Welcome baby Bronx Mowgli

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/27840950/?GT1=43001
....and here I was thinking we were a colorful people when it came to naming our babies.

What Shall We Name Her?

May 3, 1972 & that was the question.

Apparently my parents hadn't decided on what to name their 1st born until that fateful day.

Daddy had chosen Jennifer Lynn & wanted to call me Jenni Pooh.  Mama disagreed.  She didn't like either one & suggested Monica.  Daddy was okay with that & still suggested Lynn for my middle name. Mama said no.  So here's 9lbs & 1.5 oz little Monica with no middle name. 

Mama pondered the middle names of her nieces & chose one that fit, but spelled it differently. {Ya'll know how we do.}  Mama was happy & Daddy was too.  You see my family has a tendency to recycle and/or combine names to create a middle name.  Considering my grandmothers were Dorothy Mae & Lillie Mae, I'm just damn glad I'm not Monica Mae.  *gag*

Papa even threw in his nickel's worth and decided to nickname me Pumpkin because of my smile...imagine that. {I miss that old dude.}   I hear he raised quite a ruckus with nurses because they would only let him see me from behind the glass.  In the end, Papa got what he wanted.

Now of course, I have to ask - do you know how your name came about?  I'm all ears!

Her Name? His Name? You Tell Me.

Note: I changed the subject with the hopes of getting a few more testosteronic (ha!) replies.

When I was a lil bright-eyed child, I dreamed of the Cinderella wedding like most girls do, including the big, white gown & releasing of the doves. There's was one major reason I couldn't wait to get married....to change my name!

I hated my last name for a really long time.  I wanted the last name of several of my relatives - Jones, Smith, Brown (Meet The Browns ain't got shit on my Browns & one of my connects can tell ya)....sorry....back to my topic.  Pretty common names right?  I guess that's why I wanted one.  It wasn't until one of my distant cousins became a star athlete in high school, that I started to appreciate my name...my daddy's name...a name widely recognized in our area.

The late Ike "Fine Yo' Ass" Turner put the icing on the cake for me with "That name got my daddy's blood on it."  I'll repeat that in heartbeat.

Again, back to my topic - after so many years of wanting a last name other than the one on my birth certificate & later learning to appreciate my name, I decided if some lucky brother ever made an honest woman out of me, I wouldn't change my name.  No children would come from this union, so what's the point?  I'd be inclined to reconsider if that was the case.

I've decided my tombstone would read the same as my birth certificate.  I would go out the same way I came in - not as Joe Smith's wife, but as Frankie B's baby girl.  I could replace a husband umpteen times, but I could never replace my daddy.

The two (2) times I was seriously in love & contemplating marriage, I toyed around with the whole hyphenation thing, but my last name & theirs simply did not flow.

This brings me to my question:

Ladies - did you/would you keep/drop your birth name or hyphenate?

Gents - did your wife drop/keep her birth name?  How did the decision effect you?  Feel free to answer based upon wifey material.