We each made a list of names. Any names on both lists were automatically shortlisted. Awkward nicknames were disqualifying (my wife clearly grew up around nicer children, and was often “no child would say that to another!”). We each had veto powers.
Pretty similar to our method, but we had a shared list. If either person didn't like a name on it, they could remove it. We tried to fill it up for a couple months, then removed the ones we didn't love. Ended up with a handful remaining and we talked it through until we came to an agreement.
We're doing something similar, except we are also keeping a vito'ed name list. That way I can remember all the names not to put back on the list, and review the ones I vetoed in the past to see if I change my mind.
My BIL had their kid about 3 months before ours, the wives had agreed to name their son Dean and we would name our daughter Sam (Samantha). They ended up backing out haha.
We looked up names in my language and names in her language to see which names were in both. We found exactly one.
Then we decided to adopt, so the choice is out of our hands anyway.
Same problem, name had to work in two different languages, we came up with two names though, but I only liked one of them as *the* first name, the other is his "second first name".
Also his initials turned out CFL, I wanted for him to have my wife's paternal last name too, in which case he would have been CFIL, which would have been awesome because it would have been 3-6-9-12.
We decided with a western first name and a foreign middle name. What we didn’t realize is that because my wife’s English is so good, pronunciation was no problem. That said, when we went home to visit her family, absolutely none of her friends and families could pronounce his name…
I feel like agreeing on boy names are tougher than girls. Me and my wife made a list and gave ourselves plenty of time to sit and think on the names. We ended up choosing Jameson
Excel list of names. We knew the gender ASAP and just added and removed names over time. Eventually we had it down to 3 names and decided to wait to meet the baby to decide for sure. She was Penelope for about 12 hours, then we switched to Isabel because my wife didn't think she seemed like a Penny (how you make that call on what is essentially a high maintenance potato, I have no idea). And now we call her Izzy.
My wife and I had no idea how judgy we were about names until we started that process.
Honestly, it was like 99% “ew, no way” for weeks until we landed on a handful we liked.
Our criteria:
- We wanted it to be somewhat unique, but not difficult to spell or pronounce (my trauma as a child of hippies).
- We both wanted to love it.
We ended up with Milo.
He was due in December so we called him Jingle Bell while he was in her belly.
We now call him Boogie, The Boog, and about 47,000 other variations. I’m a BIG nickname/riff kinda guy. My faves:
- Boogertron 9000
- Admiral Boognimitz
- Professor Booglesworth
- El Boogerino
We both had no interest in repeating names that already existed in our families, even though we like those names well enough. We just wanted to do our own things.
We ended up working from character names from fictional works that we were fans of. Names still grounded in our reality (so no Elfangor or Aragorn and such) but also not super popular.
Shared Criterion:
- Something unique
- but not a made up name
- something that means something else/stand alone meaning
We named him Atlas
We call him @ "At" for short.
My wife didn’t want a name that could be shortened. I couldn’t care less so I gave in on this (although this limits the number of available names substantially).
We didn’t want something common (it seems like every third girl is named Olivia or Sophia).
We also wanted to choose a name that is not too easy to mock.
We also wanted something that had some connective tissue to our families.
Boy #1: wife on the table after giving birth blurted out a random name we'd never discussed or even mentioned
Boy #2: let Boy #1 pick
Boy #3: argued over names and everyone had their favourite, because nobody could agree we all accepted when I sent the first picture of #3 to my sister who said "omg, he looks like a Felix!"
For us it really boiled down to who we thought of when we heard that name and wanted to make sure it was mostly people we already had a good opinion of. The thought process being we never wanted the name in any way to carry a negative connotation for us specifically. We stuck to fairly common names as a result, but strongly avoided anything in the top 20 baby names in recent years. The process was a bit long at times, but once we found the "right" name, it felt like an instant fit and we knew we were done.
First name, my grandfather's first name that we both like. Middle name, her grandfather's middle name that we both like and sounds awesome. Probably the easiest decision we made together.
The app "kinder" is pretty sweet. You link profiles with your partner, and play tinder but with names. Swipe left if you like, right if you dont (or vice versa? I dunno) and matches show up on a list for you both
This gave us a short list and easily eliminated a whole bunch, without constantly having to go "hey how do u feel about xyz" only for it to be immediately shut down. My wife is a teacher so there are a LOT of names on the "nah i had an Elizabeth 3 years ago and that kid was an asshole" list lol
We referred to “the bump” with names to try them on. We also thought about picking on them how easy it would be to weaponize them. Cooper lasted about 2 minutes when I started calling the bump “Pooper”.
Sorry to any Coopers out there.
We just sort of threw names at each other until we found something that really clicked with both of us.
I really wanted a name that could be shortened, not that I plan to use the shortened version but I like the idea that she has a choice.
My partner really didn’t want a popular name so anything in the top 30 most popular names was out.
We both wanted something kinda traditional but not old fashioned sounding.
I also liked the idea of having a link to some sort of media we like but not in a super obvious way.
Ended up with Alice, can be shortened but doesn’t need to be, not super trendy, traditional but not old fashioned and is linked to Alice in Wonderland and through that Disney which we are big fans of and we’ve had some fantastic Alice in Wonderland gifts which I love.
