Do you follow any rules or patterns with your baby names?

[Forgetaboutme]

My two children's names both start with the same letter. This wasn't intentional but I know of others who follow patterns like that.

I only had one rule which others thought was weird. I would not choose a longer name for ds2 than ds1s name. To me, if I see the names Ben and Christopher, for example, its weird the second child having a longer name than the first. I therefore would only consider names 5 letters or less for my second child. My dh thought this was weird!

Nope, just chose names we liked! I guess they had to go well together.

No

No. Never occured to me. Just chose names we liked.

People are children for such a short period of time relative to their rest of their whole lives. You might be thinking about how sibling names go together and how they sound shouted across the park playground but they grow up into individual independent adults and nobody gives a shit about someone's brother/sisters name do they?

Using your example, if someone is called Ben, how is it relevant or even coming into conversation as an adult that their brother is called Christopher?

no but I did with my dogs!

I'm only pregnant with my first so not at the point of considering themes or rules for multiple children but my parents did this with me and my sibling - they wanted our first names and middle names to have the same number of letters as each other so that it was balanced and in their words "fair"

A question on your rule - if your first child had been called Christopher would you have used a short name for your second child? Or is it just the other way round? And do nicknames count towards this too?

Yes but it was unintentional and I only realised a couple of years ago that they all have the same 2 letter sounds in their names.

Eg. Dasha, Sadie, Edison.

No that’s just weird, choose whatever names you like in whatever order.

I just chose names I liked, never gave it a thought about doing it any other way.

I can't explain it and I did myself say it's weird. But I don't agree childhood is short and my parents still get Christmas cards with me and my siblings names on them. I also use my siblings names regularly when talking about them and my friends do the same?

So, using a Christopher as an example, thats a longish name so anything that is shorter or the same would be fine. Using a smaller name as an example: Isaac. I would then have been happy with names like Oscar, Ben, Leo etc. Not something like Sebastian even though I like the name. Like I said, i know its probably weird but to me it just doesn't sound right when the younger child has a longer name.

Maybe I associate length of name with maturity in my subconscious. Who knows?

I would avoid really popular names, ideally avoiding top 100 and ones that are outside of top 100 that appear to be rising sharply. However, if DH and I really loved a name that was 78 then we would probably use it.

I would also try and make the names equally special or interesting - I wouldn't have an Ann and Marina or John and Wilbur, but I think my preferences sort of do that anyway without that being a big thought process.

No I would just select names that I like

All our children have an o in their name not done purposely and 2 of them have a silent O. 3 of them have 6 letters and we did consider if we could do that with dc 4 but hers has 5. We liked the name.

Nope. Just chose names I loved didn’t matter to me popularity, syllable’s or meaning etc

I'd avoid the top hundred and other names spiking in popularity, and use family names in the middle. But after that, the list of names (especially boys) that my husband and I agree on is so short that I'm not going to introduce any more restrictions!

All my preferred names had to be fairly short, and phonetically spelt e. g. Robin. My name is long and complicated with a weird spelling.

I don’t think your thinking is weird. I don’t agree with it myself but I think a lot of people have ‘odd’ quirks or preferences like that!

If this next baby is a girl (I’ll find out next month!) they will have a name with a similar sound in it to my current daughters. And that’s just because I must just like the ‘sk’ sound. It’s also 2 letters longer. But if we have a boy, the name we’ve picked doesn’t sound much like my daughters name at all.

No but both boys are 2 syllables, different start letter and different end sound, and both feature in the names of musicals. So that was very pleasing to us 😄 but not intentional.

I don't think Ben and Christopher sound wrong together at all!

The only thing I would find strange is if you called one or more child a traditional name and then went a bit wacky or modern with another. So Thomas and Rudy say or Elizabeth and Crystal!
Mine all have traditional (but not boring) names. I always think families where they all have the same initials must get really confusing. Mine all have different initials and numbers of syllables and I still call them the wrong names!

Not really but mine all have traditional/old fashioned but not too common names. This wasn't necessarily a discussion we had more the kind of names we like. I guess for our 3rd we dismissed some as they wouldn't "go" with the "vibe" of the first 2.

Oh and we definitely purposely avoided having names starting with the same letter. I don't know why though.

I personally like sibling names to be roughly the same style iykwim - it just feels "fairer". So while I like a wide variety of different style names I'd feel weird naming one brother something classic and popular like Edward and the second something more "out there" like Orion for example - even though I like both names.

I also like middle name/s to honour family, it's a nice link to a childs heritage for me.

Not me as I'm about ready to pop with first but my brother's children accidentally have the same middle letter and end in the same fairly unusual letter.

If I heard 'Ben and Christopher' as siblings I'd assume that Ben was a Benjamin who preferred the short version! That's about style more than length, though, I think.

I refused to allow family to shorten ds name, he still refuses to answer anyone who tries.