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

[picklemum]

If so what were/are they ?

We had couple, like didn't want to use same intial as me or DH and, second time not same as DD1. Also ruled out 'noun' names eg Ocean even though I liked a lot of these, I thought in long term might not be appealing for the person who has it as a grown-up ( no offence to others who disagree)

Also one rule was nothing very very unusual or really weird that no-one had heard of, so to avoid the poor kid having to spell their name out all the time....

.......BUT in the end me and DH fell in love with one name when DD2 was born and gave her a v unusual name. We simply liked nothing else better.

SO did you have 'rules' ? Did you follow them ?? ?

[Lemoncurdy]

Are there name consultants, MrsvWoolf?

Links?

We had:

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

[wisteria12]

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.

[zozzle]

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.

[zozzle]

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

[violethill]

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)

[GladioliBuckets]

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.)

[DilysPrice]

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.

[allbie]

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

[rachel234]

"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?

[KnitterNotTwitter]

I did a similar thread to this a few months ago... lots of fab rules here!!

[fishie]

no foreign names (including french ones like Paul)
no religious names (ditto re Paul, saint's name)

this leaves about 2 names so it was all rather painless.

[mamaloco]

names we both liked (the hard part)
names which depicted our origins (i.e. not english)
the neaming was very important to me (when you travel most people ask you that "what does your name means")
No religion (christian/ine)/history (vlad/ivan)/doomed names (cassandra)

We mostly succeeded, both DD first names can be religious but are actually prechristain.

I have a "little fairy loved by the gods"
and a "messanger of hope"

Ruled out caroline (manly, look like a man) and emily (hard working) for the neamings

[Fink]

1)Something meaningful for the family but not an immediate family member's name (we ended up going for an already dead relative)

2) Preferably a saint's name

3)Socially neutral (classic/traditional but not overused)

4)Either works or at least is understandable in French and hopefully other Romance languages

5) Nice meaning (e.g. I like Tristan but wouldn't use it because of meaning)

6) Sounds nice!

I used them all, DH wasn't bothered apart from 6) so I ended up vetoing a lot of his choices and having quite a small list myself. We agreed in the end and both still like the name!

[TrillianAstra]

"All rise for Judge " is good.

"And now we call the defendant " is bad.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave]

Not reusing initials (DH's, mine, older DCs)
Nothing too similar-sounding to other family members (e.g. Lorna is out because SIL is Laura)
Not the name of any other children we know
Should be able to spell it easily on hearing it (this also rules out names that have several different common spellings)
Should be able to pronounce it easily on reading it
Nothing that sounds silly with DH's last name (this rules out a LOT of girls' names)
Nothing too popular as last name is very common

(tsc, are you sure your DH wasn't just using this "rule" to veto names he didn't like...? )

[Astronaut79]

1. Nothing popular. Can never see Ds name in those lists so think we're ok. Only taught one or two in the last 10 yeasrs so again, not too bad.
   

1. No names reminding me of naughty/unpleasant chilldren.
   

1. Nothing from Jeremy Kyle.
   

1. Proper name - no nicknames,but the ability to shorten when necessary.
   

1. Suitable for a baby and an adult.
   

6.No celebrity connontations.

1. Allowed to go for a slightly more unusual middle name.
   

Most importantly, sounds good.

Got THe perfect name for DS one and no idea how to make lightening strike twice for future DC.

[VeronicaCake]

For preference will contain the vowels o and e, possibly a.

For preference no letter l.

Cannot begin with m.

Not a family name (Irish family and not strikingly original so this only really ruled out Margaret, Patrick and James!)

Definitely no letter i.

No repeated consonant sounds (so not Lily, Pippa, Titania).

Not too obscure (preferably in top 100).

Short, pretty, easy to spell.

It's like a logic problem. Given those constraints you can probably work out DD's name.

[NewbeeMummy]

No duplicate initials
Make sure initial don't spell anything odd
Make sure initials aren't some dodgey company on the stock exchange or a chemical element
Couldn't be on the top 100 list for the last 5 years
Something that could be shortened (my name can't and I always hated that)
Nothing too unusual
Nothing that would have to be spelt/ somethign easy to pronounce.

We stuck to our rules, finding names we didn't like was a lot easier than ones we did.

[neytiri]

my only rule was to avoid names that would date so we didn't end up with a 'kylie' situation.

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave]

I'm guessing Phoebe, Zoe or Rose for VeronicaCake's DD...

[englishmummyinwales]

Had to be more than one syllable, because our surname has only one and DH thought it would sound strange. And that, dear readers, is why my request for Luke became Lukas!

[MerryMarigold]

Name that should be easily 'nickname-able'. Didn't follow it for dc3 and regret it - gets called all sorts of rubbish 'cos we can't give him a decent nickname (his name is already one syllable).

[alicet]

We wanted names that you couldn't shorten.

Ideally we wanted not to repeat initials but were scuppered as name we eventually chose for ds2 has same initials as me.

Didn't want middle names - dh not me.

Not Ben (our preferred boys name) as our surname begins with T - BenT.

Ds1 was easy to name - we both loved the name we chose and he was known as this from very early pregnancy.

Ds2 we couldn't agree on. Got down to one choice each that they other could accept but wasn't willing to go for. So we did rock paper scissors to decide - dh won. Actually when he was born I was pleased as it suited him much better than my choice would have.