Our criteria:
- Needs to be uncommon enough to be unique without being strange
- Needs to be easily spelled
- Needs to mean something good/important/interesting
- Needs to go well with our last name
- No initials that spell horrible words, or names with bad nickname potential
- Would be nice to use an Irish name, as that is a heritage that we share
Not a horrible list, right? Not too impossible? I guess it will be easier once we know the gender, but for now, we have a list for a boy and a list for a girl. It is proving to be more difficult than we thought it would be at first. It's not like we are fighting over the name, it's just that we want it to be perfect and that's difficult.
So far, we have agreed on middle names. For a boy, we want to use James or Graham. James is my mother's maiden name and Graham is a family name on Jon's side. For a girl, we are looking at Anne, (my mom's middle name) Elisabeth, (my middle name) or Rose (my grandmother's middle name.) I'm leaning more toward Rose at this moment to honor my grandmother, who passed away several years ago.
It seems like every name we come up with is either taken already by someone we are close to or someone we don't like, or is the name of a notorious celebrity. For instance, we liked Bryant Graham for awhile, until I thought about Kobe Bryant and realized I didn't really want that connection to my child. Jon still likes it for the Bear Bryant connection, but I'm just not sure.
I really like Westley Graham, but Jon is afraid the poor kid would be spelling his name his entire life (because of the "t" in the middle) I thought it would be cool, and his nickname could be "West." But I agree - it would be hard on him to have to spell his name all the time.
So we are still on the drawing board on this. Of course, we will come up with something before Pintsize is born, otherwise, Pintsize is going on the birth certificate! I can just see all the crap he/she would get for that!
Dear Readers - how did you name your children?
Our babies were all nameless for a few weeks after they were born! It bothered everyone else rather than us.... we just needed to see their little faces to see what they looked like! :)
ReplyDeleteWe just started off with a list of names, collected for whatever reason, and then crossed them off as one or the other had objections. Our aim was to have two names for a boy and two for a girl (because not every child *looks* like an Eilonwy!)
ReplyDeleteI think crossing off Graham because of Kobe Bryant is working too hard. You can't assume that the celebrity you like (or dislike) will be a big thing in five or six years. I think the family connections are a great thing.
By the way, our girls are Abigail (several years before the curve on that one - she's in college) and Dorothy (which still hasn't 'come back'). A few years after Abby was born we agreed that Amelia should have been on the list, but by that time... :)
I named my first daughter Cheyenne because we met a cute little girl with that name and I thought it was adorable. My daughter has never quite come to terms with her name. We almost decided to extend the theme to future children with Shawnee, Cree, Dakota. I'm glad we did not. Daughter 2 was Victoria Joy--obvious meanings and she loves her name--we've always called her Tori. #1 son became a junior--or C.J.--and he now goes by his real first name. That's all well and good until he gets in trouble with the law and all of a sudden my husband sees his own name in the paper in the police blotter. Something we never considered, of course. The last child was a made up name, Greydon. We still like it, but of course, he has to spell it quite often.
ReplyDeleteThe funniest comment I've heard lately was someone said their great-grandmother said, "My goodness, girl! You're not naming a goldfish!" Still laughing.
It really is hard to choose a name, but when you hit upon the right one, you will know it instantly. Just make sure to have a little fun with the process.
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