You Named Your Baby What? {Choosing a Baby Name}
February 11, 2013 | Posted by Jessie under Baby, Thoughts |
Hi everyone!
I hope you all had a great weekend. We got a super cool, original living project started that I can’t wait to share, but it’s not finished so you’ll have to wait a little while longer:) In the meantime, I have sort of turned Mondays into nursery days. I’ve been sharing all of our baby ideas and projects to start off each week lately so I decided to stick with that theme today and talk about a daunting topic for parents-to-be: naming your baby. We found it to be a difficult task with lots of back and forths and indecisiveness…anyone else with me?
As a teacher, I feel like I’ve seen it all as far as names go: traditional, popular, vintage, and completely made-up. Weird spellings and names you can’t pronounce when you read them were definitely not what we were going for. I don’t want to have to spell or pronounce her name every time we go somewhere new. We wanted something that would be easy to say and spell, and that we both liked. There are a million names out there, so when it was time to choose a name for Baby H., I felt a little overwhelmed. Picking a name for your child is soooooo permanent. They have to live with it for the rest of their lives and there isn’t any going back once you’ve done it. Maybe I was a little crazy, but I sort of came up with a list of criteria of what I wanted for her name. She’s getting my middle name {Rae} because it’s a family name and I love it, so the name had to go with that. Because it had to go with my middle name, it needed to be more than one syllable. You can’t have a one syllable first name, middle name, and last name, right? Too choppy. However, we wanted something short and sweet. Sort of a contradiction, huh? I didn’t want her “real name” to be a name that we never used and used a nickname instead. Having two names can get confusing {I know because I have one}. It needs to be something that is cute when she’s little, yet respectable when she’s introducing herself at her collage dorm and looks like a grown-up on a resume. And possibly the most difficult test to pass, Mike and I both have to like it. Yikes. Not the easiest thing to agree on.
Now that I’ve shared all of my crazy list of baby name must-haves, you may be wondering if our baby will ever have a name. Well, believe it or not, she does! When we were in Cincinnati on our mini-babymoon about a month ago, one of the goals for the weekend was to decide on a name and we stuck to it and reached an agreement. And we love it! I think it’s going to be a perfect fit for her:) It is a family name {sort-of} on both sides which adds some extra meaning for us. And it is really cute with Pudge so I can already see a hilarious children’s book about their adventures in our future:) Unfortunately for everyone and their mother who has been asking us if we’ve chosen a name lately, the answer is yes we have, but no we aren’t sharing until she gets here. Such a tease, I know!
So, what about you? Any other mommies or mommies-to-be out there think this was a really difficult job? Did anyone else have a crazy criteria list? Please tell me I’m not alone:)
My husband and I are due in late April with our first and picking a name is so overwhelming! We also have a last name that can make it easy for kids to tease if the first name allows it. Needless to say we did we found several girls names we both liked, but we found out we are having a boy! At this point we think we have narrowed it down to 2, but want to make sure we are not settling because we have no found something better! Good thing we have a few more months!
We got word shortly before “getting” our first daughter (adoption). Though we have had our names picked out for quite some time, the one we had just…didn’t seem right (and yes, it took hours upon hours to figure out names in the first place). As we were hurriedly heading to Target to get baby stuff (because we literally had nothing), our son said “We should call her Gracie. I like the name Grace.” My husband & I exchanged a glance and KNEW this would be her middle name. Easy, peasy, meaningful, and picked out by her big brudder. And so I had a list (of probably 30) names for her, but Mister wanted to wait until he met her (!!!!!). It was stressful, but when we put our son to bed that night, Daddy announced that Ruby was the one. It was my maternal gramma’s name, and it goes PERFECTLY with Grace (and it was on my list as my #1 choice). But yea…i get your dilemma. And parenting is just full of those dilemmas.
Blessings!