How did you pick names?

leapgirl8

Just curious. We're so far apart. Right now the best idea I've come up with is to each write down 50 that we like and hope that there is some crossover. Jen's favorite response to my names is "I'm not feeling it." My favorite response to her names is "Seriously?"

butterflygrooves

A's Dad and I had a different name picked for her but I changed it to something I chose and loved a few days before she was born.

J and I write down names when we hear ones that we like, we only keep the ones that both of us like.  Most names are eliminated with "No, I would not name my son/daughter THAT."

Two*True

We didn't agree on names.  At all.  And the hardest part was that K wasn't into looking for names. She just said we would figure it out.  In the end she had a boy's name that she really liked. I agreed to it for a boy.  We never settled on a girls name.  When DD was born I threw out a bunch of suggestions that were similar to the boy's name that DW liked.  I think DD's name is pretty much the female version of that name.

So I have no advice other than don't stress about having to having the name prior to the birth.  Maybe get it down to a few select names but there is something neat about meeting the child and then naming him/her.

cookiemonster03

We went through the book and made a list every couple of weeks. Eventually our favs really stood out.

norika33

We had one of the "200,000 names" books, and we'd go through it on our own, and circle names we liked, then check what the other circled, and make fun of their selection :-) lovingly of course. The ones that neither of us hated got written on the title page of the book, then every so often we'd say "So, what about Max?" and one of us would have an issue, and it would get crossed off.

Boys names are so much harder, and honestly, we wanted names that if possible could be gender neutral if needed down the road. Oh, and Max and Emme are J-Lo's twins names, so we couldn't go with Max ;-)

It was the hardest part of the process for us, but also one of the funnest. Its cool to look back at that book and the names that almost made the cut, and look at Finn and wonder "Is he a Max? Not at all!"

 

2moms2twins

Oh it was horrible...  we are on the same page for the most part  we had a slew of Boys names and only one girls name and we were having twins but until they were born we did not know what the sex was. 

All of our names are pretty obscure and a lot of them were pretty Hebrew names( my presence as i am Jewish)

Our 1 girls name  and it was a combo of our grandmother name.  My grandmothers name is very polish LILKA and so we loved lilly but it was gaining popularity for sure so we stuck with LILKA ( its pronounced how it sounds and people have trouble with it ) Her middle name is Melanie's Grandmothers Middle name Mae so she is our "Grandmothers Girl "  this was the only girls name we had picked out that was a feminine name ....

Low and behold we ended up with TWO girls ... ACK ... you should have seen my face in the Operating room .... perplexed because we were certain we had one of each ... hahaha...

All of the other girls names that made our list were mainly androgynous name like our 2nd girl name was going to be Stanley but knew we would get lots of flack from people and friend... but we likes Charlie, Paisley, and Harper, Pressley all the names that the women on the name forum freak out about ...

Needless to say we also had the name Sloan down for a boy and realized it can also be a girls name SLOANE but we chose the Masculine spelling SLOAN and then we realized we had to give her a very feminine girls name ... so we wanted DANICA Melanie wanted to spell it Danika ( BLECK ) and I knew no one would pronounce it as DON-ICK-KA which is the proper pronounciation people would say DAN-ika ...NO THANKS  so we figured out what we loved and made list and we both have a huge heart and fond childhood memories watching Pipi Longstocking but knew Pipi would not fly so we used ANNIKA ( pronounced AH-nikka but people say ANNE-ikka)

It was tough ....so hard - i still think did we do the right thing because people have such a hard time with Lilka's name ...   but all in all we did make the right choice. 

We met a woman the other day and she said that our Girls have "movie star names"  

Good luck on this crazy process keep trying even ones that you hate something will click 

Oh we also had t meet the babies before we gave them their names just incase Lilka was not a Lilka and Sloan was not a Sloan ... Their names fit them perfectly !

- J

2brides

We were very fortunate in that we were really on the same page regarding names. I had heard the name Grayson about 15 years ago (before L and  met) and really liked it - I thought Gray could be a cool nickname. Thankfully L liked it and it turned out that the Gray was an anagram of L's father, Gary. Perfect.

We went through the name book and came across Carter and loved both the name and the idea of naming him after Jimmy Carter, a great humanitarian. Carter's middle name, Julian, was easy since it is my father's name and since Gray was more or less after named after L's father, it was a no-brainer we'd do the same for mine.

Gray's middle name was the most difficult. L decided that since Carter had one name after a great man and one family name, Gray should have the same. We went round and round with names (at one point, L was lobbying for Mandela. LOL) when we finally decided to go with James to finish off the whole Jimmy Carter thing - plus we liked the name and how it sounded. Done.

