Discussing what name we want to give our baby boy has definitely been one of the most fun things about being pregnant! It’s not something Ryan and I chat about daily, but it comes up a lot, especially since we didn’t go into this pregnancy as one of those couples who already has names picked out ahead of time. Sure, it’s something we’ve talked about in the past, but it was never a super serious discussion until now.
We’ve been given one piece of advice from numerous couples time and time again: Once you settle on a name, do not share it with everyone you meet. This will open you up to feedback and opinions and can potentially strip some of the joy away from finding your perfect name.
I love this advice and though my secret-keeping abilities rank at a two on a scale of one to 10, Ryan and I are going to try to keep our little one’s name under wraps until after he’s born. Realistically, we’ll probably share his name with some people very close to us, but I can also see us not totally committing to a name until after we meet our baby. I feel like I may have to meet him before I could really know what name truly suits him.
In the meantime, we’ve been having a blast brainstorming names and discussing tons of possibilities! When it comes to selecting a name, we do have a few random factors we’re taking into consideration when it comes to naming our baby (<— just our personal preference) which you will find detailed below.
And if you have any fun baby naming stories, I’d love to hear about them in the comments section of this post! I’m not sure why, but I find this kind of thing super fun to talk about… I’ve heard some hilarious and heartwarming stories surrounding baby name selection that always make me smile! (Oh and if you haven’t seen the hilarious comment thread surrounding a Humans of New York story about a girl named Beyoncé, click here for a good name-related laugh!)
Our Personal Baby Name Guidelines
- Avoiding Rhyme Time
As it turns out, Fagan is last name that rhymes with a lot of names and can sound almost “sing-song-y” when paired with certain names at times. I’ve always loved the name Reagan for a girl and after Ryan and I got engaged, I realized I’d never have a little Reagan… though Ryan said if we ever have a girl we should totally name her Reagan Megan Fagan. YES! Haha!
I’m also funny about names that end in “an” with Fagan which is kind of crazy because I’ve never thought of Ryan’s name clashing with Fagan and it falls into that category. Maybe it doesn’t bother me since it doesn’t rhyme at all?
- Paying Attention to Initials
I knew a girl in high school with the initials A.S.S. and always felt horrible for her! Fortunately there aren’t many three letter words that end in F that we have to work around, so I feel pretty safe on this front!
- Family Names
Neither Ryan nor I have any names in our family that have a long-standing tradition of being passed down from generation to generation. I do love the idea of giving our little guy a middle name that has some sort of family significance, but we’re still chatting about this one and go back and forth on middle names all the time. And no, Baby O’Fagan isn’t a real contender. Haha!
- Nothing Too Trendy
You know the cutesy names you see popping up all over your Facebook feed? We’re trying to avoid anything like that. Both of us like classic names, but we also love names that aren’t too traditional – striking a balance between something that feels current but not too trendy or old fashioned can be tough!
- Nothing Too Popular
We’ve ruled out any names we’ve seen on current “most popular baby names” lists even though there are quite a few boy names we both love that have become very popular over the past few years. (Liam and James are two names I personally adore!) Actually, one of the names up for consideration for our baby’s middle name is on this list, so…
- Easy to Say and Spell
Ryan and I both have very easy names. They’re easy to say and easy to spell (well, unless you’re a certain Starbucks barista – I’ve been “Jewlie” and “July” before) and we both appreciate the fact that we’ve never really had names that we’ve had to repeat over and over again for someone to understand them after we introduce ourselves. We’d like something similar for our little one!
Question of the Morning
- Do you have any fun baby name stories to share? I’d love to hear them!
- For the parents: Did you share your baby’s name with people ahead of time?
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I am with you on the initials. Of course my maiden name is Weekley. First name June. Kids had a ball with that in school. My initials were JAW. Then I married someone with a last name that started with an S. Hence JAWS. Horrible! But, I guess funny.
Oh my goodness naming kids is so HARD – I just felt so much pressure to “get it right.” Maybe I felt it more because I’ve always hated my name? Anyway, I definitely had all the same criteria you did! Our son is named after my husband so that was pretty easy (and no one talked bad about the name or gave strong negative opinions – at least not to our faces), but we kept our daughter’s name a secret for a long time. The worst was BEFORE we picked a name for our daughter because everyone felt complete and total freedom to “help” us pick a name and I got daily lists (especially from my mother 🙂 ) with suggestions. Once we picked a name, I had enough of the helpful suggestions (pregnancy hormones?) and just started telling people so they wouldn’t suggest names anymore. I still kept it to a pretty small group though – only people that I knew wouldn’t tell me they once knew a girl with the same name and she was a horrible person. Haha.
