New to mumsnet and looking to canvass some honest opinion outside of the main circle of people I know. My partner and I whittled baby names for our new boy down to a few. We had a lot of trouble deciding any boys names and have an older son for which a name decision was difficult as well. For a long time, I'd just assumed we'd call the lad a certain name we'd been joking about assuming he'll just be called when he arrives. In the end, we didn't use it.
I thought I was ambivalent between the names and my partner had a definite preference, so we named our lad that. During the name registration itself, we were going to change the middle name to something I liked much better than what we originally decided, but I got cold feet about it and didn't make the change.
We agreed a name that will be the formal name, but instead we'll use the nickname (the nickname adds a letter to the formal name so it's not a straight nickname and if people hear the formal name, they may call him a different nickname). I don't particularly like the default nickname from the formal name but we'd agreed we just won't use it, however this has not been true now that the name is in use.
There was another name I loved and we were going to use, but it is one of those many people would think is a girl's name rather than a boy's name if seen on paper. I decided this just was unfair to do to the child because his brother has a normal male name. Living in a city, it seemed like it would be a "trendy" or "hipster" name especially since we are very English and the name is very Eastern European generally and we have no Eastern European roots.
So now I'm not sure if I should change his name to the one I had always assumed it was going to be, change it to the "trendy" name that I had loved or try to get used to this one and get over the regret that went into this name being decided (we absolutely rushed the naming as my partner thought my indecision was similar to my previous indecision for my previous son). And if we change the name, a) are we damaging him forever as the original would always be on the long form birth certificate? b) should we try to keep this current name with him as a middle name?
Sorry, quite a long one! Very grateful for any opinions on this though.