Do you have any 'rules' that you use/used to choose a name ?

never gave a thought about names ,i called my dcs names that suited them ,:)

• traditional but pan-European as we have family around central and Eastern Europe
• easy to spell
• wouldn't give you a hint of the social class of the child/adult
• no repeating initials within immediate family
• multiple nicknames
• family name as middle name
• for girls - an actually girl's name, not one derived from a boy (e.g. not Georgina, Roberta, etc)

We stuck to them.

Pregnancy died in the end but my criteria were:

Must not have taught an utter nightmare series of children with the name (ruled out Thomas on this one - even though it's a lovely name - as a succession of them had given me grey hairs and one fed a paperclip to my electric pencil sharpener - I bear a grudge!) That one's a hazard of teaching as a job though - so many names get massively linked in your mind with certain personalities that you've encountered over the years!

Must be phonically regular to be easy to spell (yes I've previously taught reception far far too much)

Must have a longer form for maximum impact when telling off when you know you're REALLY in bother... added impact when the middle name's dragged in as well

I had right of veto over all silly sci-fi, TV show and mythological names suggested by hubby. No, Darth Vader is NOT a suitable name for a boy. Prolonged ridiculous suggestions may result in a clip around the ear (Luke Skywalker was ruled out that way too).

I don't like the nicknames as full names either.

The Tesco-test... imagine it being screeched full volume down the freezer aisle of Tesco in the worst variation of the local accent possible. If you're not laughing at the daftness of it or cringing you're onto a decent thing.

went through the ons website list at www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=15282
DH and I scored each:
2 = really liked it
1 = okay could live with it
0 = do not call our child this.

4 names scored 4, and 30 names scored 3. We looked at these, got to a shortlist and when DS arrived called him "what he looked like"

hope this helps!

DH has an extensive list of rules, mostly due to the fact that his last name is Green

1. No plants, eg flowers etc
2. No colours (shame I like Scarlet)
3. Correct spellings are a must
4. No places, months, seasons
5. No words that can be names but should just be words, eg Faith

So you can see he likes traditional names

My two rules are

1. Not in the top ten here in England or NZ (where we are from)
2. Some part of it to have a family connection

I also like names that are a little different so it could take us a while to agree on one, good thing we've got til Jan!

our rules

1.nothing that will be embarrassing later ( not like jamie olivers kids) ie bunny pixie chasity

2.nothing that instantly will age you in 20 years remember all the kylies!

3.family name as second name

4.nothing too common, misspelt/ different like davyd instead of david or so unusual that they will have to spell it out slowly for the rest of their lives

1. initials dont make a word even if an ok word like jam

1. would we hate the shortened version ie if you dont like liz/beth dont call her elizabeth

1. we only have 1 child so far but not rhyming with sibling ie molly and polly or and twosomes like jack and jill

I've been banned from using any names I've previously given to a cat - living or deceased.

DH is a teacher and insisted on 'Top set' names to give them the best chance in their exams. :)

It had to be a name they could put on their CV.

It had to be a name that everyone knows how to spell (or so i fucking thought!)

It had to be a name that wouldn't make other children take the piss.

It had to be a name that didn't make the teachers roll their eyes.

My rules were:

No easily shortened names

Nothing beginning with same letter as our surname (sounds silly IMO)

Nothing that makes words out of the initials

Choose Biblical names, but not too unusual (not Hezekiah, for example)

Not in the top 50 names

Nothing that any close friends / family have picked (despite MIL's pleading to use her name for dd!)

DH and I had to agree!

I did stick to the rules, though MIL thought dd's name was too unusual (she just wanted us to name her after herself!!). Ds recently said he really liked his name (he's grown up now) which really pleased me, as I chose it!

Along with many others on here, I ruled out a lot of names I liked because they were too popular, although I only went up to the top 20 most popular names. We had a list that did not have anything weird, anything where the initials spelt a word etc... But in the end I let my husband name our baby when she was born, it wasn't my first choice of names but I love it now and I think he made the best decision!

k isn't really used in Spanish and that's the reason I ruled it out. I hate rarely used letters. I'm just funny like that. I suppose I should add X and Z to my list on names not to start with too.