And if we had girls we had names for them too - Emerson Grace and Annabelle ???

ssg73

It was pretty easy for us.  I had always loved the name Ella and had a student I loved named Ella a few years before I met dw.  DW's grandmother is named Ella had always wanted to name her daughter after her.  So that was easy.  Boys were so much harder.  We finally got one name Jackson and went with it.  I must say that I don't love the name now though (he would have been Jack).  We have decided that if we have another baby and it is a boy his name will be Leo after my grandfather.  

TaylorandMel

We prefer biblical names.  We're 95% sure of what the names will be for our twins, it's just a matter of meeting them to make sure it's a perfect fit.  Several years ago, we liked the more unique names.  Not so much anymore.  We love the meaning of biblical names and the classic appeal, in that they always age well.

JoySeattle

For us it has been a long process and we only have a short list to show for it. (Good thing we have awhile before a baby could join our family.)

I keep a list of names I like and add to it. I want names that we both LOVE, so there's a lot of sharing with C to see her reaction. Simiar to Two's wife, C isn't interested in doing name research.

My goal is to have a short list 3-5 of each gender and a couple gender neutral names, before birth, and we're not finding out the sex prenatally. 

Our #1 boy name we decided on our honeymoon from a list that I had written down and it was the only one C has a positive reaction to (as opposed to her usual, immediate veto or meh).  We both love this name and since if we have a boy he won't have a middle name, we're all set, unless it doesn't "fit" him at birth.

For girls it has been much harder. We have one that we suddenly considered and agreed on within the last 6-12 months. It's a not-too-close-friend's name, so C didn't think I'd want to use it, but I love it. If we have a daughter, her middle name will be the same as mine, my mom's MN and my Nana's FN. 

Since I want a few more names of each gender, I'm still adding to the list off and on, but at least we have a few that we both consider great names now.

ball.and.chain

I'm glad to see other people struggle with this, too!  Like other PP, my wife is not interested in doing name research, whereas I enjoy it.  However she is perfectly comfortable vetoing most of what I suggest!   We have a girl first name, which is my grandmother's middle name.  We both like the sound of it and we both miss my grandmother, so it was an easy one.  However, once we start talking middle names there is NO agreement.  We had a boy name we liked but it started getting popular and now we are sort of feeling like it isn't "ours" anymore -- and unfortunately can't seem to agree on any other names.  Since I'm not pregnant we have a while to decide, but I'm a little worried that our lack of agreement isn't going to resolve itself easily.

kendylann

We have very different taste in names as well so I printed off two copies of the Social Security top 1000 names, we each took one, ruled out the top 100 or 200 (can't remember) due to popularity, and then highlighted anything on our list that we liked "okay or better." Then we compared lists and everything that was highlighted on both lists went onto a short list. I think we added a couple that weren't on the top 1000 yet, too, although I believe they are all on there now. We narrowed it down to 3 boy names and 2 girl names before Elliot was born and that is how we headed to the hospital. After E was born and we found out he was a boy, I didn't get to see him until much later in the day because we both had complications, but it didn't take us long to pick one of our three once he and I finally "met." Ironically, we're completely back to the drawing board just 2.5 years later because of the other 4 names we didn't use (which we were fully prepared to give to a child the day he was born), there's only one that is still even on our "maybe" list! And yet, I still LOVE Elliot's name, so I guess we made the right choice. :-)  That said, I'm pretty sure that whatever you pick becomes the right choice because once you get to know your child with the name you choose, it's hard to imagine them as anything else.

2brides

kendylann:

, I'm pretty sure that whatever you pick becomes the right choice because once you get to know your child with the name you choose, it's hard to imagine them as anything else.

 

I TA - We gave Baby A the name Grayson because that is the name we chose first and gave Baby B the name we chose second. I've often thought about what if they were switched and I cannot imagine them with the other's name. Their name fits them.

On a side note, I am a but disgruntled about the number of Graysons that seem to be popping  up. From the time I heard the name in the mid 90s until we named the kids in 2005, I had never seen it again. And now I hear it all over. Oh, well. I would still choose it again.

JoySeattle

Kendyl, from what I know about you that definitely sounds like your way to go about picking names.

At least you have a proven strategy that you can revisit as you pick them for these next two babies!

LV1979

We talk about this alot.  Mostly on long road trips.  I have a very uncommon name and DWs is not super popular so it was important for us to chose names that werent as common for our future munchkins.  We have two boys names and two girls names picked.

The middle names for our boys will be my maiden last name since I took DWs name.  Our daughters will have some aspect of my mother's name as their middle name.  DWs family names are awful...she dislikes them as much as I do so they are out.  My grandfathers on both sides have a Junior and a Third so they are out.

leapgirl8

Thanks for the great input, everybody!

Just for kicks I looked up the SS name indexes for 1880 and 1950 too - all names used 5 times or more, not just the top 1000. The 1880 lists are very short. (1,059 male names on the 1880 list, vs. 14,027 on the male 2010 list.) Ooh, ten boys were named Zyquavious in 2010. Problem solved!