ac claire]

I think that depends on if you want another middle name for the baby. If not, I would go with John Paul (John as first name, Paul as middle name, called both names.)

We had a similar issue with our daughter. Some of yall may remember, I opened a loooong thread about this very subject. We wanted to name her Anne Marie (called by both names). BUT I also wanted her to have a middle name. The name we'd picked out, Justine, was really, really important to me. So we thought about doing Anne-Marie, we thought about linking it all together as one name (Annemarie) and we thought about just doing Anne Marie Justine, where the baby would essentially have two middle names.

Only reason we didn't go with the latter option (which, all things considered, was my preference) was because Marie and Justine were so important to us as names for this baby, and we thought if she had two middle names, one of them would end up getting dropped on official forms and prescriptions, etc., etc., and we were afraid it'd eventually be dropped altogether. So we went with Annemarie Justine.

I don't know if John Paul is a name that can be strung together that way, though. Johnpaul. JohnPaul. Yeah, so....I'd personally just go with John Paul. UNLESS you have another middle name that's important to you, in which case you could go with John-Paul Middlename.

(Or you could let the baby have two middle names and just have more confidence than we did that it will work. )

[tgauchsin]

Originally Posted by Agape Thom

This is really unrelated, but the question about names brought back a memory.
Many, many years ago, when I was a student in a parochial school, about 4th or 5th grade, the teacher, a member of the order of the Sisters of St. Joseph, mentioned that all Catholic children, when baptised, must be given the name of a saint. She then looked directly at one boy in the class who was named Garret. She went on to say that there was a problem because there was no St. Garret!.
Now, let me state a couple of things right up front. My memory may be clouded by the more than 50 nyears that have passed. Also, this was the statement of one person, that nun.
So...two questions: was her statement about every Catholic child needing to be named after a saint true? And is there a Saint Garret?

If I was Garret, my comment to the nun might have been, "There may not be any St. Garret now, but there will be."

Maybe that kind of snarkiness is why I spent so much time in the principal's office at my parochial school.

[Em_in_FL]

There's a John Paul in my oldest son's class... not hyphenated... but he's just always been called by both names, so that's always stuck.
I think you just have to start the habit of calling him by both names and not make it too confusing.

[MessyMom]

I'm due in about 6wks now with a little girl who's first name will be Mary Clare and who's middle name will be Elizabeth. No hyphen. She will be called Mary Clare pretty much exclusively by our family (though I can see her deciding to shorten it to something as she gets to her teen years, same way that I changed the spelling of my name from week to week around that time!) and so far, friends have stuck to calling her Mary Clare when we talk about the pregnancy.

I love John-Paul, with the hyphen, and it would have been on our list if Paul didn't conflict horribly with our last name

For some reason, I hate double Mary names (Mary Clare, Mary Katherine, Mary Elizabeth) to have hyphens and love double John names to have the hyphen (John-Paul, John-Caleb, John-Francis.) I don't know why.