Baby Names

One of the most important things we get to do is name this baby...who will become a child, then an adolescent, then a teenager, then eventually an adult. It's not like picking out a stroller or crib bedding. Those things only affect the child for a little while. But a name is something they will keep for the rest of their lives (unless they hate it so much they change it). It's a big deal. It's something we've been putting a lot of thought into.

The name can't be only baby or little kid appropriate. This mostly applies to cutesy or trendy names. You know, the names of kids who have not yet grown up so their name still sounds like it belongs to a baby. For boys, I put most of the names that end in -aden or -ayden or some other variation of that in the category. They're not bad names at all; it's just hard for me to imagine adults with those names, even though it will inevitably happen.

The name can't be too wierd. I'm sure there are plenty of people in the world who give their kids some crazy strange names, but of course the people we only hear about doing so are celebrities. If you name your child Pilot Inspektor ( like actor Jason Lee) you have the potential to limit their career options. Although, I suppose if they're the child of a celebrity, jobs and making money may not be such a big deal. I don't think all wierd celebrity baby names are bad, though. Apple is kind of a cute name. That doesn't mean I'd ever name my child that.

The name can't be too popular. I experienced it first hand. I was one of many Jennifers. My name is the most common one for my age group. Nowadays, I think there is enough diversity among names that a strong concentration of one or two names doesn't really happen anymore. Unfortunately for us, the name we want to use as a boy name is extremely popular now. That wasn't the case a few years ago. The same goes with the name Mia. We've liked it for along time, but now it's like in the top ten baby names all of a sudden. It's not a bad thing. It just makes me think twice before naming my child that. By the way, we will not be naming our child Mia if we're having a girl.

If it's a boy name, it has to sound distinguished. At least my husband thinks so, and I agree with him. We've actually looked at a list of English kings to get baby name ideas. We don't want it to sound too pretentious, though. My husband actually has a good, strong, English king type name, but I'm not on board with the whole junior thing. If the baby is a boy, we're leaning toward giving him the same first name as my husband, though. The toughest thing has been picking out a middle name. Nothing sounds perfect yet.

I like the idea of literary names, as in names from books we love. The middle name we have picked out for a girl comes from my favorite book. For a boy middle name, we've discussed Holden (as in Caulfield from "Catcher in the Rye"). However, I didn't just love that book and the character is kind of strange and the whole associated with John Lennon's death thing turns me off to it. Lennon's killer had a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" on him when it happened. Now I know most people don't know that, but I do and I think it would bother me! Biblical names are good, and we've discussed some of those for boy middle names. Nothing has really stood out, though.

So all that to say, I think we do have a girl name picked out. However, I don't want to share it yet in case we change our mind or if we're having a boy. I think we have the first name of a boy picked out, but it could change. I keep thinking we'll come up with something better although it never happens. We do not have a middle name for a boy picked out and that has been THE hardest thing to decide on. So if you want to help, we're trying to come up with a middle name for William (he will go by Liam, which is the super popular name).