Before friends and family get all excited here, NO I AM NOT PREGNANT AGAIN!! It’s just that I seem to have been having a LOT of conversations just recently about baby names. Quite a few friends are expecting babies at the moment and so obviously names have come up quite a lot in conversation. It got me thinking about how different people go about selecting names for their children so I decided to do a bit of crowd sourcing.
Choosing a name for your baby is a very important decision as this is something they will carry throughout their entire life (unless they decide to change it once they are old enough) so you need to choose wisely. Are they likely to be teased because of the name you have chosen? Will it suit them? Will they be able to pronounce it or even spell it easily?
Popular methods for choosing a baby’s name included:
1. Favourite singers/bands/songs – one blogger had named both of their children (and their cat) based on the name of their Husband’s favourite singer and two of his songs. A friend chose their son’s name based on the singer of their favourite band (they even named baby’s teddy after another member of the band). I think this is quite nice as it gives a very personal feeling towards the names.
2. Family names – many families have a tradition of names which pass down through the generations. This is a great way of picking a name, provided you like the names of course. Sometimes this is better reserved for a baby’s middle name. If your family doesn’t have a tradition, then perhaps by going back a couple of generations you might find an original name which you hadn’t thought of. Alternatively, you could come up with a name by combining two names, for instance Mum and Dads to create something new (although this obviously won’t work with everyone’s names).
3. Favourite films/books/characters/writers – rather like choosing names based on a favourite song or musician, choosing from a book/film or writer also keeps a very personal feel to the name. You might also come up with something a little bit different from the norm this way.
4. Sporting heroes – rather like the music/film/books route, if you’re from a sporting family then you might want to choose a name based on your sporting heroes but remember your child does have to live with it. I have known of people name their children after an entire football team before! Imagine filling in application forms – there’s never enough boxes as it is!!
5. Think about what inspires you or who you admire? Failing that, there’s always plenty of baby name books around or a few fun name generators on the internet.
When it came to choosing our children’s names (which I won’t be sharing sorry) we had a variety of methods; Little Bean’s name is something that I have always had in my head since I was a young child and believe me, she couldn’t have had a more perfect name for her personality. We were convinced that Beanie Boy was a girl and had her (his) name all picked out until we went to the 20 week scan and discovered that she was in actual fact a ‘he’ so it was back to the drawing board. We found that all the names we liked had already been taken by friends or family members. Then one day Hubby came home from work and said “how about . . . ” and I loved it immediately. His whole name just seemed to fit perfectly. When Jelly Bean came along, it was time to get back to the boys list (which to be honest, most people say they find it harder to pick a boys name than a girls) and we really struggled. One evening as we sat watching Celebrity Mr and Mrs, one couple were discussing their children’s names when one of them jumped out at me. I mentioned it to Hubby later and thankfully he loved it too. Each of the Bean has three names as well as their Surname because they each bear my family’s Surname too as I was the last female of our name and I wanted it to continue for another generation.
Did you choose your name differently to any of the suggestions above? If so please leave a comment, it might help someone who is still searching for that perfect name.
Roo’s name including her middle name were names I liked from my childhood and lucky Mr Boo liked them too. Tigger is named after three very important family members who are no longer with us, so a traditional family name.
Wow you were lucky Mr Boo liked both of her names. LB’s first name was one I had loved from childhood too, her middle name is after Hubby’s sister 🙂 I like a family link x