1. Steve Weaver

December 7, 2008 @ 4:05 pm

It seems such a vicious cycle. Those with bad names do the same to their offspring. I’ve seen WAY to much of that.

BTW, my first wife was Chastity. What a misnomer!!!

2. mehitabel

December 7, 2008 @ 4:06 pm

We wanted names that were strong and not too unusual. We have a weird last name, so it needed to be something that “scanned” well too. We picked Andrew and Jeffrey for the boys; Jennifer, Deborah, Caitlin, Meighan and Courtney for the girls. Of course immediately after we picked Jennifer, Love Story came out and suddenly there were hundreds of thousands of Jennifers! Something similar with the younger girls’ names, too: my Caitlin says she’s the oldest Caitlin she knows of! And, they’ve all done well by the grandkids.
I say, it needs to be a name that resonates well with “President” or “Doctor” or “Judge”….

3. Devyl

December 7, 2008 @ 4:15 pm

My exhusband and I went through several debates about names. He wanted “Sakura” which means Cherry Tree in Japanese. While he LIVED in Japan, he is half Filipino and I am half Mexican … and each of our other halves are white. No Japanese in either history.

I liked the name Celeste Rose … he said it was too old fashioned. I liked Anateka … he said it was too “out there.”

Finally, my stepmother called and said, your dad came up with a name. It is something that reminds him of home, something that makes him think about being happy and relaxed and calm. When she told me, I knew it was perfect. Not only was the name pretty, it could be changed to have an “ena” at the end, instead of “ina”. This means that not only does it have a more hispanic feel to it, but it fits in with the traditions the females in my exhusband’s family have (common “ina” names with “ena” spellings).

I will not publicize her name, but will tell you via email, IM, or some other private message if you promise not to share!

~Devyl

4. Rita

December 7, 2008 @ 4:28 pm

We have a ten letter ethnic last name, so the first names we chose for our kids needed to be ones that could be shortened.

Alexander was the only boy’s name that was on both of our lists, so we chose that for our first if he was a boy. We’d call the child Katie if it was a girl (although the spelling was debated–Katherine or Kathryn).

Our first was a boy, so we had our Alex, our second was a girl and we named her Katie (I’ll leave the long version a secret).

At this point, we realized that both of our kids’ names were historical “Greats” as in Alexander the Great and Catherine the Great, so when we found out I was pregnant again, we decided upon Elizabeth for a girl and Nicholas for a boy.

It was a girl.

5. Hillary

December 7, 2008 @ 4:46 pm

Charlotte was on my short list, but the ex-husband overruled me. I didn’t want too trendy names, wanted them to be short, didn’t want the initials to spell anything obscene.

6. Tiny Tyrant

December 7, 2008 @ 8:21 pm

Clare Julia if we have a girl (current hubby is fighting me on this)

Austin Robert if a boy after his father and grandfather and my brother.

7. Meg

December 7, 2008 @ 10:12 pm

We went with a family name - Audrey, with Katharine for the middle name as a nod to my husband’s film geekiness. If she’d been a boy she’d have been Paul James. Paul is my Fil’s middle name and James is my husband’s.

8. momof3_ipmod

December 7, 2008 @ 10:38 pm

We have a lot of different heritage on both sides of our family so we decided to choose names from our heritage and that mean something to us.

So with our first we choose a name that is Latin (my husband’s side) and her middle name is French (also my husband’s side). And both names have meanings that are pretty or mean something to us.

Our second child we choose an Irish name (from both sides) and his middle name is Latin (again, my husband’s side). And, again, the names mean something. I’m very big on meanings, not just ‘oh this sounds pretty’.

Our youngest child’s name is a normal name. It was the name of the ship that my ancestors came from England on. And her middle name is a Christian name.

Oh and all of our kids’ names start with “A”s and have “Y”s in them! So if we have anymore kids we’re in trouble! Nah…I still have a couple in my mind! I really like unusal names. I really wanted our youngest to be named Aaliyah, Alyssa or a Native American name (my side) but hubs didn’t go for them. And we both really wanted to name our son Joaquin but we got made fun of so changed it. Joaquin is a family name (my husband’s uncle who died in a warehouse fire) and it was also the name of Mary’s (Jesus’ mother) father. So it too would have had meaning behind it.

My thing was I didn’t want to go to a store and call out my kids and have five kids turn around and go, “What?”! I wanted something pretty but a little different. Who would have thought that our son’s name would become so popular!? Oh well…there’s always next time! lol

9. Dave

December 7, 2008 @ 11:15 pm

Here is a great website for picking a name by the child’s attributes:

And to map where a baby name is popular (by state, region, time, and even by Democrat or Republican):

Of course, I do secretly call my son, “Superfly”.

10. Dave

December 7, 2008 @ 11:27 pm

Oops, messed up the links:

http://www.whatalovelyname.com/

And another one, the very cool baby name voyager that lets you look how popularity varied over time:

http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager

11. lora

December 8, 2008 @ 11:00 am

we wanted a name that no one else in the family had- there are a million John’s and David’s in my husband’s family and my family is full of old fashioned Welsh and Scottish names that wouldn’t work to well these days. We both liked J names for boys, so we settled on Jacob. I picked Alexander for his middle name. A few weeks after he was born we realized his monogram is JAM. Oh well.

12. Tiffney

December 8, 2008 @ 11:16 am

We entertained names :
1) stood the test of time (which is how we ended up with a Lillian and a Josephine)
2) the combined initials could not be mistaken or confused for something else (ie: M.A.T or F.A.T or C.A.T… etc.)
3) would be appropriate at any age (Lilly as a child, Lillian as an adult, Lil as an older woman.)
4) were not also inanimate objects. (We are too close in my opinion with Lillian, as Lilly is a flower as well… but at least it’s a flower we both like)
5) held an air (in our opinion) or class, grace, and elegance.
6) had family significance. This was important, but would not have been a deal breaker.
7) something that was not common and overused (of course Lillian is now more popular than we would like, but it’s still not “Elizabeth” popular.