Hi! I have to admit that me and my hubby decided on what our kids name would be way before I got pregnant..lol.. For our first daughter we named her Jamely is a mixture of my name and my hubby’s. My hubby’s name is Javier and my middle name Emely. So I Love it. For my twins, we named our son after my hubby and my daddy and my daughter after me and my mommy. So I love it. You should definitely do what you feel is right in regards of not telling anyone until birth. I think that’s clever! God Bless!
My husband and I decided to keep the names of our boys quiet and something only we knew. Because it took awhile for us to agree on the name we did not want to get swayed by others, if they didn’t like it.
Our boys are named… Preston, Keegan, Braxton (yes, as in Hicks- ha), and Ryker.
First off, congratulations!!! Long time reader, first time commenter! When my mom was pregnant with me, my parents were walking around the college in my hometown-also both their alma mater- and they were still trying to figure out names for me. They stumbled on some graffiti and it was signed Lindsay, my dad decided he loved that name! So I am named after someones graffiti art:) haha!
We’re in the process of choosing now. If a boy, we decided Louis William (his grandfather and my grandfather).
We’ve narrowed it down a bit for girls: Alexandra (Alex), Cora or Mika. SO HARD!
We just had our son this past September and picking a name was the most stressful thing for me. It seemed so permanent and if had to be perfect. Of course we had girls names picked out but boy names seemed like an impossible task. It took us a long time to settle on one and then we kept it a secret from everyone until he was out in the world. It drove our families crazy but we are so glad we did. We then used the middle name to bring in the family ties. Good luck!!!
My parents came up with my name (a combination of my mom’s + grandma’s names) a whopping 13 years before I was born! They were out with friends at dinner and loved the name so much they knew they wanted to save it until I was born. When my mom was pregnant, everyone was convinced I would be a boy, by my parents were incredibly sure that I was going to be a girl and that they would get to use the name! So far, I have never met another Virdiana. I think the day I do I will be legitimately freaked out! 🙂
We always wanted to name a girl Emma, but then another family member used that name. Turned out to be a good thing, because we didn’t want a super popular name either. We had our daughter in October and her name is Ellie, which is super cute and you’ve heard of it, but not terribly popular either. 🙂
LOVE the name Ellie!!
I was named after my grandmother that died before I was born. I didn’t like my name very much when I was growing up – the only other people I met with my name were old women! It was also hard to find anything with my name on it, which I guess seemed important to me as a kid haha. I really love my name now though – I like that it’s not that popular and it connects me to my family roots. My grandmother only lived to the age of 30 and I like knowing that she had the same first and last name that I now get to carry on.
Our boys are named after Orthodox Christian saints: Seraphim and Simeon. Seraphim is now almost 19 and none of his friends share his name but all have told him what a beautiful name it is and the honor of being named after such a great saint in the Orthodox Church. The same goes for Simeon, who is nearly 17. It’s fun having names for our boys that we don’t hear very often and I am glad they have those saints’ stories to share with others when they ask about their names.
One of my friends, named Lisa, was ALMOST named “Blaze” when she was born. She’s very glad she’s a Lisa. And I’m a Kimberly, and my mom loved that name forever. But then she had a boy. And then she had another boy. And by the time I was born, she wasn’t sure if she should name me Kimberly. But my dad said,”you’ve loved that name for so, so, long, you need to do it.” So I’m a Kimberly. 🙂
When one of my colleagues was born, her parents agreed they were going to call her Sarah. On they way to register the birth, her father decided to make the spelling more interesting and registered her as Sara. She is still called Sara but it is pronounced Sarah. Poor girl, it confuses everyone!
my name is Sara!!! it is actually pretty common now 🙂
We had decided on a few names, my partner really loved the American names:) I had my mind on Jack, Evan or Adam. When I gave birth and the nurse handed our baby to his dad, Ross turned to me and said how about Reece:) that was it, just perfect. I guess we just needed to see his little face 🙂 xx
I had a friend in junior high and her initals were PMS. We told people my son’s name early on, but with our daughter we waited a while to tell my mom. Our daughters name is Winn, and it took a while for my mom to warm up to it.
An acquaintance of mine named her daughter Winnie but sometimes shortens to Winn. I think it’s adorable!
Ahh I can’t wait to hear what you guys decide!
I’ve actually been pretty open about my baby naming options (I’m 25 weeks ) only because so many of my friends are pregnant too I’m worried they’ll take my name!!!
I hear you on trying to avoid super trendy names but also give the little guy a good strong name! I just love nick names so that’s what I’m basing my naming on..my husband thinks I”m crazy but I can’t help it!