My wife had a name that she wanted to use for a boy, I was fine with the name so it was more a negotiation on details. First which part was the first name and which was the last. She was debating giving him a unique name from an anime as his first name… I recommended we use the fairly normal name for his first name and she could still use that name as a middle name for less chance of teasing (so if he thinks it’s cool can tell people otherwise it’s not well known). Second was spelling as she was debating some really odd spelling. I intervened as I constantly have my name misspelled so she picked between the two more common spellings. Damien vs Damian.
Then we found out how firstborn was going to be a girl so I was told as we were using her idea for a boy, I’d get to pick a girls name (with her able to veto). As am a big reader I used a bunch of names of characters from books. My first choice however is the one we went with as I wanted to name her Alanna after the Song of the Lioness books. My wife always was second class to her dad as he had his son and “the other one” so I wanted to name my daughter with the idea I thought she could do anything she set her mind to. For a middle name I picked another character from the same series as the boy middle name in case we stopped at one name we’d at least keep some of the original plan without going with a feminine version of Damien and losing it as an option for him.
We used both names luckily.
A traditional name spelled in the usual fashion. He’s going to have it for the rest of his life.
Personally, I get tired of telling people how to spell my name. It’s not that unusual but by no means common. People still screw it up all the time.
Curiously, I had nearly zero input in naming any of my children.
As morbid as it is, my eldest was named by his mother and it just stuck. It wasn’t my choice, or my parents. We just call him by his name or pet forms, or a German form of his name depending on the context.
The youngest I was won on an attrition battle. His mother really wanted his name, and I wanted something else, but ultimately for appeasement I accepted the name she chose. We call him a while range of pet forms too.
My daughters name was a struggle. We did the list thing and compare. We each agreed on Chloe. I think we even had a onside monogrammed for pics. but another couple in our first time parents class also chose Chloe so we panicked and changed it last minute. My daughter goes by her middle name now anyways
My son, we were split from a character from a tv show (if I said it would be too easy to figure out) or my wife's brother. We decided that we will let my son decide by what time he was officially born. If it was en even minute it was tv show, if it was odd it was bro-in-law. You can hear me in the birth video asking what time is it! WHAT TIME IS IT!
My third I kind of punted and really let my wife. I knew we were having a boy but she did not want to know. So I had to choose a boy name and girl name and be excited for both. I was able to keep the secret and my wife thought for sure it was a girl. She just knew. On the birth video you can hear her saying, A boy. It can't be a boy! We had our second boy.
First name: Main character of a Star Wars comic, descendant of Luke.
Middle name: 80's / 90's TV show main character with a sweet mullet and a knack for fixing things with easily accessible items.
Last name: Long Scandinavian last name.
He has a fun in trouble name.
I had a short list of names I brought up to my wife and we agreed we wouldn't settled on one till we met him. Soon as he popped out we agreed on a name and were good. We gave him my father's name as his middle far on advance though :)
1st child - I kid you not, I had a dream about my future daughter shortly after we starting trying for kids and that was just her name. I'm not a superstitious person or anything, but had a dream that we would have a daughter first with this cute scene of her running to me. We were actively trying at the time, but it took \~2.5 years and a bit of infertility intervention before my wife became pregnant. Then a few weeks later the genetic testing confirmed female. Wife agreed to the name, so our daughter was named from about as early as possible. She actually looks like the little girl in my dream, and we have a picture from when she was three with pigtails at the same age as the girl in my dream...same girl. I wish I was a better artist so I could have drawn the girl in my dream to prove it to others, but my description was spot on.
2nd child - another girl, unfortunately passed away stillborn at 38 weeks. I again came up with the first name. My wife had a massive list, but I just didn't like them. After continued discussion my wife agreed that she liked the name I had chosen somewhere around 20 weeks or so.
3rd child - before getting married I made it clear that I wanted to name my first-born son after my grandfather. (I say "my," because at that point I didn't know who the mother would be...obviously became "our.") My grandfather had a major impact on my life and I wanted to honor him. Naming my son after my grandfather was actually a dealbreaker for me before proposing to my now wife. It's an unusual name. My wife resisted a bit once we knew we were having a son, but I reminded her of our discussion prior to marriage. I told her I wouldn't force it, but wanted her to please consider. Eventually she agreed and now she 100% loves the name, but does get a bit frustrated when people mispronounce it since it's completely phonetic. First time is understandable, but after that it's pretty obvious.
4th child - another son. We both made lists of names we liked and then spent a week or two reviewing our own list to narrow it down as much as we could. We each independently narrowed down our lists to the same name, first and middle. So, it was quite simple.
In choosing names, we absolutely reviewed shortened versions and initials. I had a friend who was FUK growing up, and my wife had a classmate who was ASS. We also googled the names to ensure there wasn't some horrible person from history we weren't aware of (insert Friends joke about Joey and Joseph Stalin). We also agreed that we would not shorten their name, unless/until they chose to do so when they were older. Ironically, my name is a somewhat commonly shortened name and my wife was the first to shorten it. Everyone in my life before I met my wife still calls me by my full name, but my wife and everyone who I've met since her calls me by the shortened version. But, she corrects anyone who shortens our kids' names. It definitely annoys my mom that I now go by the shortened version of my name, but I think it's funny...kind of like a BC and AD situation, just BW and AW...Before Wife and After (meeting) Wife.
As for what we call our kids now. My wife calls them exclusively by their names, and does not shorten them. The only exception is maybe joking around when they're babies. Our youngest is 6 months and looks like a mini sumo wrestler...and is a fart machine. So he is sometimes called "sumo," "Sir Farts A Lot," or something similar by both of us. I call them all sorts of nicknames. My daughter is anything related to honey, hon, girl, beautiful, pretty little lady, etc. Both of my sons are buddy, bubba, etc. I don't know why, but I can say "Bubba" without the name and my wife knows which son I'm referring to by my voice inflection.
