How do I choose a baby name?

[WiIdfire]

There are lots of threads here which ask 'which of my top ten do you prefer?', but how do you go about even starting the selection process? Everytime we discuss it we keep choosing more and more ridiculous names to giggle over and get nowhere with the creation of a top ten list. So, have you all bought a book of names and read through? Or gone through the top 100 names list? Or did you all have names selected since you were 8 years old yourselves?

Also, should I have a backup name incase the first one doesn't suit once he/she is here?

Help me get started please.

There must be names you like? Start there.I had a list of some names I liked, when I shared with DP he laughed off most and point blank refused others. He told me names he liked and it turned out that whilst we had two boys names that we both liked we had no girls names. He liked very traditional, I didn't. We had a girl (of course!) and did get there in the end, we just trying different names out on each other til we found one we both liked. We love the name we have given her.

Her middle name is my Mum's name, who passed away 9years ago x

Think of ppl who inspire u.

But yes I chose names aged 8!

Oh and just to clarify I didn't have my list since I was eight, names were just something I though about as soon as we started TTC. I noted down names that I liked on my phone as I heard/thought of them.

I looked through my family tree for inspiration because I like old fashioned names. I also looked at different countries because we both have different heritage and also live abroad so needed a name that worked there.

I am also not very religious that ruled a lot out and then because dh and I are quite green fingered we agreed on possibly a botanical name too. He wanted to do his own list and he got his inspiration from tv credits! I thought we were poles apart until someone on here pointed out we both like retro names and have similar taste after all. I had a lot of mythological names on my list and he had a lot of American cheerleader type names and we ended up finding a name that is all those things and stuck with it!

I love so many names and if this was a lovely, fair world might have chosen very kr8tiv names. Its so hard if you know you can't name your child Love Monkey or Coco-Demelle or Moira as some names have negative connotations.

With dc1 naming was easier. I had lots of names, from Thirza to Imogen. In the end I went with a name DM mentioned a few days before as it suited baby completely. Up until that point I would say a baby suits a name and you'll know when you meet him or her. Only now I think this was something that happened to be the case for this instance and that I found it easy as have loads of positive feedback about her name. Its a noun name. Easy to spell. Think Winter, Summer or Robin. No one ever forgets or misspells her name which I took to be a given.

Until dc2 turned up. Her name is feminine but takes longer to remember. Its only been the last few months where her and name fit together.

So I would advise:

1. go for name you both like
2. look for names after top 200 on ONS lists.
3. vowel names are very popular at moment.
4. names like Juliet, Wren, Rose, Willow, Celine, Quinn, Noreen, are strong definite names.
5. be wary of slightly unusual names as they often get confused with popular counterpart - Emily/Emmeline, Bethan/Bethany, Evangeline which will get shortened to very popular Evie.
6. if you love a name though none of the above matters!

Oh, and you can take the whole 6 weeks after birth to decide on name!

I'd been mentally collecting a list of names I liked for a while, mostly ones I'd heard somewhere. Think dh had too. We compared lists and struck off any we didn't like, then whittled it down to about 5 or 6. We didn't give him any of them! He was named at 4 days old. We went through baby names books and our original lists trying out any to see if they suited him and ended up with a name I never would have considered. I know a lot of people say babies just look like babies, but he looked nothing like I expected - we both thought he'd be chunky and dark-haired, when he came out this tiny blonde scrap with my brother's face I just couldn't imagine him with any of the names on our list.

We have very different taste in boys names, annoyingly we agree on girls - hopefully if this one is a girl it'll be a bit easier!

The names I liked when I was 8 are most definitely not the names I ended up using! I had a handful of girls names but no particular boys names in my head up to about 2-3 years before we tried to conceive.

When I actually got pregnant I trawled lists and made a huge list of any name I vaguely liked. I'd say there were maybe 50 on the list for each sex. DH wouldn't entertain name discussions until I was 7 months pregnant. I made him write a giant list for boy and girl and we swapped lists. We started by crossing out any names that were complete no-nos, and then amalgamating the two lists and just ranking them in order of preference and generally whittling them down. The whittling down took a few weeks as we pondered the lists and tried sounding out the names etc. In the end we had three serious contenders for boys, and about 5 for girls but the girls list quickly came down to a choice of two and we settled on one of the two in the hours after she was born.

