Hi, can anyone help me and my boyfriend name our baby? I just found out yesterday that it's a boy and we can't seem to agree on any names. My favourites are Tom (Thomas on bc), Jack, Harry, Sean, Sam(uel on bc), Daniel, Matthew...all shut down instantly as were the second tier choices Oliver, Charlie, Peter, Joseph, Michael and Callum. He knows/knew someone called Jack he doesn't like, he says Sean and Callum are "chavvy"(!), Harry is vetoed because it's a pet he had/because of Harry Potter...the rest he just says are too boring, or he just doesn't like them.
He's also blanket-vetoed anything featuted in the Bible, which I don't really follow as this is most normal names and I don't think it implies you're religious to use one?
The problem is, I only seem to LIKE "boring" names. I grew up with probably a top-5 name for the year and it wasn't that bad, I always knew a couple of other people with the same name and...so what??? Everyone develops their own individual personality, so I don't actually think anyone needs to have individuality thrust on them. I also really don't want a name that's pretentious or people will have preconceptions about, and I feel like the best way to avoid preconceptions is to have a name that's quite common? Like surely the fact people know 5 Toms or Matts mean they're less likely to have a set picture of what someone with that name is like.
Boyfriend also says he wants a name that "looks good on a CV", which is surely these generic white guy type of names, or else picking an overtly "posh" name, which I don't want to do because we're a modest middle-income couple and I feel like it just looks stupid/try-hard if our son has a name like Tarquin when he'll be going to state schools and living in a 2-bed flat etc (also my family would absolutely rip the piss out of me...)
We're English living in London. Extended family in the North East (Newcastle area/County Durham) and South Wales (no Welsh heritage ethnically, all Welsh names vetoed. Of Irish heritage. Would use Irish names (in fact boyfriend said he liked them so I built hopes around "Sean" which were then sunk) but nothing difficult for English speakers to pronounce (don't mind a counter-intuitive spelling as any Irish-language derived name will have one, just want to be able to spell it).
Boyfriend doesn't really have any suggestions. We looked through the popular baby names and he liked Arlo, which I initially shot down. Now I think it's growing on me? But I'm not convinced. I've never heard this name before and it doesn't have a clear origin, so it doesn't feel like a proper name to me? Also it's just come up out of nowhere which to me comes off like it's kind of a fad/tacky/will date badly, and I'm generally not keen on "O" endings.
TL;DR I have three questions:
1.) Is there a name I'm overlooking that we might both like? (Names we like but can't use for personal reasons are Conor, Rory and Laurie)
2.) There are three names we both deemed "acceptable" although I think that's as warm as it gets and I like but don't love - Fred(erick on bc...), George and Alfred (bc only would be Alfie or Fred IRL). How do you rate these? All likely to enrage my older relatives with their overt Englishness but they emigrated here so they can suck it up.
3.) Can you convince me on Arlo, or even better, convince my boyfriend on Tom/Jack/Harry/Sean? Or are these names terrible?