The Name Game
Ok, one more baby related post this week, and then I promise NEXT week I will have some new house posts for you! Since we found out the baby’s gender on Tuesday, I wanted to take a minute to talk about the naming process.
We’re not going to be sharing the baby’s name with anyone until after he is born. That’s partially because we want to leave a little surprise for everyone on the big day, but also for an entirely different reason: baby boy won’t actually have a name until he is born. Yep, that’s right. We’re not picking it out ahead of time.
Instead, we’ve decided to narrow down our list of favorite names and come up with four full names—first and middle. When baby boy is born, we’ll see what name fits him best and select then! And no, we won’t be sharing our top choices, either. We want it to be a total surprise!
We’ve got one complete name figured out, and have narrowed down our other first name choices. So we already have our top four first names. Now we’re just selecting middle names to go with the last three, and then we’ll be set for baby’s birthday.
Early on in my pregnancy I picked up this book from Target:
It has been a really fun source of entertainment for us. They have all sorts of name lists, plus a comprehensive section for girl and boy names with their meanings and origins. We’ve also enjoyed perusing the Social Security website’s listing of baby names, as well as Nameberry and Nymbler, two popular baby name websites.
We tend to like classic names. As examples, here are a few of the names we DIDN’T pick:
William
Andrew
Alexander
Benjamin
Lucas/Luke
Zachary
Michael
I repeat, we did NOT pick any of these names. So don’t go thinking his name is in there somewhere!
We’d also looked at the girls’ names before we knew the gender, but had only picked a few out. Our favorite at the time was Clara, but we also considered Grace, Charlotte, and a few others.
So, there you have it. How baby boy will get his name, and why you won’t know it til November. What’s your take on the baby naming situation? Did you/will you pick out baby’s name ahead of time?
I love that plan and think you will end up so happy with the choice that way!
I like classic names too!
I love that idea. I’ve contemplated not knowing the gender of future babies but I think if we decide to know who he or she is then we’ll want to wait on the name part like this.
That is a fun plan! We only truly loved one boy name so that made our decision easy, I guess (harder for future kids though!)
We didn’t tell anyone our top names save a few close friends and family members. We also didn’t know if we were having a boy or girl, so couldn’t exactly name him in advance. We were still debating girl middle names on the way to the hospital, actually, so I was a tiny bit relieved it was a boy
My cousin actually chose a name before finding out the sex. They wanted something that would work for both boy or girl (London) and just had two middle names chosen to designate gender. Not my cup of tea, but interesting!
That is interesting. Like you, not my cup of tea, but a very neat way to do it nonetheless!
And I have a feeling we will be debating middle names all the way until the end, haha!
I think that’s exactly what we would do, wait until meeting the baby to 100% decide on a name. What if the name you pick out doesn’t match your baby once you meet him! I can’t wait to see what you picked! My sister and I don’t have very traditional names, so I’m a big fan of the classics.
That’s a really cool way to do it!
With my first, we knew before I even got pregnant that if it were a boy, he’d be named Noah. So picking Noah’s name was super easy. We kept it a secret until he was born.
With our second, we had a harder time picking a boy’s name but finally settled on Jude and love it just as much. We also kept his name a secret until he was born.
Third time around and we’ve having our third boy. I stumbled upon the name Blaise and LOVED it and then got my husband on board. His name is not a secret, but we’re not making a public announcement (via blog or facebook) until he’s born, but we’ve been telling friends and family his name and our other two boys have been referring to the baby as “Baby Blaise” which I love.
So that’s our story! Can’t wait to hear what your little guy will be called.
I LOVE THE NAME JUDE! So so so much. My husband used one of his “name strikes” to cross that off the list, but I seriously love that name & always will.
I actually had my heart set on the name we chose for A, but his father was bent against it! He had asked that we give the baby an Irish name – which is what I chose, but then he changed his mind. Three days after A was born he still didn’t have a signed birth certificate because we couldn’t agree and finally, on the third day, just before we left the hospital, he agreed (and sealed the deal with a kiss). I’m still VERY happy with the name, but FOTC always says there is still time to change it!
David James Blah Blah………would be nice. Just kidding
That’s a great idea to have a few options and pick! I always worry about people who get all the monogrammed stuff… what if the doctor was wrong and you have a baby of the other gender? (It DOES still happen, rarely!) I am also particularly doubtful so I am pretty sure I should just hire a surrogate now instead of giving myself anxiety for 9 months.
Haha, very true. B’s cousin was told she was having a boy and the baby was a girl!! But in our case, thankfully, there really was no doubt. It definitely wasn’t a finger or something down there to fake us out!
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I get so uneasy when people reveal the name of their kid before it’s born. People are sooo judge-y (myself included) and always say things like, “Oh, I went to school with a so-and-so. Hated her/him.” I think you’re totally right for having a few names picked out and then finding the one that suits him the best. I feel like you can’t name some one you’ve never met before, right??
My mom didn’t know what she was having, but *thought* I’d be a boy, so she was going to name me Sammy. Not Samuel, Sammy. And NOT Samantha, if I turned out to be a girl. So when I popped out she was like, “Oh! Well, I like the name Emily so…Emily it is!”
We also like classic names — or as some of our friends and family put it, “old people names.”
Ha! I tend to think that classic names will always be classic, whereas trendy names with unique spellings will definitely show their age over time. 
Dad was going to be named Jeff all during Grandma’s pregnancy. But when he was born, they (Grandma & Grandpa) said he did not look like a “Jeff”! So David James he is
We used classic family names. Our first child was a girl and I had called her Phoebe even before our u/s. Phoebe is the name of my husband’s grandma and great-grandma. We used James as her middle name (husband’s name) because I liked the edge of a boy name mixed in there and the initials PJ. It seemed like with both pregnancies we only had a few names. Once we learned Walter was a boy, he was Walter from that day on. And my husband James is the third James in his family, so we were off the hook on that since it was Phoebe’s middle name. Walter’s middle name was to be Robert (husband’s middle name, his grandfather and my grandfather’s name). But sitting in the hospital four days after a c/s on day 4 of a epidural induced migraine, I suddenly felt like I was getting ripped off. James had his name passed on and I had nothing with two kids in the mix, so I added Gabriel on the birth certificate (my confirmation name), so Walter is Walter Robert Gabriel.
We had our name picked out for a while but kept it a secret. While it pissed off some, I didn’t care!! It’s our baby and we did what we want. Can’t wait to find out what you chose!!