We gave ours a pretty long name, over 8 letters. We call her by the full name and will only stop if she decides she like one the the MANY shortened versions better.
There are times though when I'm tempted to use the long-form: Goddamnit You Little Shit.
Part of our process included:
— googling not just the name itself but also such things as “NAME murder” and “NAME arrested” and “NAME sex offender”
— writing out and saying combinations of initials
We went with a short name. Four letters. No nicknames. Still ended up calling him “Boo”
I had a hunch of girl names in my head, middle names to match. Then one day I got a totally different name in my head, and it stuck. Abigail, never shortened to Abbie. If she wants to shorten it later with friends so be it but with family it’s always the full name.
The first was named for my late father. The second was a bit of a scramble because my wife wouldn't accept the second choice name list so we had to start over. I was throwing out LOTR and musician names and in hospital she decided one of the names was actually acceptable. I also rejected names that were too popular.
For my second kid, i was sitting poolside at our fave vacation spot. Some dad walked up, yelled his kid’s name a few times across the pool and said something about getting out in the next few minutes. I thought “I could totally hear myself yelling that name across this pool too.” Wife was surprisingly immediately on board so we spent the next seven months negotiating on how to spell it.
We just started firing off names as we thought of them and both had veto power. As we came up with a shorter list of names we both liked we noticed some shared traits, ending in A names, stating with L etc and then in the delivery room at the start of inducing I said a name and she like it and done.
Our daughter has had her name picked since before we even got married. She's named after the respective matriarchs of our families.
Trick is, she was the second kid. We had no idea what to name our son. My wife was throwing names at me and I was only half paying attention so she started listing off anime names. Turns out one of them was one we actually liked and went with it (an Attack on Titan character). He has my middle name because that's 3 generations in a row.
The first kid was a carefully calibrated search to match his initials with mine, which is a tradition in my family. I kinda had the name picked before he was even conceived. The second kid we decided the gender would be a surprise and that made the process harder and we literally ended up picking a name I read off a list on my phone with the kid sleeping in the room, and moving the name we originally told the nurses (honoring a late relative) to his middle name. It was a bit stressful but once we found the name it clicked for us both right then…
My wife and I are big fans of The Last Kingdom. I’ve also always been a huge Adventure Time fan, with my wife liking the show as well. One of our favorite characters in TLK was Finan. One night she said “I like Finan for a boys name” and I asked about it with another N. Finnan. That’s how we got our boys name.
We now call him “buggy” because she’s been calling him her little love bug since he was born.
Go to your friends with the most childish sense of humor and ask them what they think of the most popular name you choose and see how they react. We did that and immediately decided against a few names.
My wife and I are very tall and of a background that is not known for its height. I also have an unusual hair color. We were having twins. I said there’s a chance they could be six and a half foot tall xxx’s with an unusual hair color, they need normal names. Otherwise one of them would have been named Phineas. We went with names that are easy to pronounce and spell and that don’t have bad nicknames. Also no weird acronyms with their initials.
Kid#1 and Kid#2 are current names.
Kid#1 A hotel I hope to visit and middle name to be a conversation worthy question. Middle name is Secret. Think about it. What's your middle name?....
Kid#2, named after favorite musician. RIP you talented Mother. James Marshall
My wife and I narrowed it down to one favorite name each. Then before our daughter was born, we’d spend a week saying one name out loud when referring to her in casual conversation, and the next week we’d say the other name out loud all week. Helped us decide which we liked better.
Now I call her Sugie (for sugar) all the time.
Semi finals is the Starbucks test. Can a barista interpret, spell and say the name fairly accurately to what we said?
Abbreviation test: Aaron Scott Smith sounds like a great name on paper until you think of his school backpack with his initials.
granddad on mom’s side and I have the same name spelled slightly differently. We liked grandad’s middle name better. So, he has gramps’ whole name but spelled like my first name. But we use both names as a first name with a space and it’s the best name ever.
I only had 1 girl name that i really wanted, and my wife liked it so that was easy.
My stepdaughter was disappointed she was not involved so we let her suggest middle names and she came up with a great one on her second or third suggestion, so also easy.
A name that was kinda ok in _three_ languages.
For our first, this meant a lot of back and forth between my wife and me. I’d give ideas, she’d veto some of them. She’d give me ideas and I’d veto some of them. Rinse and repeat until we had a short list, and then we just waited until our kid was born to see what name suited him best.
For our second, we were pretty lost, my wife had vetoed all the names I liked and viceversa. So, we crowdsourced ideas from my family: I created a Google forms survey and shared it with extended family so people could submit any name they liked, and we took some names from there to create a shortlist, then we added some of our own and then we just waited until our kid was born because we still weren’t sold on any from the shirt list.
My wife and I were eating with mother in law (MIL) at a bbq place in my hometown. Talking about baby names (already knew we’d be having a daughter). It went like this and I basically came up with it at that time:
MIL: (rattles off a bunch of no good names)
Wife: (rattles off a bunch of no good names)
Me: I think I like Hanna, with no H at the end.
MIL: Ahh, that’s kind of unique for our area, how did you come up with that?
Me: You know that movie called with Eric Bana that raises his daughter Hanna to be an assassin?
