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

"no male names that sounded like they might play rugby for england (so no ollies,joshs etc etc)"

What does this mean? Honestly, what are rugby player names?

Had to be 6 letters long and have 2 syllables! And yes, we applied it to all 4 kids!

Ooh, don't get me started.

Proper bloody name to go on birth certificate , not a nickname (so not Charlie, Bill, Tom, Jack, Alfie, Harry).

No names that pretended to an ethnicity we did not in fact possess (there was a plague of Irish names when we had our DC - which is fine if and only if you're of serious Irish descent).

No names whose primary literary or historic reference is tragic (Heathcliff, Cassandra, Ophelia).

Nothing which sounds cute on a baby but unsuitable when she's Her Majesty's Ambassador to Kazhakstan (or whatever) (Millie, Poppy, Honey).

And yes we stuck to them - the DCs have boring top 25 names, although there aren't any others in their years at school, and exciting middle names bearing witness to an ethnicity we do possess.

Nothing beginning with the sound 'Uh' eg Olivia.

Any nicknames to begin with the same letter as the name. Mine wasn't so obvious and as a child I used to worry about which to write all them time.

No public school type names (poncey if you will.)

No same initials within the family

A proper name with a history going back at least several centuries

Had to have a beautiful meaning (ruled out several beautiful sounding names which have negative or plain nasty meanings)

No middle names which could potentially cause embarrassing or ugly initials for dds (assuming they might change their surname on marriage)

Did someone mention name consultants? Don't they see your child like a brand? Is that what we've come to! S**t!

To be a name:

We both loved/liked
With a great meaning and history (ideally with some link to our Christian faith in terms of meaning or an inspirational Bible character)
To include a family name as first or middle name
To be neutral in terms of class (esp. no aspirational yummy mummy names, poncey private school names etc)
No stupidness in terms of spelling
Full name to be on birth cert not nn
No names that would make people think we have certain foreign origins that we don't have.

It had to be:
Something very uniquely English but underused
Something quite rare (DS2 and 3's name didn't even appear on the 2008 listings)
And it obviously couldn't rhyme.

Are there name consultants, MrsvWoolf?

Links?

We had:

No daft acronyms
No ponceyness
Nothing you would have to spell out over the phone

I don't have a child yet (TTC) but I do already have name rules (oh dear), which are:

• no surnames as first names;
• no wrong unusual spellings;
• watch what the initials spell;
• save the more out there names for the middle name (i have a plain first name and an Irish middle name which i like but i wouldn't have wanted them to be the other way round (or to have been named Jucintha Sinead which was my ddad's preference - a narrow escape me thinks)).

I also have names i hate but DH keeps telling me to keep my mouth shut about them as i'm going to get in trouble!

argh - with. Sorry, silly H key keeps sticking. Also am quite new so apologies if bold doesn't work

we did the same as a lot of people here, no one else wit same first initial and check first/middle/last initial spelling. We have double letter use in our surname (eg. le'tt'er for lack of a better example) so wanted to avoid this with our chosen baby name.

I prefer nothing with the same initial as anyone else in our immediate family and no alliteration of initials of first and surname.

And no daft initials and it shouldn't sound rude if you say it aloud.

And no rhyming.

Think that's it. Stuck to it as far as I'm aware...

The easily pronounced in relevant languages was the main thing for us... had DD been a boy, we'd have had to abandon my favourite boy's name because it kept dislocating my tongue.

And then, nothing that denoted/connoted/translated into something unfortunate. One name I loved came across as entirely lovely in English, but with a very aggressive edge in our other language...

• Socially neutral
• No stupid initials
• Nothing that implies a certain characteristic- eg Chastity/ Hercules in case they turn out to be promiscuous/ geeky

-Nothing too common/trendy (not top 100)
-Easily pronouncable in several languages (we are bilingual)
-Length of first name to balance short surname.

We also avoided top 100 names. In fact ds's names was only used 13 times last year .

Nothing in the top 500. My DD's name is very approximately 1800th. DS's is now in the top 800, which makes me nervous.

Other than that, the only rule was that DH had to agree with me.

Nothing stupid and nothing in the top 75 (my chosen name was 78 I think, hence the random cut off!)

Nothing in the top 100.

Apart from that I wasn't fussed.

Not really.

Nothing made up or a misspelling

Other than that - if we like it, add it to the list; choose favourite and use it

My rules are..

1. It has to mean something to us, i.e next baby will be named after my Mum..

1. No ridiculous made up names

1. Nothing that makes me sound like im naming the child to purpously be 'unique'

Yes we followed them.

Oh and yes, I followed them