Last year, after my fiancée Kara learned she was pregnant, we decided to wait until delivery to learn whether we were going to have a boy or a girl. While I was indifferent about whether I learned the sex of my child from a sonogram or a live birth, Kara was set on being surprised on the day of delivery. Since she felt more strongly about it than I did, I went along. So, we would not know we were going to have a daughter until the day our daughter was born.
Though we went through the pregnancy not knowing the sex of our baby, we suffered no agony debating names for our child. We had no list of possible names that we had to winnow down. We did not have separate lists depending on whether we had a boy or a girl. There was only one name we ever considered, and it was the name we settled on.
We named her Lincoln.
My father was born in Lincoln, RI, a town in which generations of his family had been reared. Kara knows I was close to my father, and that family history is important to me. One day, it occurred to her that “Lincoln” would be a good name for our child because it would honor my family’s history and my father’s memory. It also did not escape me that Lincoln is the surname of America’s greatest president. Indeed, the town of Lincoln was instituted in 1871 and was named after the sixteenth president. For me, it was an honor to name my daughter after a president whose grace, intelligence, humility, sense of humor, and patience helped steer the nation through the greatest crisis in its history, while also spearheading its greatest moral achievement up to that point in its history: The Emancipation Proclamation.
Top Comments
Generally parents who want to give their children 'unique' names are doing it all for them self and not for the child. If you like the name so much, you take it. Change your name by deed poll. But realise when you try and be all 'unique' (there is at least one case of a girl whose name is Youneek - that is how trashy some people are these days) your child will have to go through the rest of their lives with that name, so think CAREFULLY. All this Brooklin/lyn, Maddison, McKenzie (basically anything that sounds like it should be a SURNAME, not a first name), Tay-lah etc etc is really crass. Lincoln would have been fine as a middle name. But not as a first name. It is all about how the parents look and trying to be 'unique', b.gger how the child has to cope with it.
I like Lincoln for a girl. It is traditionally a boy's name but it does not sound like it 'should' be. Plus lots of names tend to switch sides (e.g. sandy, lesley, vivienne).
If you called your little girl 'Garth' or 'Brent', well we may need to draw the line somewhere haha