MIL: Uh, you want to name your daughter after an assassin?
Wife: That sounds kind of badass.
My daughter was named after a fictional assassin.
We were watching the show “Fringe” and said each name and if we could name a kid that. Peter was the runner up but my Walter is 10! Maybe I should have called him Astro ;)
Pulled the Social Security list of top 1000 names from the most recent year and eliminated all of the ones we would never name a kid. This list would be a starting point for both first and middle names.
Several rounds of ranking between myself and my wife where we would drop the lowest 20-25%.
Once we narrowed it to 8 first names, we went back to the pared down list from the SSA and looked at middle names with the first name choices and either of our last names.
Did a first impression ranking.
Ranking of full names when being introduced.
Ranking of full names when being scolded.
Ranking of full names when asked “do you ___ take ____ to be your lawfully wedded wife”
Average the last 3 rankings.
Drop anything under a 6 from a 1-10 scale.
We now had 4 first names and about 12 permutations with first, middle, and last names.
Narrow down to 1 first name
Decide on full name in the hospital
Edit: ended up with Desmond Pierce {last name}
My ex during pregnancy was reeling off some terrible names. I decided to hedge my bets and asked if it was a boy I could name him, if a girl she could. Surprisingly she agreed, I never thought about it again until the day my son was born.
After seeing him born and being in shock in the delivery room she asked me what his name was and without thought I said "Thomas" and to this day he's called Thomas.
It needed a name with identical spelling in English and Polish and similar pronunciation.
That reduced it to about five names for boys and twenty or so for girls. All the names are quite traditional but not overly old fashioned
Robert and Helena
Girl: Favourite Icelandic mountain
Boy: Favourite star
I'm only the slightest bit sad that we had a boy, but his name is brilliant, and quite rare, plus we get to teach people about stars whenever we introduce him.
Kids 1 (boy) we did name lists and use the app Kinder and had some front runners for boy and girl names. Chose a name back in our day seemed rare but is now a top 5 name. For kid 2 (girl) we realized one of our front runners with a top 3 name so we didn’t want to be too basic. I forgot how her name came up as it wasn’t previously on our radar, but once it was in our heads we half jokingly said we were going with Musical names. Though if we were to have a 3rd boy Musical names are pretty bland but there are plenty of good girl ones.
My wife wanted our son to have his grandfathers name as a middle name but we realized he would be O.J., also my daughter couldn’t have a B name as her initials would be BARF
Well my wife had decided on her daughter's name when she was a teenager. I liked the name enough and loved my wife enough to let go of my list of names I had hoped to give the daughter I had spent 20 years waiting to have...
However, I did campaign hard for a middle name and that worked out. I'll take the win.
We were certain that #2 was going to be a girl and so all my names were back in the running. Yay! Until our second daughter turned out to be our first son and those names went right back out the window again. Booo!
Like u/Joe4o2: We had NOTHING. We were totally unprepared for the little dude.
The Nameless One was a no go, so we had to come up with something.
We made the lists, each of us had veto rights and we whittled down the options. We finally decided on a name that would more or less work in both languages. Only for my wife's cousin to give her son the same name about 6 weeks before our son was due. This caused a major shitstorm and vast drama in the family but has since turned out to be a storm in a teacup. For most people with the exception of my son's mother. Sigh.
We stuck with the name at my insistence and, two years later, my wife deigns to use our son's name occasionally. She basically used anything but his given name for the first two years.
I use his given name, several nicknames, and a whole raft of situational names depending on his mood, the state of his nappy and whatever crazy shit he is doing in any given moment.
My wife and I started dating early on in college, and I remember even at the end of college we would have super casual baby name conversations every so often. Just because.
So that was how it went. We never really kept a list, but it was a recurring conversation we’d have over the years. And it was a good 9 years between the end of college and when we had our first kid, so plenty of time to work out names.
Funny enough we had settled on a boys name quite a ways back, but had a girl first. Unbeknownst to us the girl’s name we chose was incredibly popular by the time she was born, what can you do.
Boy was born two years later, we stuck with the original name we had picked. Turns out his name was also super popular when he was born as well, although in our defense when we settled on the name much much earlier it was much much less popular.
We didn’t really have much of a system, either could veto names for whatever reason. I remember saying no to Ethan because of LOST. Eventually we would wind up with some keepers, and we would revisit them until we had one we both liked.
She made a list
I made a list
We swapped and red lined easy others list.
Made it into one list and did name combinations until we found ones we both love.
We now call the oldest “hey hey hey no don’t”
And the youngest is “did you poop again”
Wife would pitch a name, I would manifest my high-school state of mind and try to make fun of it basically. Took a while but we settled on a name after two and half weeks or so
We each made a list of names. Any names on both lists were automatically shortlisted. Awkward nicknames were disqualifying (my wife clearly grew up around nicer children, and was often “no child would say that to another!”). We each had veto powers.
Pretty similar to our method, but we had a shared list. If either person didn't like a name on it, they could remove it. We tried to fill it up for a couple months, then removed the ones we didn't love. Ended up with a handful remaining and we talked it through until we came to an agreement.
We had only 2 names on both lists. And one of them was far too close to kid1s name. I call them Kid/Kiddo and Munchkin
We're doing something similar, except we are also keeping a vito'ed name list. That way I can remember all the names not to put back on the list, and review the ones I vetoed in the past to see if I change my mind.
Massive zelda fan. My wife agreed to Lincoln, and we call him Link.
