Choosing a Baby Name

[LadyTrampScamp&Angel]

CampbellScot,

I love your Irish names, pretty and unique. Also love your Dad's comment!

 

[laughinplace199]

Oh gosh...let me tell y'all...my family is Irish. All three of us got traditional Irish family names with Irish spellings...there were days I WISHED I had a name like Brittany or Sarah. My sisters and I are:

Aoibheann (prounounced Eve-een)
Caoilfhoinn (Keelin)
Clíodhna (Clee-uh-na)

When we moved to Texas, teachers HATED our names. My parents always started the year with the new teacher by giving them a phonetic spelling of our names so they could pronounce them. One teacher said to my sister "If your mom wanted you called "keelin" she should have spelled it properly!" She called my sister Miss Conway for the rest of the year. MEAN LADY. After the first year we began giving the nicknames we'd always had from family and friends as our given names at school. We became:

Evie, Kiki, and Clio.

Be careful what y'all name your kids. It can be a curse. We love our Irish names. But they were such a worry when we were young. Nowadays a name like "Keelin" would be spelled that way and would probably be pretty popular. But when we were little, that wasn't so and my father flat refused to "change" the spellings of our names to suit mean school teachers! He kept saying "THIS ISN'T ELLIS ISLAND!"

We love Irish names too, but worried about spelling and pronunciation difficulties. When I got pregnant with our first child, we picked Patrick if it was a boy, but we couldn't decide between Siobhan or Erin if it was a girl. Although Siobhan isn't unheard of here in Boston, it is still difficult to pronounce and spell if you aren't familiar with the name. We ended up having a little girl and calling her Erin. The next baby was a boy, so we got to use Patrick for him. Baby #3 was also a boy and we chose Sean. I still have to spell it for people sometimes, but most people know how to pronounce it.

 

[maedelken]

We named our daughter Kaylin. She's the only Kaylin in her school but there are several Kaitlyns. Seemingly everyone calls her Kaitlyn. She had three Jacobs in her class last year (just finished 1st grade) but no other overly popular names in her school.

Our son is Logan which seems to be hugely popular in our area. However, there are only two in his fairly large daycare center so I'm hoping his kindergarten class won't have six!

My friend's daughter is Eden. Friend totally freaks out whenever she sees another Eden in the paper or on tv because she's POSITIVE everyone in the world is out to steal "her" name. That drives me nuts! Does she really think there will be NO other kids with that name???

My DD3 is named Eden we call her Edie. We saw the name in Greece. There was a shop in Athen's called Eden's Cafe. Thats how we picked her name I thought it was beautiful.

 

[design_mom]

The only thing that drives me nuts (sorry if I offend anyone) are people who name their kids something very common but think they are being original by spelliong it wierd.

We recently saw a boys' little league baseball team that all had their first names spelled out across the back of their jerseys. There was an AARIC. I can only assume that was Eric, but replacing the "Er" with the "Aar" from Aaron?

 

[TiggerStac]

Our first DS (8) is KayShawn and I have never met another one yet,and we just love his namemit fits him to a t.Our middle DS (20 months) is Jordan and when we named him we didnt know that is was such a popular name for both boys and girls but still I dont think it would matter if we knew we would have named him jordan anyway.and our little girl (4 months) is Savannah,i dont know anyother ones yet but only time will tell.We dont go by the list,if you like the name then just go with it.good luck!

It seems Savannah is a common name in my area right now. That was the name that I picked for DS who is now 4 months old. I know of 2 people who had girls, 1 about 7 months before me, savanna the other just recently savannah. I have been reading the birth announcements and have seen a lot more.
We have a Brady, instead...and of course living in MA, everyone asks us if it's after Tom brady. It is not. It is actually the name that ds#1 would have been, but we wanted his middle name to be after my dad and uncle...which is thomas, so I wasn't going to even go there and name him brady thomas. So, 1st DS is Tyler, which definatley is making a comeback. And 2nd DS got brady.

We didn't even look at charts or anything...and I'm a Stacy, who had 5 others in my class. And Hubby is a stephen....

 

[CampbellScot]

CampbellScot,

I love your Irish names, pretty and unique. Also love your Dad's comment!

Thanks! We love them more as we get older. My dad was so funny about our names. His grandfather came to the states when he was a young man and they tried to change his name to Finn McLean. My great granddad was Fiacre (fee-uh-cruh)Conway! Conway isn't even hard to say! (St. Fiacre was the patron saint of Gardening! how funny is that?!) It seems they called a lot of the Irish men Finn when they arrived and McLean is a SCOTTISH name, not Irish. It just gets under my dad's skin, which I think is the reason he named us SUCH Irish names. It was a "TAKE THAT" kind of thing! Go Dad!!!

 

[Juliet25]

I wouldn't bother going by lists alone to determine popularity. Spend time on a playground to really get a feel for the popularity of a name. Two pf my favorite names, Olivia and Sophie, are super popular where I live. I didn't choose either name for precisely that reason. Olivia is in the top 10 on the SS website, but Sophie isn't. Still, I hear that name all. the. time.

I would go for a name in the 200-600 range.

 

[CoralCayTownhome]

Just caught up with this thread!

When we had DD11 we looked for a different name. DH and I have very common names with at least 1 other child (if not more) in our classes through school. So when we named her India we got some strange comments initially - very unusual name for Northern Ireland I think my MIL's first reaction was 'your joking' Now of course we have heard the name used for younger children in our town.