Usually when I tell people the name, I just say ‘ I don’t want to see a reaction AT ALL’ you can comment once I’ve left the room! lol
Good luck!
How is the pronunciation different? I’ve known lots of Sara’s and Sarah’s, and they all are pronounced the same?
I was wondering the same thing! Both ways of spelling it sound exactly the same…
Agreed! I’m a Sarah and I every other Sara and Sarah I have known (at least in the United States) has pronounced it the same: sair-ah. Overseas I sometimes get it pronounced sahr-uh, so maybe that’s it?
Our daughter’s middle name is Cassidy, after the Grateful Dead song about a daughter. My husband always wanted a daughter with that name. I really wanted the name Delilah, but my I have one niece named Lyla, and another named Aliya, so I thought it would just be too similar. I ended up loving Harlow, though, so we went with that!
As for a boys name (we didn’t know the sex until birth) we literally sat for a couple of nights and looked through THREE baby books, reading each and every one of the names one by one. We still only had a couple of “maybe” names but nothing we remotely loved when I delivered, so we’re pretty lucky she was a girl!
For us it was the opposite. Couldn’t decide on a girl name but our past two boys we had the names picked out from the start. Lincoln Callahan (family maiden name) and Harrison Daniel. We always make the middle names have a family association.
Definitely keep it a secret. We’ve had horrible stories with all three of our kids names after we told. For some reason we never learned our lesson. I guess I was just so excited to share and also worried someone else might “take it”. Good luck! It’s so nice once you’ve finally settled on a name and can call your little one in your belly a name. 🙂
When we were choosing possible names we could always come up with tons of girl names, but there were no boy names we could agree on. I found the name Camden on a Pinterest board and we both fell in love. Turns out we were having a boy and in January we welcomes Camden Michael into the world. My maiden name would not have worked as a middle name so we went with my dads first name.
Ok, here’s a funny trick that I used…My sister is 8 years younger than me, so when my Mom and Dad were trying to pick names out, he used to yell them….like he was calling her/him in for lunch or dinner. He would pretend he was opening the back door and yell out the potential name! Suzanna got excluded quickly because every time he would yell out the name, he would start singing “Oh Suzanna”!! Then he would say the first and middle names like they were in trouble!
When I was pregnant with my girls, I did the same thing.
My advice is to make sure you like every derivitive of the name. If you like Patrick, but hate Pat, someone…somewhere will call him that!
I chose 2 names so that when I met my children, I could look at them and really get a feel for what name went with them. And so I have a Meghan and a Rachel!
“Oh Suzanna” made me laugh out loud!! Great story!
I’m nowhere near having kids, but this is what I always think of too!! Would I feel comfortable yelling this name (whether they’re in trouble, or if I can’t find them in the grocery store, or if I’m cheering for them at a sports event, or…)? Glad I’m not the only one!
We had issues with the initals not working out well when we were picking names for our son and our daughter. The first name we decided on left our son with the intials PMS…not happening. Then we were in love with the name Alexandria or Alexis for our daughter, but everything we came up with kept leading to the intials ASS…mark that one off the list! My husband is a HUGE super hero fan so we ended up with names in the super hero family. My son is Parker Reed. Peter Parker for Spiderman and Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four (Reed is also my grandmother’s maiden name so it worked). While I LOVED my grandmother’s name Ruby for my daughter, my husband vetoed that quickly and we ended up with Emma Storm. Emma Frost from X-Men and Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four as well. We do have some issues since my name is Emily and hers is Emma, it confuses a lot of people 🙂 Whatever you choose it will become your norm and you will never imagine your little boy with any other name. Good Luck!!!!!
I actually brought up the name Reid to Ryan as a possibility!! 🙂
LOVE THAT! My grandpa is named Reed, and I knew since I was a teenager that I would have a kiddo named Reed. I even “dibbed” use of the name so my sisters wouldn’t use it! When we found out we were having a girl, I loved it even more because it was unique but common at the same time, and so now we have the coolest lil two-year-old girl named Reid!
For me it helped to say the names out loud and to call my prego belly by the names we were tossing around. When we named our daughter, it completely and totally clicked, and that was it. After tossing ideas around, Reid Emery felt perfect!
Totally agree about the “personal rules” for baby names. Another thing I will take into consideration personally, no names that have to do with movie characters!! My name is similar to the little mermaid, and while it is both pronounced and spelled differently, I still get jokes and puns about the little mermaid all the time (mostly at work since I work in retail).