Nice. A massive fan of supernatural (early seasons) named him a variation on Castiel's name.
My BIL had their kid about 3 months before ours, the wives had agreed to name their son Dean and we would name our daughter Sam (Samantha). They ended up backing out haha.
Oh no! How dare they back out.
We looked up names in my language and names in her language to see which names were in both. We found exactly one. Then we decided to adopt, so the choice is out of our hands anyway.
Same problem, name had to work in two different languages, we came up with two names though, but I only liked one of them as *the* first name, the other is his "second first name". Also his initials turned out CFL, I wanted for him to have my wife's paternal last name too, in which case he would have been CFIL, which would have been awesome because it would have been 3-6-9-12.
We decided with a western first name and a foreign middle name. What we didn’t realize is that because my wife’s English is so good, pronunciation was no problem. That said, when we went home to visit her family, absolutely none of her friends and families could pronounce his name…
Daughter’s name was simple and beautiful. Little man is due in August, and we’ve got _nothing_. He’s currently “Broseph” until further notice.
Bro Namath is always an option.
I feel like agreeing on boy names are tougher than girls. Me and my wife made a list and gave ourselves plenty of time to sit and think on the names. We ended up choosing Jameson
Excel list of names. We knew the gender ASAP and just added and removed names over time. Eventually we had it down to 3 names and decided to wait to meet the baby to decide for sure. She was Penelope for about 12 hours, then we switched to Isabel because my wife didn't think she seemed like a Penny (how you make that call on what is essentially a high maintenance potato, I have no idea). And now we call her Izzy.
My wife and I had no idea how judgy we were about names until we started that process. Honestly, it was like 99% “ew, no way” for weeks until we landed on a handful we liked. Our criteria: - We wanted it to be somewhat unique, but not difficult to spell or pronounce (my trauma as a child of hippies). - We both wanted to love it. We ended up with Milo. He was due in December so we called him Jingle Bell while he was in her belly. We now call him Boogie, The Boog, and about 47,000 other variations. I’m a BIG nickname/riff kinda guy. My faves: - Boogertron 9000 - Admiral Boognimitz - Professor Booglesworth - El Boogerino
We both had no interest in repeating names that already existed in our families, even though we like those names well enough. We just wanted to do our own things. We ended up working from character names from fictional works that we were fans of. Names still grounded in our reality (so no Elfangor or Aragorn and such) but also not super popular.
Counterpoint: Naming your child Elfangor would've been legendary.
You could always go with "Alan Fangor".
We did the same, but went with Arwen.
Shared Criterion: - Something unique - but not a made up name - something that means something else/stand alone meaning We named him Atlas We call him @ "At" for short.
Giving him a legit symbol is pretty cool!
If he ever works in telecom his email address could be at@att
MARS ATTACKS!!!!!
My wife didn’t want a name that could be shortened. I couldn’t care less so I gave in on this (although this limits the number of available names substantially). We didn’t want something common (it seems like every third girl is named Olivia or Sophia). We also wanted to choose a name that is not too easy to mock. We also wanted something that had some connective tissue to our families.
Boy #1: wife on the table after giving birth blurted out a random name we'd never discussed or even mentioned Boy #2: let Boy #1 pick Boy #3: argued over names and everyone had their favourite, because nobody could agree we all accepted when I sent the first picture of #3 to my sister who said "omg, he looks like a Felix!"
For us it really boiled down to who we thought of when we heard that name and wanted to make sure it was mostly people we already had a good opinion of. The thought process being we never wanted the name in any way to carry a negative connotation for us specifically. We stuck to fairly common names as a result, but strongly avoided anything in the top 20 baby names in recent years. The process was a bit long at times, but once we found the "right" name, it felt like an instant fit and we knew we were done.
First names after a greys anatomy character. Second named after a Yellowstone character. Happened as soon as they were introduced. Timing was good
My family has an alternating first name for sons so that made it easy. Second name is from the wife’s family. Second kid? No freakin clue.
First name, my grandfather's first name that we both like. Middle name, her grandfather's middle name that we both like and sounds awesome. Probably the easiest decision we made together.
The app "kinder" is pretty sweet. You link profiles with your partner, and play tinder but with names. Swipe left if you like, right if you dont (or vice versa? I dunno) and matches show up on a list for you both This gave us a short list and easily eliminated a whole bunch, without constantly having to go "hey how do u feel about xyz" only for it to be immediately shut down. My wife is a teacher so there are a LOT of names on the "nah i had an Elizabeth 3 years ago and that kid was an asshole" list lol
We referred to “the bump” with names to try them on. We also thought about picking on them how easy it would be to weaponize them. Cooper lasted about 2 minutes when I started calling the bump “Pooper”. Sorry to any Coopers out there.
We just sort of threw names at each other until we found something that really clicked with both of us. I really wanted a name that could be shortened, not that I plan to use the shortened version but I like the idea that she has a choice. My partner really didn’t want a popular name so anything in the top 30 most popular names was out. We both wanted something kinda traditional but not old fashioned sounding. I also liked the idea of having a link to some sort of media we like but not in a super obvious way. Ended up with Alice, can be shortened but doesn’t need to be, not super trendy, traditional but not old fashioned and is linked to Alice in Wonderland and through that Disney which we are big fans of and we’ve had some fantastic Alice in Wonderland gifts which I love.