Personally I'm a fan of having a short list to choose from rather than deciding on a definite name before the birth. I don't necessarily think babies look like a particular name, but for us I didn't want to decide 100% until baby arrived.

Mentally naming my future children in bed at night was something I did from aged about 10 until the day we named DC2. I knew I wanted no more children the night I stopped doing that!

Neither of the names were names I ever considered in my night time ponderings! It was strange to me that I'd spent years and years thinking, and DH didnt want to think about names until I was about 8 months pregnant. He suggested DDs name and we both loved it.

We used to play the A-Z game and run through the alphabet saying one name each.

Helped us get started and was a bit of a laugh late at night when I was lying like a beached whale in bed unable to sleep.

Oh. And we watched til the end of the credits on every film and tv programme!

I would also add that I'm really glad the name we decided on suited dd because here we had to register her the day after I got out of hospital.

We did almost change our minds though because staff in the hospital gave her a nickname that's very well liked on these threads at the moment.

My dh didn't want to talk about it either until I was about 7 months and even then it took ages to get his list! Another thing we did was look at the alternatives to the very popular names we both liked on the name websites like nameberry etc. So for example dh and I both liked Phoebe and Sophia but they're top 10 in both countries so we looked at names in the same genre.

Don't worry about them not looking like a name eg a willow not being willowy. My db was given his name because it means little red one. There are loads of famous people with his name and not one fits that description!

We looked through a Baby Name book, but also found the baby naming websites very handy eg nameberry, baby name wizard, behind the name, etc. There are LOTS out there.

Discuss some basic considerations with your partner - Do you mind how popular a name is? Do you prefer traditional or modern names? Is it important that a name has a good nn to go with it?

You must have some names that you've thought previously 'oh that's a nice name'? Not necessarily in relation to naming a baby, but just in general? DD's name is one that I never even thought about until I was about 30 weeks pregnant. Can't remember where I saw it written down but knew it was the name I wanted immediately. Told DH and luckily he loved it too so we went for that one, no further discussion. Don't anticipate it being that easy for DC2 though!

We had a couple of books - we really ignored anything that wasn't scottish/celtic. Also considered family names or ones we came across. We each made a list added them together and passed it back and forward scoring one of each time.

When No1 son was born - we didn't then like any of the ones we had left so then went through the graduations page in the newspaper while in the hospital, narrowed it to two and picked from those.

We didn't bother to look at all before No2 son was born. Then we did everything from sticking a pin in a map to trawling the books again. We then made up the list as above and ended up with two names which were very similar so we sort of compromised on a name that sounds like one but is spelled like the beginning of the other.

Japan that alphabet game is a great idea!

We've settled on a girl name for baby-to-be... I don't even know how we got there I think we just vaguely looked through the top charts, and we were also joking about Harry Potter names, and kind of came to rest on this one. It's lovely and I haven't considered any others. So if baby is a girl, that's what we'll go with.

Boy names though...good grief. We've trawled the top 1000 from last year, I bought a book, we've laughed our way through Nameberry (sorry, but there are some bloody awful names out there) and still nothing. I'm still only 23 weeks so we have time, but I'm getting worried!

I wrote a list out as did dh.

There was no cross over

So I crossed out the ones on dh's list i HATED
He crossed out the ones on mine he hated (sadly this included my all time favourite boys name)

then we each made a list from the others of names we were ok with and names we kinda liked but had not thought of for our list.

That left us with a list of 20 odd .. then we would alk of them bit by bit one would go off and in the end we had 6 girls names and 1 boys names.

dd1 got one of the names from the 6.
dd2 got a name I dreamt off when we were expecting dd1
DS got a completely different boys name that we both love (came to us later)
dd3 got a name that was not considered nor even added to either list for dd1

There's no rush. I didn't give it much thought till a week or two after DS was born, everything else was so overwhelming. Then I remembered a name that had come to me in a flash when I was being morning sick at about four months pregnant, and we went with that. I certainly didn't sit about making lists throughout the pregnancy.

Thanks - this is great. One of the biggest decisions to make - OMG the pressure!!! Dont want to get it wrong. :-D