Naming Your Baby

Naming your baby is not always an easy task. With my first two we knew before we were even pregnant what we were going to name them. We had made a list of names we liked early in our marriage and we were so excited so excited to use those names. The nice thing about that was that we could address our child in the womb as soon as we found out the gender. Now that we are coming up on baby #3 we have NO idea what to name her. We don't like the names on our original list anymore and we are definitely struggling on making a list that we like and narrowing down those names. Here are some tips on naming your baby:

1. Make a list. This will help you from forgetting names that you hear and like and will also help you narrow down the names as you go throughout your pregnancy. We ultimately used two names from our original list and with our new list for baby #3 it has helped us to see them and think through each name. Put the list on the cloud so that you don't lose it. We published our baby names back in 2009 (before we were even pregnant) on our personal blog so that we wouldn't forget (and to claim dibs...). Don't be afraid to change the list over time or even start a new one all together.

2. Decide if you want public opinion. Asking friends and family what they think can be bittersweet. We were dead set on our first two names so there was no reason to ask people what they thought. We still got unsolicited opinions, but they didn't matter since we knew what we were naming our kids. If you're not sure and you want opinions, you can ask others what they think, but be prepared for lots of opinions and thoughts, maybe even some heartache. You also will need to find a way to politely turn down people's ideas. It can be nice to get ideas by others thinking outside of the box for you.

3. See how the name flows with your last name. You may really like a name, but once you say it out loud it may be cumbersome when said with the middle/last name or it may turn out as a sentence (ex Isabelle Bytheway-- Is a bell by the way?).

4. See how it fits in with the rest of the family's names. My husband and I have somewhat common names, and we decided to keep with that and do semi-common names for our kids. However, my sister-in-law chose to name all of her kids with really unique names and she stuck with that theme with all of her kids. Having one name come from left field while the rest are all the same may cause hurt feelings down the road.

5. Pick a theme. This ties in well with #4. Maybe you want all the names to start with a certain letter, or perhaps you want them all to have names from your favorite movie, book, cultural reference, or family names. We chose family names for all of our middle names, and despite our first two starting with J's we are not actually doing a J theme. It was happenstance.

6. Be patient. We really feel like we won't know our baby's name until she is born. Sometimes verbalizing the name too early can cause others to stick on it, even when you're not sure you will use it. My daughter has been calling our baby Abby and has been telling everyone that is her name. We don't know if it is and now various family members are attached to that name. I don't want to break my daughter's heart, but I also don't want to choose a name because my 3 year old said so. Sometimes keeping the names to yourself is the best idea and waiting it out to see your little one will pay off.

7. If you're still stuck, read through baby names online. If you just Google baby name lists you will have thousands to read through and pick as favorites. Then you can narrow down your favorites. You may run across names that you hadn't thought of before.