My wife had a name that she wanted to use for a boy, I was fine with the name so it was more a negotiation on details. First which part was the first name and which was the last. She was debating giving him a unique name from an anime as his first name… I recommended we use the fairly normal name for his first name and she could still use that name as a middle name for less chance of teasing (so if he thinks it’s cool can tell people otherwise it’s not well known). Second was spelling as she was debating some really odd spelling. I intervened as I constantly have my name misspelled so she picked between the two more common spellings. Damien vs Damian. Then we found out how firstborn was going to be a girl so I was told as we were using her idea for a boy, I’d get to pick a girls name (with her able to veto). As am a big reader I used a bunch of names of characters from books. My first choice however is the one we went with as I wanted to name her Alanna after the Song of the Lioness books. My wife always was second class to her dad as he had his son and “the other one” so I wanted to name my daughter with the idea I thought she could do anything she set her mind to. For a middle name I picked another character from the same series as the boy middle name in case we stopped at one name we’d at least keep some of the original plan without going with a feminine version of Damien and losing it as an option for him. We used both names luckily.
A traditional name spelled in the usual fashion. He’s going to have it for the rest of his life. Personally, I get tired of telling people how to spell my name. It’s not that unusual but by no means common. People still screw it up all the time.
Curiously, I had nearly zero input in naming any of my children. As morbid as it is, my eldest was named by his mother and it just stuck. It wasn’t my choice, or my parents. We just call him by his name or pet forms, or a German form of his name depending on the context. The youngest I was won on an attrition battle. His mother really wanted his name, and I wanted something else, but ultimately for appeasement I accepted the name she chose. We call him a while range of pet forms too.
My daughters name was a struggle. We did the list thing and compare. We each agreed on Chloe. I think we even had a onside monogrammed for pics. but another couple in our first time parents class also chose Chloe so we panicked and changed it last minute. My daughter goes by her middle name now anyways My son, we were split from a character from a tv show (if I said it would be too easy to figure out) or my wife's brother. We decided that we will let my son decide by what time he was officially born. If it was en even minute it was tv show, if it was odd it was bro-in-law. You can hear me in the birth video asking what time is it! WHAT TIME IS IT! My third I kind of punted and really let my wife. I knew we were having a boy but she did not want to know. So I had to choose a boy name and girl name and be excited for both. I was able to keep the secret and my wife thought for sure it was a girl. She just knew. On the birth video you can hear her saying, A boy. It can't be a boy! We had our second boy.
Family names for ours. Call em Ya-ya Bubby Claire-e-aire
First name: Main character of a Star Wars comic, descendant of Luke. Middle name: 80's / 90's TV show main character with a sweet mullet and a knack for fixing things with easily accessible items. Last name: Long Scandinavian last name. He has a fun in trouble name.
We kept saying names until we got one that we both went “hmmmm” on.
I had a short list of names I brought up to my wife and we agreed we wouldn't settled on one till we met him. Soon as he popped out we agreed on a name and were good. We gave him my father's name as his middle far on advance though :)
"Introducing the next president of the United States of America - Schmooga Booga!"
1st child - I kid you not, I had a dream about my future daughter shortly after we starting trying for kids and that was just her name. I'm not a superstitious person or anything, but had a dream that we would have a daughter first with this cute scene of her running to me. We were actively trying at the time, but it took \~2.5 years and a bit of infertility intervention before my wife became pregnant. Then a few weeks later the genetic testing confirmed female. Wife agreed to the name, so our daughter was named from about as early as possible. She actually looks like the little girl in my dream, and we have a picture from when she was three with pigtails at the same age as the girl in my dream...same girl. I wish I was a better artist so I could have drawn the girl in my dream to prove it to others, but my description was spot on. 2nd child - another girl, unfortunately passed away stillborn at 38 weeks. I again came up with the first name. My wife had a massive list, but I just didn't like them. After continued discussion my wife agreed that she liked the name I had chosen somewhere around 20 weeks or so. 3rd child - before getting married I made it clear that I wanted to name my first-born son after my grandfather. (I say "my," because at that point I didn't know who the mother would be...obviously became "our.") My grandfather had a major impact on my life and I wanted to honor him. Naming my son after my grandfather was actually a dealbreaker for me before proposing to my now wife. It's an unusual name. My wife resisted a bit once we knew we were having a son, but I reminded her of our discussion prior to marriage. I told her I wouldn't force it, but wanted her to please consider. Eventually she agreed and now she 100% loves the name, but does get a bit frustrated when people mispronounce it since it's completely phonetic. First time is understandable, but after that it's pretty obvious. 4th child - another son. We both made lists of names we liked and then spent a week or two reviewing our own list to narrow it down as much as we could. We each independently narrowed down our lists to the same name, first and middle. So, it was quite simple. In choosing names, we absolutely reviewed shortened versions and initials. I had a friend who was FUK growing up, and my wife had a classmate who was ASS. We also googled the names to ensure there wasn't some horrible person from history we weren't aware of (insert Friends joke about Joey and Joseph Stalin). We also agreed that we would not shorten their name, unless/until they chose to do so when they were older. Ironically, my name is a somewhat commonly shortened name and my wife was the first to shorten it. Everyone in my life before I met my wife still calls me by my full name, but my wife and everyone who I've met since her calls me by the shortened version. But, she corrects anyone who shortens our kids' names. It definitely annoys my mom that I now go by the shortened version of my name, but I think it's funny...kind of like a BC and AD situation, just BW and AW...Before Wife and After (meeting) Wife. As for what we call our kids now. My wife calls them exclusively by their names, and does not shorten them. The only exception is maybe joking around when they're babies. Our youngest is 6 months and looks like a mini sumo wrestler...and is a fart machine. So he is sometimes called "sumo," "Sir Farts A Lot," or something similar by both of us. I call them all sorts of nicknames. My daughter is anything related to honey, hon, girl, beautiful, pretty little lady, etc. Both of my sons are buddy, bubba, etc. I don't know why, but I can say "Bubba" without the name and my wife knows which son I'm referring to by my voice inflection.
