As you may already know, I’m going to be having my fourth baby at the end of May. This gives my husband and me about 5 more weeks to come up with a name. It’s our fourth SON, which is making it nearly impossible to come up with yet another boy name that we BOTH love (or at least LIKE) and can agree upon.
Naming our first son was easy. We found out we were having a boy, and instantly started calling him the name we both loved and had mutually agreed on with no argument whatsoever.
Son #2 was named sort of accidentally by Son #1. Son #1 was in a Star Wars phase and we all jokingly began calling the baby “Luke Skywalker.” When Son #2 was actually born, nothing but Luke seemed to fit him. (Don’t worry – Skywalker is not his middle name, even though Son #1 begged for it.)
Son #3 was sheer agony to name. For months, my husband and I made and shared our lists with each other and never liked anything we found on each other’s list. He tried to like some of my suggestions and I kind of tried to like some of his, but we could not come to any sort of agreement. The night before Son #3 was born, my mom forced us to go on a dinner date and not come home until we had decided on a name. The extra pressure worked, and somehow we agreed on a name we had both only recently discovered, but ironically the name ended up having a personal meaning to both of us.
Fast forward to now. My husband and I have yet to discuss baby names except for when I occasionally ask him how his list is coming along. He says he has one going, but nothing he is ready to reveal. I’m starting to get frustrated because I want to talk baby names, but at the same time I am not looking forward to a repeat of the baby naming agony we went through with #3. I don’t even have my own list of baby name possibilities made out yet – I just haven’t fallen in love with another boy name yet. And now time is running out! We need help.
What are your strategies for naming a baby? Do you tell family members or friends or ask for their advice/opinions on names? Does your significant other have the final say or do you? Have any favorite boy names you want to share? Please comment, I’d love to hear your input!
Andreas Stonakis says
Great article! With us it was easy as the names comes from our anchestors. But generally we like names that come with an inspirational meaning.
malinate says
I love this book. So many baby books are just unending lists of names and “meanings.” This book offers a huge variety of names with a short paragraph for each that talks about popularity trends, nicknames, usage in pop culture, etc. The author’s comments are interesting, entertaining, and most importantly they absolutely ring true. My favorite part is the list of sibling names for each name. It is fascinating. It seemed like all of our favorite names showed up on each other’s sibling name list. I also loved the groupings of names into style families. The book is informative and fun to read. I highly recommend it.
The publisher took full advantage of the “look inside” feature on Amazon. Being able to see the index is very helpful so you can see just how extensive the list of names is and you will know which names have the detailed “profile” (the ones in bold in the index).
This is by far the best baby name book I have ever seen!
Alicia says
As a self-proclaimed “name geek” and collector of baby name books, I list this among my top 5 favorite baby name books. No, it does not include definitions and origins for every name, but that is what the majority of other books do. This book however, provides expert opinions. Really, knowing that a name means “noble worlf” is not near as important as knowing that it will always be associated with a horrific ruler (or perhaps a not-so-pleasant word…or whatever else you can think of). It also helps some to know where the world is in their naming style. Is the world ready for Lois to come back…probably not. But, they seem to be ready for other old-fashioned favorites.
Emily says
I have a family friend who bought one of the mini pocket book baby names that are on the side of the check out aisle. She bought two and her and her husband literally went thru the entire book of names and crossed out names they hated and circled ones they loved, and left the ‘okay’ names blank. Then they compiled a list of all the names that they both either liked or loved, and went from there.
I thought it was a neat idea but an entire book is a lot! But if you start soon after getting pregnant then you’d have time i guess. haha. Plus, I like really weird names that are basically made up so they wouldn’t be in a book.
Allison Bonar says
We don’t tell our friends and family the names until we are 100% sure. i feel like if you tell people you were thinkning about x name, they’ll give you their opionion, but if you say this is the name, they shut up.
As for picking names, good luck. We fought over names a little, but we mostly just couldn’t makeup our minds. It was tough.
Tina says
With baby 1, we were convinced it was a boy. We had some girl names ready but none that we agreed on. Fast forward to water breaking, we drove to the hospital and talked about if it was a girl and decided on the name. No family ties, no input from family or friends. Just us. We got our girl and named her Caley. But we had to make it masculine and easy to spell. No fancy spelling for us. I didn’t see her being girly girl. And she is but not at the same time.
Baby 2: We just saw the name Jared in a bible verse and knew it was the one. Weird since we had Joshua picked out since our daughter was born.
For us the name could’t sound corny or have some bad rhyme to go along with it. Or couldn’t bring back memories of a kid we didn’t like in school.
Good luck!
Nicole says
We are the same way about names and not wanting to use one that reminds us of some kid we didn’t like in elementary school! LOL
Samantha Cadwalader says
We came up with a list of 3 names and picked one after he was born that fit.
How we came up with that list…. well his first ad middle name are both family names, first name from his side, middle name from mine. His name was almost Orion though because we love the stars, and every night when we walked our dog together while I was pregnant Orion was the only constellation we knew =)
Nicole says
That is nice you were able to name him after both of you at the same time. We use family names for middle names too.
Katherine says
Maybe you need another high pressure dinner date to decide on a name? I am no help here, we officially had ONE boys name picked. That was a huge challenge with our first since she was a girl. Once we decided on hers, naming this boy was a piece of cake since it was already picked. Baby #3 is really in trouble though. I’m sure you’ve already been there but I really like the Baby Name Wizard book and website, maybe that could help.
Nicole says
I really should get the Baby Name Wizard book. I love her blog and have never read the book, you’d think with all our naming troubles we would have read it by now. It does seem to get harder to name babies after the favorites get used on the older kids. We also named our dog one of our favorite names before we had kids. So now that one is out. Thanks for your suggestion, I need to hit the bookstore!
The Trophy Wife says
Boy, oh, boy….We are going on number three and luckily, we had a girl name and two boy names picked with #2 (who is a boy) so I hope we are covered with those….of course we are already talking about other names. We try to stick to 2 rules when picking names. 1. There has to be a ‘family’ name somewhere in it…our daughter has a version of my grandmother’s name and our son has my DH’s grandfather’s name as his middle name. 2. The middle name has to be spelled in a traditional Irish way (i.e. Padraic). BUT….now we are possibly changing that because it turns out that all of the names we like are also names in popular songs, but #3 girl name isn’t a family name. Too many decisions. But, we don’t ever decide until we see the baby. We go in with a list of 2 of each and then figure it out after we see them.
Nicole says
I love the idea of using family names. Our boys all have middle names from family. Good luck naming #3!
Beader Bubbe says
With us it was easy…or somewhat easy…we name after a departed relative. Not exactly the same name but using the initial…that narrows it down. We also decided on one or two syllable names….now that I am a grandma, I have no say in the naming of my grandchildren..now that’s hard! Just enjoy them, whatever their names….they grow up too fast!