How did you choose your baby name?

[rosiegoodwin5432]

Finding it really hard to choose a name! Would love to know how people reduced their shortlist?

Depending on how long the list is/ how much time you have left, work your way through it choosing one name each day / week to refer to the baby by. It's amazing how you can go off names the more you hear / say them, while others you maybe weren't as keen on can sound better. Also consider any and all shortenings.

First child named after relatives. Second child arrived as a child and already named.

They have their partner whack their list by their preferences

But also, when you're expecting a baby many names do get cut off the moment you say them out loud and realize you'll say that name many times - and for whatever reasons you get cold about the name
many names do get cut off when you see baby on ultrasound or you starts imagine your child actually being name you pick before. Often times we tie names to people, and we tie certain names to our unborn children all the time - or they get a name at birth when we finally meet them.

Twins are very similar to this.

Girl name we chose was purely one I fell in love with. Boy name is DH's middle name and a family name. Middle name is a referenced to a deceased friend who died young but in a language that recognises my family heritage which was important to me.

We are from different countries so wanted a name which was pronounced as phonetically as it was spelled in both languages. We used the baby name tinder like app and both swiped on a name we loved!

Thought of people I loved.
What goes with the surname? - ie initials not offensive.
Discounted any name I disliked or partner disliked.
Came up with a short list both liked.
Picked my favourite two names in full.

Husband chose the final one from those, after we met the baby.

We were out for a country walk and were suggesting names to each other. DH rejected all mine and DD's name was the only one of his I liked. Luckily she was a girl as we never did agree on a boy's name!

My husband said "what about this?" and I just loved it. I think it was the third name one of us suggested? We got lucky!

My mum really struggled to name me though. She and my dad couldn't agree, and were bickering about it right up to registering me! She hollared over at one of the maternity nurses and asked her name, then picked that. So I was named after a random maternity nurse!

We needed a name that worked in two languages, which gave us a relatively small pool to choose from.

When I was pregnant with DD1, DH and I went through them all and whittled it down to two that we loved.

Whne DD1 was born I immediately had a strong feeling that she needed to be one of those names, and she is.

DD2 now has the other, and that suits her perfectly too.

DS1 DH and I seperately wrote down a list of 10 names. If any were on both lists they made the short list. We had a shortlist of 3 then waited until he was born to decide though I think we already knew which it would be.

DS2 after finding out he was a boy. I said I like X which is a name that wasn't on withe list for DS1. DH said yes hebwas thinking of X as well. So that was that.

We had a shortlist on the fridge. We kept adding and deleting, until we had 4 left on arrival date. One seemed to suit her more and it really does now at 6

My husband is French so we limited ourselves to crossover names which work in both English and French. We also didn't want a very unusual name, but one which is reasonably well known and current in both countries. (So Isabelle was off the list because most Isabelles in France are in their 50s or 60s.)

I made a list of the top 100 names in both countries and shortlisted all the names which appeared on both. We then also added names which work in both languages but were outside the top 100. We then each went through and got rid of the names one or both of us didn't like. What was left was our shortlist and we spent the last few months of my pregnancy trying them out, talking about middle names and initials and so on.

Family names

We have a difficult to spell and unusual surname and concluded the children should have classic names with no spelling variants. Fortunately DH and I were on the same page. When born our children suited one name on our short lists more than others:

Hugo
William
Edward
or
Madaleine
Helena
Eliza

Isabel
Imogen
Alice
or
Oscar
Oliver
Louis

By dd we had gone off the other short-listed names first time round.

We didn't know their sexes.

We didn’t have a list . With both my boys, I found out the sex at birth so I needed both a girls and a boys name .

With our first born, we both came across a boys name we liked early on ( 6 weeks pregnant ) and never contemplated anything else . It took us nearly the entire pregnancy to decide on a girls name. We didn’t have a list because we couldn’t find even one we liked lol. We both eventually found one we liked . We didn’t love it but we liked it a lot . Anyway it was a boy 😅

A very similar story with our second born who was also a boy . We had a boys name picked out early on and it took a long time to find a girls name and it wasn’t a name we loved but a name we liked .

To make it clear , we both had girls name we Individually loved but we have different taste when it come to girl names . Oddly, we have the exact same taste with boys names. I’m glad I had two boys . We love their names.

Ours were named after characters in our favourite books., middle names family or best friends.

Naming app, went through the matches and discounted any we didn’t really love. I wanted an unusual but known name as I’m a teacher and prefer not to name my kids common names I’m going to say lots at school, but I also wanted one with a definitive spelling and pronunciation. One stood out from the short list for us both and I really liked the meaning of it too. For the middle name we went through various family members to honour and eventually chose one to honour my partner’s brother who sadly passed away. So to be honest it was fairly straight forward and I love the name.

for girls we found it harder as neither of us really loved one, but we sat down one night and really went over it and landed on one we agreed on and came to love. But it’s a boy anyway so now we’re just a little sad we can’t use both the boy and girl names we loved in the end.

My husband never suggested any names. I’d just come up with names and he’d say yes or no. We were quite lucky as he liked some of my top names and before week 12 we’d selected a boy and girl’s name. I started having doubts on the girl’s name near the birth but we had a boy and I’ve never doubted the choice.

My first born was easy, his name has been my boys name since I was probably about 8 years old and my Dad introduced me to the Beatles. There was zero discussion, that was his name. Music is a huge part of my life and always has been. My second DS was harder as I'd already used my favourite name. I had 3 I really liked, then I found out my name inspiration for one of those names had my eldest's name as his middle name and it kind of felt meant to be. Second time round I was learning towards nature/music inspired names. He was very nearly Bowie.

Please tell me your DS1 is Ringo, @MrsCharlieD.

My Ds name was chosen as when I heard it pronounced I realised it sounded like a combination of 'my' fathers and my late grandfathers names. My Dd name i let Ds choose...felt it would feel special to him that he got to choose his little sisters name, and he actually chose a very lovely name after another child he was quite fond of at his Tennis lesson, but none the less a very lovely name that i double barrelled with 'Rose' on the end

Additionally I did google the supposed meanings of these names after somewhat deciding and one meant 'god has heard' and the other meant 'god answers', and that sealed the deal as those meanings felt in someway fitting to way I felt after finding out I was pregnant both times☺️☺️