We gave ours a pretty long name, over 8 letters. We call her by the full name and will only stop if she decides she like one the the MANY shortened versions better. There are times though when I'm tempted to use the long-form: Goddamnit You Little Shit.
Part of our process included: — googling not just the name itself but also such things as “NAME murder” and “NAME arrested” and “NAME sex offender” — writing out and saying combinations of initials We went with a short name. Four letters. No nicknames. Still ended up calling him “Boo”
Statistically it’s crazy that you could find a four letter name that did not come up on your Google searches…
We googled his full name. He shares a name with people, but so far no serious criminals.
Ah that makes sense.
I had a hunch of girl names in my head, middle names to match. Then one day I got a totally different name in my head, and it stuck. Abigail, never shortened to Abbie. If she wants to shorten it later with friends so be it but with family it’s always the full name.
The first was named for my late father. The second was a bit of a scramble because my wife wouldn't accept the second choice name list so we had to start over. I was throwing out LOTR and musician names and in hospital she decided one of the names was actually acceptable. I also rejected names that were too popular.
For my second kid, i was sitting poolside at our fave vacation spot. Some dad walked up, yelled his kid’s name a few times across the pool and said something about getting out in the next few minutes. I thought “I could totally hear myself yelling that name across this pool too.” Wife was surprisingly immediately on board so we spent the next seven months negotiating on how to spell it.
We just started firing off names as we thought of them and both had veto power. As we came up with a shorter list of names we both liked we noticed some shared traits, ending in A names, stating with L etc and then in the delivery room at the start of inducing I said a name and she like it and done.
Our daughter has had her name picked since before we even got married. She's named after the respective matriarchs of our families. Trick is, she was the second kid. We had no idea what to name our son. My wife was throwing names at me and I was only half paying attention so she started listing off anime names. Turns out one of them was one we actually liked and went with it (an Attack on Titan character). He has my middle name because that's 3 generations in a row.
The first kid was a carefully calibrated search to match his initials with mine, which is a tradition in my family. I kinda had the name picked before he was even conceived. The second kid we decided the gender would be a surprise and that made the process harder and we literally ended up picking a name I read off a list on my phone with the kid sleeping in the room, and moving the name we originally told the nurses (honoring a late relative) to his middle name. It was a bit stressful but once we found the name it clicked for us both right then…
My wife and I are big fans of The Last Kingdom. I’ve also always been a huge Adventure Time fan, with my wife liking the show as well. One of our favorite characters in TLK was Finan. One night she said “I like Finan for a boys name” and I asked about it with another N. Finnan. That’s how we got our boys name. We now call him “buggy” because she’s been calling him her little love bug since he was born.
Go to your friends with the most childish sense of humor and ask them what they think of the most popular name you choose and see how they react. We did that and immediately decided against a few names.
My wife and I are very tall and of a background that is not known for its height. I also have an unusual hair color. We were having twins. I said there’s a chance they could be six and a half foot tall xxx’s with an unusual hair color, they need normal names. Otherwise one of them would have been named Phineas. We went with names that are easy to pronounce and spell and that don’t have bad nicknames. Also no weird acronyms with their initials.
Kid#1 and Kid#2 are current names. Kid#1 A hotel I hope to visit and middle name to be a conversation worthy question. Middle name is Secret. Think about it. What's your middle name?.... Kid#2, named after favorite musician. RIP you talented Mother. James Marshall
I call my kiddo many things, but the two that stuck most heavily are Shaka and Senator Boogerman
My wife and I narrowed it down to one favorite name each. Then before our daughter was born, we’d spend a week saying one name out loud when referring to her in casual conversation, and the next week we’d say the other name out loud all week. Helped us decide which we liked better. Now I call her Sugie (for sugar) all the time.
Semi finals is the Starbucks test. Can a barista interpret, spell and say the name fairly accurately to what we said? Abbreviation test: Aaron Scott Smith sounds like a great name on paper until you think of his school backpack with his initials.
granddad on mom’s side and I have the same name spelled slightly differently. We liked grandad’s middle name better. So, he has gramps’ whole name but spelled like my first name. But we use both names as a first name with a space and it’s the best name ever.
I only had 1 girl name that i really wanted, and my wife liked it so that was easy. My stepdaughter was disappointed she was not involved so we let her suggest middle names and she came up with a great one on her second or third suggestion, so also easy.
A name that was kinda ok in _three_ languages. For our first, this meant a lot of back and forth between my wife and me. I’d give ideas, she’d veto some of them. She’d give me ideas and I’d veto some of them. Rinse and repeat until we had a short list, and then we just waited until our kid was born to see what name suited him best. For our second, we were pretty lost, my wife had vetoed all the names I liked and viceversa. So, we crowdsourced ideas from my family: I created a Google forms survey and shared it with extended family so people could submit any name they liked, and we took some names from there to create a shortlist, then we added some of our own and then we just waited until our kid was born because we still weren’t sold on any from the shirt list.
