Who are you? Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Pauline, I am 29 years old and I have been married to Édouard for 3 years. We have a son called Archibald and a little Hortense who was born at the beginning of September.
At what point during the pregnancy (or before!) did you start talking about names with your husband?
You see when parents tell us "you'll see when it's the right one, you'll know" well with my husband it was immediately obvious! I think I could have said yes to a marriage proposal the day after we met! So, quite naturally, we had to start talking about children and names after 3 weeks of dating, I'm not exaggerating!
How did you get to know this first name?
Archibald is a name that I have particularly liked for a very long time, and it is also a name that Edouard likes very much. Moreover, he has this name as a 4th name because his parents had hesitated to call him Archibald.
For the record, another first name that I loved was the first name Édouard, I really have the same tastes as my in-laws ;)
How did you make your choice?
We had a small list of names that we really liked. There were 2 names at the top of the list that we had a lot of trouble deciding between. Then one day, while looking on the internet, I saw that Saint Archibald's Day was on March 29, my birthday... it was the sign we were waiting for!
Who are the great personalities who have had this name (Saint, star, artist, etc.)? Did this have an impact on the choice of giving this name to your child?
We didn't have a personality in mind when choosing this name.
Saint Archibald was a martyr in North Africa, like the patron saint of his godmother (Saint Laura).
We found out much later, but it turns out that Archibald is Captain Haddock's first name, which is already not bad!
What first names did you give up?
We're keeping all this a secret for our hoped-for future big family!
A final word? Do you have any advice for future parents who are looking for a first name?
As with everything in parenting, you have to trust yourself. The name you choose will be perfect, that's for sure! And above all, don't listen too much to other people's opinions, they're not in your family, whatever they think at first, they'll get used to it!!
Thank you Pauline for this lovely story... and congratulations on the birth of Hortense! I hope we will have the pleasure of reading the story of her first name ;)
To discover or rediscover beautiful first names, go to our first name stories section !
