1. No names that start with a C or a K. Our names start with C and K, then add Koda into the mix...well, that is why we stayed away from a C or K name for Buster. We don't need to add to the confusion by naming our kid something that starts with either of those letters (although there are a number of names that start with those letters that I love).
2. No names that start with the same letter as the first letter of our last name. We are not interested in alliteration.
3. No crazy spelling names (like Michael with a Z) and no crazy names in general (like Apple, Pilot Inspektor).
4. No names in the top 10 of the most popular baby names on the Social Security website.
5. No names of relatives, good friends, or their kids.
6. While not a bright line rule, we wanted a name that had a formal name and a nickname.
As you can see, we had a lot of "no" rules that immediately removed a large number of names. Not to mention that our friends and relatives have a lot of kids so a lot of names that we really liked were already taken.
After the first run at names, we each had about 30 names on our respective lists. We used long car drives to go over the lists and took out names that the other person hated. CP had a couple of Simpsons characters on his list (Montgomery, Homer, etc.) which I of course nixed. I think that he was half kidding, but there is no way I am naming my kid after a tv show (he was also pushing for Archer). (eye roll)
I thought that my task for the girl names was a bit harder because you definitely don't want to name your daughter any kind of stripper name (I'm looking at you Destiny and Harmony!). I know that it is quite the rage right now, but naming our daughter Addison, Madison, or something similar would have been cool, but doesn't work with our last name (CP also hated them). I also didn't want to share a name with the daughter of a Teen Mom (aka Sophia, Nevaeh) or have anyone think that we named our kid after Twilight (Isabella).
It has now been five months of us working on the name list and our boy name is set....well, at least the first name. It meets all of the criteria above and is consistently in the 100s in terms of popularity. And of course, we love it. Middle names are hard and we don't necessarily want to use a family name so we are still working on it.
We thought we had our girl name, but I started having second thoughts about it a few weeks ago. We may be changing on mind on rule #4 for the girl. CP read that even if the name is in the top 10 of most popular names it is still less than 1% of the population. Not to mention that my name was super popular growing up- in my middle school class of 50 there were 4 of us with the same name! Having the same name as others didn't affect me in any way so our kid will survive if they have classmates with the same name. This is still a work in progress.....
Did you or will you have any naming rules for your kid?
15 comments:
We don't have any rules, but I did want the name Finn if we had a boy. My husband pointed out that with our last name being Rapp.... Finn Rapp that wouldn't work :)
So many times I read your posts and I think it sounds like me and J. When I read C had been pushing for Archer as a name I almost fell out of my seat. J had been pushing for that name as well until I told him to say it with a thick New England accent. Name was off the list in a heartbeat!!
Due to our last name P and F names are out out out. You know me on twitter, see if you can figure out why. Think when the name is written just initial and last name. We also wanted not top ten but not way out there.
Oh and we are the opposite to you. Sorted for girl and still umming on boy. probably means a boy is heading my way and a girl yours!! He he.. Imagine if we have them the same day.
We had several rules similar to yours. No name in the top 100, nothing too "weird," no weird spellings, nothing with a hard K sound because our last name is a hard K sound. The top 100 thing cut out several names we loved (Logan and Grayson), and the K sound cut out a few we liked as well (Carter, others that I forget). My husband lobbied HARD for Sterling. Um, no! It came down to Quinn (Quinton) and Bennett. Literally was a coin flip, since the hospital wouldn't release us without a name!
We had some criteria... we wanted to avoid alliteration, we probably wanted a longer name to balance our short last name, we'd like a name with a nickname option... but no hard and fast rules, per se. Do you read Swistle's Baby Names blog? She has written a couple of (fun, mathy) posts about why popular names are OK:
http://swistlebabynames.blogspot.com/2008/05/even-top-10-is-not-necessarily-kiss-of.html
http://swistlebabynames.blogspot.com/2008/05/top-100-is-not-necessarily-kiss-of.html
I actually really like Archer...but I think we talked about it before I started watching the TV show. I like it a lot better than Fletcher, though, which is one of M's top choices. For us I think it would be a lot easier for a girl's name, we seem to be more in tune there.
I was going to point out these same posts! Olivia is not quite as bad as Jennifer back in the day.
We had the no alliteration rule, too. I was leaning towards longer first names because of H's short last name, and against top10, but not strictly. We also needed names that would work both in English as well as in our native language (and ideally in more as we have no idea where we'll be in a few years). When the girls were born, we had long lists as we didn't expect their arrival yet. And still, somehow, we found the "right" names quite easily.
Funny....we have had our boy and girl name since...before we knew for sure we'd have kids. And I think, back then, we were too young to think of rules, etc. We just...picked them. So that made it really, really easy when I finally got pregnant.
I'm glad you have (mostly) settled. That is a BIG deal!
We too had some rules, although hubby was more strict and picky than I was. Definitely no weird names, nothing that started with an M (too many in my family, plus hubby) or H (my name starts), it needed to work well in Finnish and English and definitely not top 10.
I was thinking of names for years and years, hubby wouldn't start talking about them until near the end of the pregnancy and really, not seriously until we had the boy home with us! (Names do not have to be given until the baby is about 1 month old here.) I told hubby that we couldn't keep calling him "baby boy", especially now that he is here!
There was a name I really liked, but it was definitely top 5, but we used it as a second name. His first name is not nearly as popular and I love it! It is the same initial as our last name, but that's ok. We finally got a name that both of us agreed upon. It was difficult to do!
Good luck! Names are interesting to choose.
Oh names... That was a difficult one for us, and we HAD to come up with two, for a boy AND a girl! My husband kept picking out really stupid names that he was actually serious on for some bizzarre and wacky reason. For example, he wanted to name our girl Pitch. Can you imagine? I told him there is no way in hell I would be setting our daughter up to be called Bitch for her entire life!! He asked everybody what they thought of the name, and every single friend and family member had the same reaction as me, thank goodness! We have finally settled on names that we both like. Whew!
Since we are a bilingual household (English/German), this is extra tricky, as names have to work in both languages and almost NO names are pronounced the same in both. At the same time, we want something that reflects the very mixed up cultural heritage our kid will get (Czech/Scottish/Austrian/Jewish), which makes the big rule about it not being a common name (which we share with you) easier to achieve!
We definitely had rules. No top 10 names since I hated having the most popular name of an entire decade. Nothing that ended in A,S,Th or started with B because of our last name. We wanted the name to have a different number of syllables than our last name. I wanted names that had nicknames but that didn't work out. We probably had a few more that I can't remember.
The girls were 2 days old before they had names...I just couldn't commit. We had a short list and my husband would have been happy with any of them. I just had to pick what I wanted.
I say if you love it, it doesn't matter what the top 10 names are. I picked Ava for Ava before it was cool and now it's all over the place.
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