1Catherine1 - how is the K pronounced differently in English and in Spanish (curious)

My second confession of the day. My rules were:

1. Initials must not spell anything at all; however...
2. Must have same first initial as me and DH;
3. Must be popular enough to ensure that there would always be a novelty keyring/mug with the name. So there .

Apols if this has already been written.

Re. girls names in particular, we liked Grace and Honor, but as these are 'attribute' names (what is the word that I am looking for??) we felt that - knowing our luck - that if we had a girl she would either be a klutz if given the name Grace, or not have a shred of honour in her soul if given Honor!!!

As it turned out had two DSs - one with a short name, and one with a biblical name. Latter just because, despite us being an aethist and an agnostic!

Really like Honor as well. May be there is just time to have a DD!

I have lots of rules. So many that I've had to loosen some of them since I was getting no names at all. And they are rated in order of importance

1. Name must be pronounceable in English and Spanish. (leading to rule 2)
2. Name must not begin with J, K, H or any other letter that is pronounced significantly differently in Spanish and English.
3. The child must not be named after any one particular person (originally the rule was any name I knew a person by but as a school teacher I can cross out the whole book)
4. No biblical names
5. No unisex names
6. No names that are hard to spell or read
7. No names with only one syllable since people always insist on shorting names no matter how short they are already
8. No name that when shortened sounds ridiculous or will result in bullying

My DP says I'm fussy but I insist that this is one of the biggest decisions of our child's life and I'm allowed to be.

Ha ha! My list was endless! So it was quite difficult!

Nothing in the top 10.
Nothing unisex or with a unisex shortened version.
Nothing where you couldn't tell what sex it was.
Nothing that was unpronounceable, or you couldn't tell how to pronounce it from the spelling or vice versa.
No naff celebrity names.
Nothing ethnic.
No biblical or Hebrew names.
No surnames used as first names.

Preferably something English, western European or Scandanavian with a distinguished edge.

We ended up with Henry.

no names which start with the same initial as our surname, and I checked to see if the initials spelt anything or referred to any thing, as my surname ends in J, so I avoided any names beginning with B!

Long first name - at least three syllables
Traditional
Middle name to pay tribute to someone in the family (grandparent or great grandparent as it turned out, but could have been aunts or uncles)
We kept to this rule for all three DC

Pronounceable in English, Spanish and French without sounding too hideous in any of them, or too different from each other (so names that exist in all three but pronounced differently were out)- much harder than you'd think.

Shortish.

Not too common.

Shortenable
sensible spelling
no dodgy acronyms from initials
no dodgy rhymes or silly run-togethers in the name
family middle names, one for each side
not unisex/confusing whether male or female
not a "sleb" type name
not starting with the same initial as surname

not many rules, really.

2 syllables so not automatically nicknamed/shortened
girls names ending in vowel or 'y' so they sound girly
boys name beginning and ending with consonant so they sound masculine
mentioned in the bible but not common/easy to find biblical names (but struggling to find a girls name that follows that rule!)
a name that can only be somebody's name - not a country, plant, flower, month, colour, object etc

i used names that were 'old' my kids are jessica ann, aimee olivia and alex paul they are strong names and dont have any one in family or friends with these names, i also spelt aimee the french way course amy was poplar when i had her. choose a strong sound name and it also has to flow off the tongue we most of had 20 names each time and we wrote them down to see how it looked and sound for a week if we liked it then that was the name. i cant say i dont like the unusual names coz they do grow on u but they arent for me my name is kathleen its a old name nt common either, choose name u feel comfortable with but think of ur child and what they could go through at school xx

My only rules with my 2 DDs was

nothing too common
and short enough that they could write it by the time they started school !

as it happens they have both had another child in their school yr with the same name ! other parents must have been thinking the same as me haha !

Well, I did have rules I suppose; names had to be classless, easy to spell, beyond fashion (I used to walk round churchyards looking at names that were consistently popular over the last 200 years!) and also manly, as I surmised correctly that my boys would not be fey, dainty creatures! That has led me to choose names that are all in the top ten but only DS3 has a duplicate in his class.