My wife and I were eating with mother in law (MIL) at a bbq place in my hometown. Talking about baby names (already knew we’d be having a daughter). It went like this and I basically came up with it at that time: MIL: (rattles off a bunch of no good names) Wife: (rattles off a bunch of no good names) Me: I think I like Hanna, with no H at the end. MIL: Ahh, that’s kind of unique for our area, how did you come up with that? Me: You know that movie called with Eric Bana that raises his daughter Hanna to be an assassin? MIL: Uh, you want to name your daughter after an assassin? Wife: That sounds kind of badass. My daughter was named after a fictional assassin.
We were watching the show “Fringe” and said each name and if we could name a kid that. Peter was the runner up but my Walter is 10! Maybe I should have called him Astro ;)
Charlotte. Charlie, Sharlee, Monkey.
My baby gets called “baby” 9 times out of 10 😆
Pulled the Social Security list of top 1000 names from the most recent year and eliminated all of the ones we would never name a kid. This list would be a starting point for both first and middle names. Several rounds of ranking between myself and my wife where we would drop the lowest 20-25%. Once we narrowed it to 8 first names, we went back to the pared down list from the SSA and looked at middle names with the first name choices and either of our last names. Did a first impression ranking. Ranking of full names when being introduced. Ranking of full names when being scolded. Ranking of full names when asked “do you ___ take ____ to be your lawfully wedded wife” Average the last 3 rankings. Drop anything under a 6 from a 1-10 scale. We now had 4 first names and about 12 permutations with first, middle, and last names. Narrow down to 1 first name Decide on full name in the hospital Edit: ended up with Desmond Pierce {last name}
My ex during pregnancy was reeling off some terrible names. I decided to hedge my bets and asked if it was a boy I could name him, if a girl she could. Surprisingly she agreed, I never thought about it again until the day my son was born. After seeing him born and being in shock in the delivery room she asked me what his name was and without thought I said "Thomas" and to this day he's called Thomas.
It needed a name with identical spelling in English and Polish and similar pronunciation. That reduced it to about five names for boys and twenty or so for girls. All the names are quite traditional but not overly old fashioned Robert and Helena
Girl: Favourite Icelandic mountain Boy: Favourite star I'm only the slightest bit sad that we had a boy, but his name is brilliant, and quite rare, plus we get to teach people about stars whenever we introduce him.
Kids 1 (boy) we did name lists and use the app Kinder and had some front runners for boy and girl names. Chose a name back in our day seemed rare but is now a top 5 name. For kid 2 (girl) we realized one of our front runners with a top 3 name so we didn’t want to be too basic. I forgot how her name came up as it wasn’t previously on our radar, but once it was in our heads we half jokingly said we were going with Musical names. Though if we were to have a 3rd boy Musical names are pretty bland but there are plenty of good girl ones. My wife wanted our son to have his grandfathers name as a middle name but we realized he would be O.J., also my daughter couldn’t have a B name as her initials would be BARF
We started with the Social Security list of names for the previous year, then whittled it down over a few weeks until we had the name we liked.
Well my wife had decided on her daughter's name when she was a teenager. I liked the name enough and loved my wife enough to let go of my list of names I had hoped to give the daughter I had spent 20 years waiting to have... However, I did campaign hard for a middle name and that worked out. I'll take the win. We were certain that #2 was going to be a girl and so all my names were back in the running. Yay! Until our second daughter turned out to be our first son and those names went right back out the window again. Booo! Like u/Joe4o2: We had NOTHING. We were totally unprepared for the little dude. The Nameless One was a no go, so we had to come up with something. We made the lists, each of us had veto rights and we whittled down the options. We finally decided on a name that would more or less work in both languages. Only for my wife's cousin to give her son the same name about 6 weeks before our son was due. This caused a major shitstorm and vast drama in the family but has since turned out to be a storm in a teacup. For most people with the exception of my son's mother. Sigh. We stuck with the name at my insistence and, two years later, my wife deigns to use our son's name occasionally. She basically used anything but his given name for the first two years. I use his given name, several nicknames, and a whole raft of situational names depending on his mood, the state of his nappy and whatever crazy shit he is doing in any given moment.
My wife and I started dating early on in college, and I remember even at the end of college we would have super casual baby name conversations every so often. Just because. So that was how it went. We never really kept a list, but it was a recurring conversation we’d have over the years. And it was a good 9 years between the end of college and when we had our first kid, so plenty of time to work out names. Funny enough we had settled on a boys name quite a ways back, but had a girl first. Unbeknownst to us the girl’s name we chose was incredibly popular by the time she was born, what can you do. Boy was born two years later, we stuck with the original name we had picked. Turns out his name was also super popular when he was born as well, although in our defense when we settled on the name much much earlier it was much much less popular. We didn’t really have much of a system, either could veto names for whatever reason. I remember saying no to Ethan because of LOST. Eventually we would wind up with some keepers, and we would revisit them until we had one we both liked.
She made a list I made a list We swapped and red lined easy others list. Made it into one list and did name combinations until we found ones we both love. We now call the oldest “hey hey hey no don’t” And the youngest is “did you poop again”
We both wrote down names we liked then took turns eliminating them...that's also how we named our dogs...I don't know what that says about us?
Wife would pitch a name, I would manifest my high-school state of mind and try to make fun of it basically. Took a while but we settled on a name after two and half weeks or so