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Hawaii Babies
SanHawaii08
member
choosing a name - so hard!
SanHawaii08
member
okay. i knew picking a name would be difficult, but it's Really Difficult! we don't have any family names to use, or any tradition we need to follow. we don't have anyone we would want to honor through first letters, etc (chinese names don't really work like that!). so really, we're just going to pick a name we like. No middle name (middle name will be chinese).
i've gone through every single boy name in 2 different baby name books and now have a list of maybe 20 names that i don't hate. i don't love any of them. MH is making a list too. maybe we'll be lucky and there will only be one name on both our lists 
well, i put his favorite on my list, so there's that one, at least. ...i don't mind it. but i don't love it!
being the nerd that i am, i'm thinking of coming up with a list of patterns (must not start with this letter, must not contain this sound, must be at least 2 syllables, etc - based on how it goes with our last name) and seeing if babynamewizard.com can spit out a recommendation.
but seriously - any advice?
for the record, i should also say that i had this same problem when i chose my wedding dress - had a lot of options that were fine, none that i loved. after i looked at all the stores i wanted to visit in the area, i just picked one, to be done with the decision. and i realized after the wedding that i didn't really like my dress - still don't hate it, but it's the one thing i regret wedding-wise - not finding a dress that i loved! (or at least liked a lot)
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Re: choosing a name - so hard!
I hear ya!!! While I loved the name we went with (it was my first choice), MH was like you. He didn't love Henry, but didn't love anything! We had many, many conversations, and consulted many lists, but he never came up with anything he loved. So I got Henry by default!
I'm sorry that I have no advice, but good luck!
I don't know if it will help, but I'll give you our criteria!
We didn't have family names either, at least not for their first names - Will's middle name is John (both his father's and grandfather's middle name as well), and Dashiell's middle name is Thomas (my father's first name). I actually very strongly wanted them to have their "own" names and not one that any recent family member had. That's just me though, and I know a lot of people feel differently.
It had to pass the Supreme Court Judge test. If we couldn't imagine our child as Supreme Court Judge So-and-so Lastname, it got struck from the list.
I didn't want anything in the top 100 of the Social Security Names list unless it had been there forever. I don't know if that makes sense - for example, we didn't want Aiden because there will be eleventy million Aidens, but it's only been popular relatively recently. William is in the top 10, but it's been in the top 10 for pretty much as long as the SSN list has been around - it's a classic with staying power, not a name you'll look at in 20 years and go, "Yup, I know what 5-year span that kid was born in!"
We weren't too hung up on name meaning, so that's a very personal thing. Dashiell technically doesn't even have a meaning - it's a name that was only invented very recently (Dashiell Hammett's mother's maiden name was Da Chiel, and they tinkered with that to make his first name). I know that would bug a lot of people - not sure if it's a concern for you.
For inspiration, I finally turned to the things we loved, and all of our top names came from that. For example, I have a long love affair with comics and comic books (don't laugh!) so one of my favorite boy names ended up being Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes. (I lobbied hard for that name!) Ben is a nerd and very into sci-fi, and Malcolm, inspired by Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly (again, don't laugh!) was another choice because of that. We also considered Logan (inspired by Wolverine from X-Men). I'm a huge reader and looked through a lot of author names, which led me to Dashiell Hammett, who wrote detective noir books back in the early half of the last century (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, etc.), a genre that I love.
I should clarify that we didn't actually name Dash after Dashiell Hammett as a direct namesake (and wouldn't have actually named him after any of these characters) but they were the inspiration and led us to names we ended up liking. Does that make sense?
If you want to see my entire super nerdy process for narrowing down our name choices, click here - I blogged about it and there are even photos lol!
this is exactly what I think will happen to us! not that it's necessarily bad, like i said, i'm okay with the name, but don't love it. but i don't have anything i like better...
ooh, +1 on both of these - i'm definitely doing this too. so all the "easy breezy" and "country and western" names are out. (the baby name wizard book is great for articulating connotations with names) in fact, i'm leaning towards old names that aren't popular at all. but MH has already nixed Alastair, Augustine, ...hah. i don't even like Augustine, but I love Augie as a nickname. (at least, now i do. first time i heard it, i thought it was weird. so now i'm second-guessing all my name choices)
ooh, i loved calvin and hobbes! Calvin's not bad...i will add that to my list
and thanks for the link to the post - i had read it way back in the day, but it's time for a re-read!
I seriously loved the name Calvin, but just couldn't get Ben to see the light.
I don't know if this post will be of any help to you - some of us listed favorite names a while back, so maybe you'll find some inspiration there?
Oh, and if you like old school names, you might find something on this list. (They have a lot of good lists for inspiration on that site.)
I'm going through the same problem. MH wants Rollie or Rigley (like after baseball). Ummmm.......no! We both can agree on Oliver, but we don't love it. However, that is the only name we both don't veto. It really sucks and we are really struggling with boy names. If it's a girl, we are in 100% agreement over.
I LOVE the name Calvin and would love to use it, but a good friend of mine named her little boy that so I can't
| Olowalu, Maui ~ August 6, 2008 |
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| Family of 5 - October 24, 2012 |
Like redshoegirl, we want to make sure the name worked well in the professional world (we used the CEO test instead of SC Judge but same idea). We also nixed names of exes (mine, in this case, since LO is a boy) and avoided names of family & friends (I had a preference towards avoiding names of anyone I've ever known). We also wanted something not too common but easy to pronounce when read and not completely unheard of or made up. I also had a slight bias towards a name that began with MH's first initial since the girl name we already have picked out for a future daughter share the same initial as mine and I thought it would be cute to have all the boys in our family with the same initials and all the girls with the same (dorky, I know, but I like it anyway =P).
