How do you choose when your favourites are out from the start?

[sunnyfrance]

It looks like my favourite girl's names will be a no-go for various reasons. How on earth, then, do you go about picking one if none of the remaining ones really stand out to you and you know the one you'll eventually choose will not be the one you really wanted?

Choose what you want regardless of if other people have it. Remember when you child grows up they won't always be mixing with whoever has the name now

Sunny - I felt a little like you do. We were slightly later having a DC than pretty much all our friends and quite a few of the names I had on the original list had been used by then.

I agree to some extent with Dropdeadfred unless, obviously, your DC's cousin has the name you wanted (there was some thread ages ago on AIBU about someone with a DD called Isabella Eve and a SIL who had called her DD Isabelle Eva, same surname - perhaps don't do that).

Could you pick something similar to the original (e.g. slightly changed spelling - Elinor vs Eleanor)?

When I was pulling together a shortlist, I had a look through the top 100 girls and boys names - most I hated but it did remind me of some I liked. This worked for me as I didn't want something super unusual but if you wanted, say Euphemia, it may not work so well for you.

I kind of have this with boys names, in that I really haven't found anything I love, and even stuff I quite like has been vetoed by DP.

Instead I think I'm happy to go with something very classic, and use a nickname that I really like instead.

Do you have family names which you could use to honour grandparents etc?

What is the reason you can't use your favourite?

Hi and thanks for your advice. It's not so much that other people have already used our preferred names, more that we can't agree or they don't go well with last name.

CrCru - did you end up with a name you loved or one that you liked? This is what I'm struggling with - that our choice will be purely practical - it isn't supposed like that is it?!

We have a difficult surname to work with so a lot of names we liked are out from the word go as they just sound wrong!

Luckily we do agree on a couple of names that do go well and we're happy with - though this has been much easier for boys than girls.

One of the 'tactics' I've used is to go through the alphabet and rule out initials we just cant have (cos of the surname), ie. all vowels!!
We've also narrowed it down to the number of syllables which sound right with our name (ie. its quite a long name so think a one syllable name would be too short and a 3 + syllable name too long, so we've agreed it will be a 2 syllable name).
I've then looked through the top 100 names and ruled out others from that (we are fairly traditional so wouldnt want anything too 'out there' - ie. beyond the top 100).

And from all that 'criteria' we are finally getting somewhere!!

Luckily we have similar tastes too which always helps.

It isnt easy though - good luck!!