I love my name, don’t get me wrong, but just a small detail I’ll pay attention to in the future!
one of my good friends wants to name her baby girl aurora but is worried about the sleeping beauty connotation!
Names are so difficult!! With our son (our first kid) I would look up the most popular names for 2008 and then the year we were married and the years we graduated, just to get an idea of what to avoid. We wanted something not popular but not something that was out of this world. In the end we ended up going with my husband’s middle name because he’s a ‘Jr.” but we didn’t want to start a royal family.
But I definitely agree with not telling anyone. With our daughter we seriously didn’t know between two names until I was being wheeled into the operating room. My mother in law accused us of knowing and just not telling…
I forgot to add the other day- My name is Paige, and my mom has always wanted me to marry someone with the last name Turner. Paige Turner. She’s even attempted to set me up with a Turner. Whenever there was a boy in one of my classes named Turner, she’d ask me ALL about him, to show a pic, etc. If I had a female friend with the last name she’d blatantly ask if they had any brothers. She REALLY wanted it to happen. Now I’m marrying a Tyler… close, but not quite.
She loves my name because of all the fun SHE has with it.
As a result I really hated my name growing up- I wanted to be a Katie or Ashley so badly. Now I love it because it’s unique and I can handle all of the “We’re on the same Paige!” jokes. But I wouldn’t recommend picking a name because you want to joke with your kid about it. That’s probably pretty obvious advice to most people… *cough* MOM *cough*. 🙂
Oh wait! Final advice, then I’ll stop bombarding. Google popular names by state. There’s the national list, and then there’s state lists. I was born in California, and Paige was number two-hundred and something in CA my birth year. I probably knew one other Paige throughout grade school. Then I moved to Minnesota- where Paige was number 35 my birth year. Suddenly I had like 8 friends named Paige. Each state has an entirely different list. So if you LOVE a name on the top 10 most popular list, it might be much less common in NC.
Just a thought.
We named our daughter Emersyn Rose. We had a lady at our church tell us that was kind of pretty. Um….thank you…that was kind of rude? Haha
We did not find out the gender until our wee one graced the surgeons hands. We kept the names a secret and so glad we did. It was fun to know these sweet lil names we’d put so much loving thought into were a secret until both the gender was revealed upon birth and the name! We’re hoping for one more in a few years but I’ll be pushing 40 so we’ll see!
I would totally recommend keeping the name a secret from everybody if you can! We only did that for our 3rd baby (and the only real reason was because we weren’t 100% set on it), but it was fun to have something to surprise everybody with after she was born! It made me wish we’d done it with the first 2.
I agree Reghan is a beautiful name 😉 We have a 2.5 year old boy named Quinn and an 8 month old girl named Grace (Gracie) and I love that they are not that common, easy to spell and cute! I had a lot of the same criteria. Our last name is Dunnett so that crossed off Scarlett because it was too similar and my fav girl name was Brynn but I didn’t want a Brynn and a Quinn lol it’s so hard but once you find the ONE you will just know. It will feel right 🙂
My parents couldn’t choose a name for me so they left it up to fate to decide. If I was born with light colored hair or bald it was Erin (Dad is Irish) and if I came out with dark hair it was Anastasia (great-great-grandmother on Mom’s side). Turns out I had a full head of black hair, so much the nurses tied it up in a bow.
Just another tip, even though you might not have to worry about this much for a boy as you would a girl. Monograms. Make sure to look to see what the initials look like monogrammed. While I love my married name, I will never be able to use it monogrammed because it’s JED and just seeing Jed every time…no. 🙂
I had a boy, Cole, and when we were picking out names, I wanted it to be a truly boy name. Not a name that could be for a boy or girl. As a teacher, I say stay away from overly popular names as teachers will have to call your child by your first name and last initial.
As a labor & delivery nurse nothing is worse then holding this sweet baby and not being able to pronounce some crazy name their parents have given them. If I struggle to pronounce it (& inevitably spell it) I can’t help but think they will have to correct people and be called by the wrong name all the time. And of course struggle to learn to spell it in school. Good luck !!
I just have one piece of advise to give you when you name your son and maybe someone above has already said this too but please please please give him the first name that you want to call him. My parents named me after both my grandmothers but didn’t want to call the that so I have gone my whole life being called by my middle name…..
I am nowhere near naming a baby but am obsessed with the Name Nerd blog on the Lainey Gossip blog. Readers write in with baby-naming dilemmas (names that work for different cultures, matching siblings names, coming up with unique names that aren’t too trendy) she gives suggestions. It’s seriously the best.
http://www.laineygossip.com/Name-Nerd/Lifestyle/Category/1284
I was named after Eleanor Roosevelt because of all of her work in civil and women’s rights. Being named after her has always had a huge impact on my day-to-day life and it’s something I really appreciate! But yes, it gets misspelled all the time. Oh well!