Anyway, I don't know if any of what we did will apply to what you and YH want but GL!!
We actually had the opposite problem! I'm glad we had boys, because we LOVED our boy names and found it relatively easy to choose them - although we both liked our girl names, we didn't love them the same way we loved our boy names.
Bella was an easy pick for us, when we were dating Ryan asked if I'd ever name my daughter Bella... so when we got pregnant he brought that up. I hate that it's SO popular but it's super fitting for our history and "where we came from" if you will... Kailani was on a list of 10 girl names and 10 boy names that my sister emailed me and I really liked Kanani but DH's friend said it sounded too much like pu... you get it?!... so that was a no... then shortly thereafter I fell in love with Kailani.
Boys names were VERY hard for us. We both came up with a list and then one by one we vetoed names off the list. Each time i'd suggest one, DH would say "if you want him to be a man whore"... such personality my DH has! I LOVED Gavin but he came with the man whore thing again so that got vetoed. He loved Andrew and I said fine but I didn't want him to EVER be called Andy because I hated it.
We also were against naming our kid something only to call them something else. Just my personal thing.. Hence why Bella is just Bella and not Isabelle or Isabella... because I'd NEVER call her that. So names that could be too easily shortened were nixed right away.
Now that we're tossing around names again, we need to go back to the drawing board. Of course I can't find the LONG list that we created the first time we did this. Once my stomach feels better I plan to go look in the basement where I think it might be.
This time for boys were thinking Grayson (the only boy name we both liked last time) but can't decide on a middle name... I'm thinking Ryan after DH. For girls, I LOVE Mya but Ryan says it reminds him of "the ugly baby on 6 ft under... ugh! He loves Adriana but I'm a little afraid the ending would get pronounced Anna instead of Ana... if that makes sense... no middle names for that either...
Picking a name is sooo tough. It is funny b/c before we were pg, we would always say "oh that is a nice name. I would name my baby that" and now we can hardly come up with one name that we like! We have one boy name and two girls names. The girl name we ultimately decided on has been my name forever (kind of old family name). The boy name, we were at a loss. We have decided on a name, that we like, but I am not sure that I love, but I think that is only b/c a former boss named his son the same name. The boss is a nice guy, but definitely two faced & I can just hear him making comments, but it is what it is. And I couldn't come up with anything else. Plus they are in LA & I am in NOLA so the odds of these kids ever crossing paths is slim.
I think it is funny that regardless of the name, the baby always seems to grow into it, where you couldn't think of them as any other name.
How funny this is exactly what DH said. Which I still think is crazy, it got vetoed as a possible middle name for a girl
a friend of mine just named her son Grayson & i think it is a cute name for a little boy. a little different but not off the wall
I like Oliver a lot - except that it's MH's friend's name...and the name of my MOH's dog (I lobbied hard for that name for their dog! what was i thinking?!)
Also like Grayson, except it's another friend's name (and doesn't go well with our last name). And i like Andrew, but that's the last ex before I met MH.
I too, am trying to avoid names of anyone I know. And then you realize you know (or meet, at least) a lot of ppl! Take Calvin for example - I only know of one, and not even well - I would barely consider him an acquaintance, and it's been almost 10 years since I last saw him (sometime in college) - yet - he's who i think of when I think of Calvin! I might just have to get over some of these, i think.
I'm no help - we broke all the rules pp's have listed as things they wouldn't do.
family name, jr/sr/IV, exclusively call him by a nickname, doesn't have a "real" middle name.
so I probably shouldn't be giving out advice.
our alternates:
noah andrew (DH's great grandpa and my great grandpa - but also names we just liked)
Clara Marie (DH's and my great grandma's name and my mom's middle plus I just love the name clara)
I read a baby name book and just couldn't get into it. So while I loved the girl name and was meh about the boy name - but able to be a-ok with the choices because they were solid (not trendy) and family names.
sometimes i wish we had some sort of family name or family tradition to follow - might make this easier for us!
I really liked the name Grayson until I realized that a lot of people were using it for daughters.
(I don't get this whole trend...it has the word SON right there in the name, it's clearly masculine!)
Really I haven't even looked into that! I just thought it was only a boy's name. It's not like Tristan, Taylor, Casey, Corey/Cori or any obvious boy and girl names. Damn people for using it for their girls!
sandra, i totally agree that choosing a name is hard!!! we didn't even pick one until the last minute and she didn't even have a middle name until i was in the hospital recovering my c/s!! we simply each went through name lists and picked our favorites then compared lists to see if we agreed on anything. i loved the name elizabeth but DH's ex was Liz and even though she never went by elizabeth, DH insisted that we could not use that name. i understand why people don't want to use an ex's name but if it was his ex and i was ok with it (and he said he wouldn't think of his ex every time we said her name) i don't see what would be wrong w/that. oh well. i love what we ended up w/instead
i didn't realize people were naming girls this?? seems odd to me. remember mrsbeachybride? her son is named grayson
i like that name too
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Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
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