Do you ‘love’ your boys name?

[LuckyFlash]

Due a boy in ten weeks and super excited. Before we knew the sex we talked a lot about names and fixed on a girl name quite quickly and I absolutely loved it. I felt excited to use it and tell people.
Things got tricker when we found out he was a boy as I just find boys names so ‘blah’. It’s seems from this board that lots of people have also struggled with boys names. I want something that is not crazy or eyebrow raising but equally not too traditional and (in my opinion) boring. There are hundreds of girls names in this category but so few boys ones. When people ask for suggestions of this type of name the same ones are always suggested.
Anyway, we have picked a name and I do really like it, as does DH. We have been calling him by his name at home for weeks and have gotten used to it. I just can’t shake this feeling that I like it but don’t ‘love’ it.

Is this normal? Will I love it when he arrives and it become associated with my little boy? Or should I be rethinking?

Did you ‘love’ the name you picked or have picked for your boy?

@SecretWitch

My sons’s name is Spencer. We love it but he wishes we gave him a harder name like “Spike” 😂

Ha, one of my ds is a variant of Joseph and is very annoyed that we didn't call him Jake. My middle child prefers his middle name and my youngest refuses to answer to anything but the short version of his first name and declares his middle name "not mine". It's a good thing DH and I love the names we've used because I don't think the children we named agree!

I wouldn't say I love their names. In fact I often wish I had called DS2 something different.
The names I 'love' change all the time though, I am very fickle in that way so I think that would have been the case for most names.
Also I have to compromise with DH who has different taste.
I think my issue is the names I would truly LOVE would be inappropriate for a man or just too unwearable in general.

I love my DSs name, but it's the only boys name I do love so if I had another that would be tricky. If you like the name I think that's plenty good enough, when he's born it will become him and you'll love him and it.

I love my boys names, they are 19 & nearly 18 now, their names really suit them, I have always been happy with the names we chose.

I really struggled with boy names but went with Alexander and I love it now. I definitely lean towards more classic names than modern though. And one with lots of nicknames is always good.

I have 5 boys and I love all of their names.
I actually found it a lot easier choosing boys names.

Yes love them all! 👍 was expecting 4 to be a boy too so picked a boy name early on but she is not!! Have thrown out all the girl names I thought I loved as now that I can use them it turns out I think they are boring! Half disappointed I can't use the boy name I had picked 😂

My son’s name wasn’t my number 1 choice but I do love it. It suits him well.

Hi OP! I'm in the same boat, baby boy is due in 8 weeks. I like Otis, Jaxon and Blake but don't 'love' any of them enough to commit. I'm hoping inspiration will just strike me when he's here to pick one.

I had opposite problem! All set on boys names and then had girls and didn't like any girls names. I think it's just Sod's law.

My boys names would have been;
-Jamie

• Harrison
• Nathaniel
• Alex

I’m the same, due a boy any day now, we’ve got a name we’re pretty sure we’ll use which I like a lot but I don’t feel a love towards it. I read something on here that said you don’t love your kids names you just love your kids which stuck with me.
Also as a FTM the name choosing process has made me overthink even “normal” names that I’ve thought were nice previously when friends/family have used them for their babies!

I love one of my son's names, and he has one of those traditional top 20 names that you find boring. He's in his 20s now and I love the name just as much as I did at the start. He has hardly come across any others with the same name, and certainly had no others in any of his school classes. My other son has a less traditional name that was popular in the decade in which he was born. It's okay but I wish I had given him something more classic. Luckily he likes his name though!

I have one son and four daughters. I always found boys’ names easier to come up with and love, and I always had a list of boys’ names I loved ready for our babies; girls’ names proved more tricky and last minute.

I do love my son’s name, though he generally goes by a diminutive that I like a little less.

I really struggled with boys names too. There was plenty I liked but none where I thought yes that’s the one. My DS was going to be Henry for a while but I still didn’t really love it. Took me ages to fall in love with a name, which I did eventually. And there was no backup name so it’s a good job DS suits it!

I can't be doing with all this 'all boy's names are blah' business on MN, as if girls' names are so much better! What is it?

I agree. I don’t get it. There are tonnes of boys names out there, and if you want unusual just avoid the top 50.

I love ds’s name, always have done. I’m not having any more dc, but if one arrived out of the blue tomorrow I have a list of other boys’ names I love ready to go:

Eric
Magnus
Edgar
Tristan

I love so many boys names (including the first and middle names of my boys). There's so many, many boys names in the "sweet spot" of not being too popular but still great names.

Names I think that fit this criteria (in various different styles): Ross, Rex, Tobias, Dominic, Owen, Peter, Jonah, Max, Seth, Joel, Andrew, Callum, Zachary, Lewis, Nathaniel, Edwin, Emmett, Eli, Isaiah, Barnaby, Xavier, Nicholas, Gregory, Aaron, Christopher, Asher, Lucien, Ellis, Orson, Magnus, Otis, Rupert, Sylvester, Robert, Nathan, Jonathan, Josiah, Elias, Anthony, Adrian, Michael, Douglas, Finnegan, Alasdair, Jared, Victor, Dashiell, Stellan, Anders, Marcus.

Agree though about checking the ONS list for inspiration though if the above don't help!

I definitely prefer thinking of girl name combos than boys for some reason! I find boys so much harder. If you look on the ONS charts people tend to name their children more of the same boys names, whereas they are more spread out across girl names! I’m sure you’ll find the right one once he’s here. I personally wouldn’t name them until you meet them as they might not suit whatever name you had in mind

I love my sons name, he's 24 now.

Yes absolutely. To this day I have never heard a nicer name

My three boys are 27, 25 & 23. I still love their names.

I had no problem choosing them DH helpfully agreed with my choices but I'd have really struggled with girls' names.

I kind of regret DS1's middle name, but he likes it so that's the main thing.

Yes, utterly and completely! To the point where it's made picking out our little girl's name so hard as I don't 'love' a single one as completely as I love our son's name!

Opposite issue - love DS’s name, I like DD’s and part of me wishes we’d waited a little longer to decide on it but at the same time she REALLY suits it and I love her so.... I actually had a few boys names I loved and never really found a spark with a girls name

I love my son's name (even though it was super popular a couple of years later) I had his name ready for him through the whole of my 10 year battle to conceive.. I also had his sisters name ready for her when she arrived 5 years later

It's not that all boys' names are blah, it's that there are a lot of boys' names which are blah and then a lot of boys' names which are so weird they are totally marmite. It's like there's no in between.

I think most people have a sweet spot with names where some things are just too ordinary and dull, but some are too out there and weird. It's just the switch from ordinary to out there with boys' names seems to happen really suddenly. There are also a lot of surname names for boys, which I'm not keen on personally.

Girls' names seem to be distributed a bit more evenly, so there's a wider area in between (for me, anyway)

It's not necessarily related to their position in the statistics list either but more how many X's you have known or heard of in your life. I've come across a million Johns and Davids, and therefore I probably wouldn't choose it as a name. I've never come across a Peyton and find it too weird, but I know a lot of people love it. Arlo is an odd one - I had never heard of it until about 5/6 years ago and now suddenly everyone has an Arlo.

@BertieBotts you’ve hit the nail on the head! For boys it literally swings from Chris and David to Jaxon and Arlo with no middle ground. The window of ‘not blah, not too out there’ contains about 10 names, and they’re all really popular.

I’ve decided to just go with popular and not worry about it!