DS7 then had to have a name to go with his sisters so he is named Kai (Kye) but this one also has started to become more common.

Naming kids is one of the hardest things.

 

[nannerbadnanner]

I'm a female that has a common male name...Chris (not Christy, Christine, or Christal, just Chris). I was unique in that I was the only female I knew with that name, but there were a ton of boys with that name. I was always called "Girl Chris" or "ChrisLastname"

When DD was born, we tried to avoid names in the top 100. I love names like Abby and Emma, but I can easily name at least twelve girls that I know with those names. We chose to know our daughter Sage Elise. Both are real names, but neither is too common. Also, we had no pretty family names so we wanted her name to have a special meaning. We met at a church called Sage Avenue so we thought that worked out well.

 

[abcboys]

TNMOMOF4-- I have a Caleb and Andrew, too. Isn't that funny!!! I also have a Brett. I just go by names I like. I don't really care if its a popular name or not. The only thing I don't like are off the wall spelling for names when people try to be original.

 

[eternaldisneyfan]

My name is Christamae. All one word-it's my middle name. My first name is Oella (family name). I love my name! Oella is my maternal grandmothers name. Christamae is a combination of my mom's name (Christine) and paternal grandmother's name (Mae)

I prefer unique names and already have some picked

 

[Suzanna1973]

My daughter's middle name is my middle name, Suzanna. My son's middle name is my husband's middle name, Karl. My DD wants to carry on the tradition and give her DD(when she has one) the middle name of Suzanna.

 

[teresajoy]

Go with what you like. Don't worry if its popular or not. I personally wanted something different for DD. I heard the name Tess on a soap and ran it by DH and he liked it. We looked up the meaning and noticed Tessa. We said at the same time that was it. It is actually a good name because we wanted to have her named after one of our grandmothers. Tessa has the combo od Ester & Theresa so it worked out great it maid all the parents happy.
Her middle name was a little harder to decide on. It was only a few hours before she was born that DH mentioned Noelle. It was perfact.

So our little princess is Tessa Noelle but most of the time she gets Belle

My neices name is Tessa, in honor of me. I love the name!

I always loved the name Corey, so we named our first son that. I never gave a thought to it being very popular, I didn't care.

We named our daughters after my great-grandmothers, Arminda (have yet to meet another on of those!) and Lydia Rose (Rose after my husband's mother) which of course it a bit more popular.

One thing that bugged me after Lydia was born is that someone my husband worked with had a baby a few months after she was born. She named her Lydia Rose, and their last name is also very similar to ours! Coincidence? I don't think so!

 

[teresajoy]

When I was at a doctor's appointment shortly after Lydia was born, there was a baby there name Asterisk, like the punctuation mark, his sister was named Toyota.

 

[Trentmom]

Would you pick a popular name for your new child? Top 100? What about top 10? Why or why not?

With our first child, we unknowingly picked a name that (with a different spelling) was in the top 50. Still, my dd hasn't run into people with the same name very often. Only once or twice at church, there was one other girl with the same name and another time two other girls. It didn't seem to bother my dd though.

With our 2nd child, her name is all the way down in the 600s, so it is unique. Lots of people have never heard her name before.

With our 3rd child, the name at the top of our list has been in the top 100 for 8 years and currently is in the top 10. I'm trying to find something we like just as well or better, but so far, no luck.

So what would you do? Pick the popular name or keep looking?

I would just pick whatever made me and my spouse happy...whether it was a classic like Jennifer or Michael or something unique or popular like Aiden or Ava.....

I would never pick something so unique for my child, that they would get made fun of in school.

Also, I put it together with my last name, to make sure it had a nice sound together...

Hope this helps....

 

[MissyDVC]

We named our daughter Kaylin. QUOTE]

My niece's name is Kaylin! DSis wanted something a little different but still easy to pronounce.

 

[PrettyInTink]

My friend is pregnant with her second, a girl, who she itends to name Pacey Jean. I think its the cutest, most unique name. She has a son names Witt and at preschool he is in class with a little girl names Paige, and for some reason he calls her Pacey. So, his new sisters name will be Pacey. I like unique names, but I also think classic, timeless names are nice as well.

 

[tigger813]

Our first DD was named for the name I always loved growing up. We did the Irish spelling, Ashleigh. I had always said growing up that I would spell my children's names a way that was usual due to the unusual spelling of my name, though it's more popular now. I blew that promise. I have seen the name different places but never made on anything.
Our second daughter's name we picked out of a baby book. I made a list of names and then my husband read through and we mutually agreed on a name, Elizabeth. She's 2 1/2 and calls herself "Izzie". Some of our family thought we should've named her Ruth since she was born the day the Red Sox won their first World Series in 87 years
Both middle names are family names or derivations of middle names, Theresa and Margaret.
Choose what you like and never let anyone tell you that a name is wrong or bad.

 

[jcc0621]

We were very traditional when we named DS. He is names after DH (And his Dad) and my Dad.....James Michael

 

[ctmomof4]

It was so exciting choosing names for our little ones. With each child my husband and I came up with 4 boy and 4 girl names that we loved. Some were traditional and some different. In the hospital when the baby was born we then had our BABY NAMES and choose one. We had so much fun with this. In each of the children's baby books I kept the original list for them to see one day. We have Michael, Alexis, John Paul, and Julia Grace... We are so blessed................