We decided to keep our son’s name quiet before he was born, it was easy though because we still didn’t have a name when we went to the hospital! We were down to 2 names. While pushing, the nurse tried to distract me by asking me our baby’s name, and I yelled out, “can we just name him Luke?” And that was it, our son was named Luke! My husband claims I planned it because I favored Luke over the other name, but I swear I didn’t. 🙂 Good luck!
A friend has sons named Sam and Cal. I think they’re great names! Easily spelled, pronounced, and likely no strange acronym with your last name.
We kept our daughter’s name a secret until her birth and I totally recommend it. We had no judgements, no anecdotal story about someone with that name. It was much easier. My husband actually picked out her name the day we found out it was a girl. He said he had always liked that name and never knew anyone that had it. When he told me, I instantly knew that was her name. We gave her a family middle name and it fits her perfectly. She is 16 months old now and we love our little, Miranda Lee. Good luck naming your little one!
My kids have family/ bible names (Hannah Kay and Aaron Leo). With my daughter we only told a select few people her name. With my son (my second), we told his first initial. I always think of the Grandma/ Grandpa test when naming kids. Grandma Kiki just doesn’t sound right. Helps to pick a name the kid can grow with.
lol My Mom always shares the story on here grandparents name. My great grandfathers last name is Cox…of course you can perceive it as cock.
His first name was Harold…short formed to Harry therefore Mr. Harry Cox and then he married a wonderful women named Iona. So Say hello to Mr and Mrs Harry Cox. Everyone dies when they hear that.
l love the name Bennett and you could call him Ben!!
My husband and I started dating in Sweden while we were on a choir tour in college, and we both have Midwestern/Swedish roots, so we decided we would give our son a Scandinavian name (if we had a boy, we actually didn’t find out ahead of time). My husband liked the name Soren and I liked the name Anders. We still hasn’t decided on a boy name by the time I went in to labor (we had the girl option picked out weeks in advance). After I went through an all natural childbirth, and we saw our little guy for the first time, my husband turned to me and said “woah. You get to choose his name after all that hard work.” Anders just turned 1 a few weeks ago!
We’ve never been able to keep our names secret while I’m pregnant, I just don’t have the willpower once we’ve found the perfect name. It worked great with our first son, but we just had our second son a few weeks ago and my chattiness bit us in the behind a bit. We’d wrestled between Jonah and Gideon for a first name, but decided on Gideon around 20 weeks or so and told both of our families. Of course, a few weeks before he was born, we both started doubting our decision, and after staring at him for almost 2 hours after he was born we realized he was more of a Jonah. It messed up some gifts and cards family had bought for us while I was pregnant, so if we have any more kids I would definitely think about keeping the name a secret from everyone until the last minute.
I was on vacation last week, so I am just now catching up on my PBF fix. (Don’t tell my bosses, but this is how I’m starting the dig out process at work …. reading FUN stuff to get my brain re-awakened before I attack things like reports and my Inbox….)
I have a funny name story, although this is a little later in life. (So the fact that you couldn’t predict the outcome, parents cannot be “blamed” for a name combination). A girl I went to high school with was named Misty. She dated a guy named Steve Breeze, and they later got married. Now her name is Misty Breeze! To this day, I laugh at this one…..
My parents were set on the name Meredith Noel for me, since I was due on Christmas Eve. I came two weeks late (my poor mother), so the middle name no longer really applied, and when I was born, my parents decided I didn’t look like a Meredith.
I was nameless for three days (just “Baby Halter”), and on the third day in the hospital, the nurse came in and told me mom, “I’d be crying too if I didn’t have a name.” My mom immediately started sobbing, grabbed a baby book, and she and my dad picked out Alyssa Lauren.
SO… I’m all for waiting to meet him to make sure he looks like his name. 😉 I’m definitely not a Meredith!
Excited for yooou!
I have no kids, so no naming stories other than my siblings and myself. My parents kept names quiet until we were born simply because they didn’t know the gender first! It was a surprise for everyone 🙂 But my sister (Alette) is named for my grandmother, and my brother (Gordon) is named for my grandfather (I love both names and both people a lot). And me? I’m named after Sybil Sheppard’s character, Maddie, in the show Moonlighting…
I always wanted to name a daughter Barrett, but when I married my husband, whose last name is Aldridge, I realized that “Barrett Aldridge” sounds like a stripper, and I can’t have a kid named “Bare-it-all.” Oops.