With great self restraint...

[GinPalace]

I stopped myself cattily telling my Mum, who suggests Roxanna for a girl or Rex for a boy, that I wanted to name my child after neither a Mills and Boonesque stripper nor a dog. :-D

I am struggling to think of boys names though. SO much harder than girls. they seem either very run-of-the-mill of totally whacky whilst I want something more in between.

I'm with your Mum, I love Rex

I'm presuming you didn't stipulate that the name must contain R and X?

What about

Anthony
Daniel
Greig
Gregor
Reece
Dominic
Hayden
Connor

What girls names do you like, it might give an idea of your taste?

Nathaniel
Jerome
Gregory

Marianne
Clarice
Francesca

Squoosh R & X not compulsory, though it could help the indecision if I narrowed things down like that!
I expect if I named a son Rex it would be no time at all before I could imagine him called nothing else, however, I have a dog and meet many other dog owners all the time, I know 2 dogs called Rex!
My lovely mum was being helpful and getting swept along with her latest TV drama no doubt, she lives her TV dramas. :)

Gregor/Greig/Gregory seems to be a theme... it could grow on me. I think I quite like that.

Girls-wise we have shortlisted:

Cerys
Natasha
Philippa

VolauVent I love Francesca but it is already my nieces name, my own fault for letting my sister beat me to it.

Gregor was in the top two for my first, we went with Craig and i do still like the name and it suits him, but sometimes I still wish I'd picked Gregor instead.

I'ts an outdoorsy kind of name and he is a big Bear Grylls fan (as well as being a computer geek!)

We had Mairi and Kirsty down for girls - we had a very scottish list :) I loved Carys/Cerys too. My other half loved Jenna but it rhymes with our surname so was ruled out!

Gabriella is nice too - (you could have Gabriella Roxanne to please your Mum :o

Agree amck5700 Craig and Gregor are definitely boys names but without typecasting in any way. It seems such a responsibility when you don't yet know their personality etc. I know a person who named their boy Wolf, which is great if they grow up like Bear Grylls or similar but possibly a burden for the lad in question if he ends up being a quiet gentle bookworm.

For DS (this baby is DC2) we had shortlisted Ewan and Daniel, but two close friends have since had sons and used both! Some people just don't think of others! Arf!

Alistair? (love this name but vetoed as we'd already decided no names beginning with A)
Laurence
Edward (was shortlisted for DS but decided against due to Twilight)

Gabriella
Marie
Yvette

Not telling my DDs name which I love because I'm selfish :D

I sometimes wonder if we create their personality based on their name though. or is it just that by chosing names we like we are already on the right track as their personalities are likely to be genetically similar to our own? Or is it that our rearing makes then like that anyway - it's all too confusing!!!

VolauVent I quite like Nathaniel but don't like the abbreviations which would no doubt follow and i don't want to be one of those Mum's who berates people for shortening their child's name.

(I have an awful memory of being at a friends house aged 6 and calling a Nicola 'Niccy' and her mother screaming in my face with spittle and everything - I hid upstairs until my parents came to collect. It has given me a total aversion to being precious about exactly how my child is called by others ever since!)

P.s. I think a lot of Scottish names tend to be "proper" boys or girls names more so than any other culture for some reason - they are also a bit less "class" identifiable.

E.g. Fraser, Struan, Lewis, Lorn, Logan, Harris, Angus, Torrin, Angus etc

amck5700 that is a really interesting question, I have also wondered that a few times. My DS really suits his name and it looked right when we chose it. I do think you and your name choice are born of your own personality and thus there is a good chance the child will become the name they are given.

I know only one person who has changed their name to something radically different to the one given. He has a very 'ordinary' name and is a wild-artist-type so switched to something more akin to his personality. However, he and his parents were never at ease together and had a very rocky relationship, so had he been more the person he was born to he would have been satisfied with the one given I guess, he is not a typical example to most people.

I declared on another name thread today I love Angus. I do, but I can't imagine my own son called it IYSWIM.

My DS has a scottish name, I love it, so a shame in a way as can't use that, but I like being able to use it every day.

Hmmm - maybe that guy wasn't his fathers son IYSWIM!! - apparently it's a very common thing - so maybe he was more of a wild renegade like the milkman and as the milkman didn't have a choice in the name.....

Oooooo possible scandal outed by name-change drama eh? Maybe he was just a throw back to a previous ancestor. Maybe an evolutionary wild card. he's happy with his new name now, that's the main thing.

lol - exactly!!

Gabriel
Jude
Jesse
Sebastien
Seth
Saul

Martha
Susannah
Felicity
Georgia
Marianna

Gavin
Gareth
Christian
Lewis
Ethan
Caleb
Jasper

OOOooo thanks for the contributions NappiesandGladrags and iheartmycat I should mention though the next boy can't have a name starting with S as DS has one and our surname is S so it'd all get a bit sibilant and a nightmare for anyone with a lisp.

gabriel is good, have run it past DH and he isn't so keen but we have time for it to grow. Christian is cool but I'm not a big Chris fan (too many negative associations), think I'll pencil in Lewis to the shortlist. :)

Thanks ladies, always good to have fresh input when your inspiration has become stale.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxana

Nothing stripperish about that name. You don't have to like it, but dislike it for the right reasons.

You are right, it clearly has a noble heritage. I am not necessarily proud of my prejudiced associations and fully recognise I am not being entirely rational or fair to a perfectly pleasant name which no doubt is owned by a few perfectly pleasant people and I am possibly insulting any Roxanna's out there.

But we all attach various mental tags to various names for sometimes utterly random reasons, I am not even sure where mine comes from tbh, but it influences our name preferences none-the-less.

Rex also has noble associations, and then just cos I have met a couple of dogs with the name I become all anti-Rex as a name for my baby - hey ho.

I am a flawed human 'tis true.

Out of curiosity.... what would be the right reason to dislike it? :)

Think it was the Police / Sting song that did it....

Roxanne
You don't have to put on the red light
Those days are over
You don't have to sell your body to the night
Roxanne
You don't have to wear that dress tonight
Walk the streets for money
You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right

Roxanne
You don't have to put on the red light
Roxanne
You don't have to put on the red light