What's in a name? Choosing the right name for your baby!

I've thought about baby names since I was twelve, so when we found out we were pregnant the first time around the idea of finally being able to choose the perfect name for our baby was very exciting and fun for me. But I soon found that coming up with a name that my husband and I both liked was a lot more difficult than I expected, and truth be told I soon felt like I was pulling teeth to get him to cooperate with me to work on coming up with something for our soon-to-be-born son.

Luckily once I told Jim my frustration he was quick to rectify the situation and stopped shooting down all my ideas and instead started bringing up baby names of his own. We soon found that we had very (VERY) different tastes when it came to baby names, so we had to compromise and work together a lot to finally decide on the right name for our baby.

Having to go through this process again is quite intimidating. Our child will have to live with this name for the rest of their life! That is a lot of pressure on us as parents to come up with an awe-inspiring name that we hope fits them and their personality as they grow. With our son I remember feeling like I had named him the wrong thing at first, and even though I eventually grew to LOVE it - I don't want to have that same experience with our next little one.

Jim and I have set up some guidelines that are important to us when it comes to choosing a baby name. I found a few useful articles that have helped give me some ideas on where to start and things to do to help on our name quest. On a previous blog post I posted an article I found about some guidelines about baby names - so here is the second installment. We thought we would share some more ideas that we came up with as we journey through the baby name process.

*I like having the option of keeping our name discussion going: I keep a list of our favorite names handy on my computer so I can go through them and decide if I still like those names. I find that I might really like them in the beginning, but the more I think of them the less appealing they are. New ones crop on the list every week, and old ones are marked off. It's fun to continue looking through names too to find if we missed one that we both really liked. I also like finding one we both really like and testing it out and calling the baby that. Before Jack we had decided on I believe two other names and both were kicked out simply because they didn't end up fitting what we wanted.

*I like that I have guidelines: This time around we set up guidelines that it was fine for me to look for names on my own and I wouldn't start bothering James with the names until later. He didn't want to start worrying about baby names early on in the pregnancy and didn't care to start the discussion until we found out the gender of our baby. It helped us not be so frustrated with each other and gave me time to really go through names and find ones I liked instead of just reading them from a book like I did last time where he would just shrug off every name read aloud. Now that we aren't finding out the gender it has been a lot easier for me to bring names up with James because I have done a little more research on the names and explained why I liked them, and he has time to consider them before he immediately shoots them down.

*I try to keep in mind how the name sounds with our last name and how compatible it is: When you say the baby's name how does it sound? Is it easy to say? Melodious? Harsh? Does it flow with your last name or come off as a tongue twister. I've always thought that longer first names work better with short names and vise versa. Since we have a more unique and hard last name to pronounce I don't want to have a long first name to go with it.

*I don't want the name to be too popular: I grew up with a name that was very popular at the time. I actually can't remember going through elementary school with out being called Michelle W. because there was always another Michelle in the class. In college I actually chose to go by another name entirely for the year because there were 8 other Michelle's in our dorm. I have grown up wanting to name a girl Olivia but find that may have to wait because it is so annoyingly popular at the moment. :( The Social Security Baby Names list is a good way of seeing the popularity of the baby names you are choosing.

We both had talked about the name Jack and both thought about all the friends we had and we never knew a Jack, didn't have any friends who had named their baby Jack - so we had no idea how popular the name was until after we had announced the name at the hospital to the nurse. She told us it must be a popular name because there were three Jacks born in the hospital currently (it's not a large hospital), and soon after it seemed like everyone was telling us they were going to name their son Jack, or they had friends named Jack, etc. It was somewhat depressing to find out that it is such a popular name - but luckily we hear other baby's being named other names more. :)

On the other hand even though having an unusual name has the advantage of having them stand out from all the Emma's and Aiden's out there, we don't want a name no one has heard of or is hard to pronounce. I think that brings attention to a child that they would most likely rather avoid. In our case our name is so unusual that I wouldn't want our child to have to constantly have both their names mis-pronounced.

*I love the idea of naming our children after a person that is important to us: I always thought it would be fun to actually be named after someone, and not have my mom always tell me "we just liked your name." James and I particularly liked going through and finding family names that were in other languages (Jack's middle name is his grandfather's name in Hawaiin) or different versions/forms (Jack is a nickname for John and James - both family names). So even though we didn't name Jack "James Roger" he will know that he was named after his father and his grandfather, without having to go through life being called James jr. We also found that choosing a family name, even if its just a middle name, gives us a good pool of names to consider and helps us narrow down our options.

The girl’s name needs to be feminine and the boy’s name masculine. I understand that having gender-neutral names is becoming very popular, but it is quickly becoming one of my top pet peeves. I hate most of all the boy names that are quickly being turned into girl names. There are so many beautiful names out there - why name your daughter Ryan or Logan and ruin those names for boys who don't want to be confused for a girl?! I automatically strike off a name that is used for both a girl and boy. It's also about eliminating confusion. I heard a story from a woman who worked in human resources who had to input people into the system and check off the male or female box with only their name to go off of - and they always fretted over getting it wrong and offending them. I would hate for my child to receive a letter from their work as a Ms. when he was a Mr. or vise versa.

*I want their name to mean something nice: Even though I don't think anyone will shun our child if their name means "bitter one", I would hate for them to feel like they were less important than other people because they didn't have a positive meaning behind their name. I remember growing up and every few years the question of what our name meant was brought up. Even though my name is the feminine form of Michael, I know that Michael means "Who is like God". I would like to have a son or daughter not have to admit that they had a lame meaning like "Tree branch". I also have decided that even if my children have a name that is a form of another name (for example our son Jack) that I am going to write in every baby name book I have the meaning behind the original name (so what the meaning of Jacob (james) or John is). I always got frustrated having to look up my name, then look up Michael to find out what my name even meant.

*I try to consider initials and nicknames: Unfortunately people, especially kids, can be quite harsh when it comes to nicknames. There are some names that are easily made fun of, which is one of the reasons I love checking Baby NamesWorld. It actually has a survey for people who have the specific name you are searching for, and it states how often they were teased for their name, how often their name was mispronounced or misspelled, and if they liked their name. We have marked off a few of our favorite names because people that had the name said they ALWAYS were having to correct people about their name, or they got teased a lot as a kid, etc. For our initials we're lucky that you can't make out too many embarrasing combitinations, like ZIT or TIT or anything - but it's still good to keep an eye on it incase we name our daughter Whitney Ann (WAR) or Tanner Alan (TAR), etc.

*I like that we are choosing a few options for names once the baby is here and not announcing it beforehand: I love the idea of waiting to announce the name of the baby until he or she is here. I know so many people who announce their baby's name early on in their pregnancy, but that isn't something I find appealing for a few reasons. I like the idea of choosing a name that fits my baby, not just fits what I think is a beautiful name for a baby. By bringing a few name choices with us to the hospital we will have the opportunity to actually see if our baby looks like a Mary, Ava, or Carrie - or a Mark, Daniel, or David. And although I don't plan on being like my sisters (who drove me crazy waiting for days to find out what name they had decided on) I think taking a few moments before making everything official won't be a terrible decision. A perk for waiting too is that if you do choose to go with an unusual name, like my sisters again, your family and friends will just have to accept it instead of giving you uninvited name criticism...?

So now that you know some of our criteria for choosing a baby name, what about you? Do you have any strict criteria? Do you have have any different point of views about baby naming? Do you care what other people think about your names you choose? Do you like getting input or keeping it just between you and your partner? Do you tell what name you picked out before or after the baby is born? Was it an easy or hard process for you? Share your experiences! It's fun to hear other people's point of view!