Baby name insipiration

[Deleted]

For those of you that have decided on a name, what's the inspiration or reason behind it?

Is it a family name? Did you think it sounded pretty/cool? Were you trying to choose something to honor a family member or your cultural background? 

If you shared the name with family, did they love it or hate it?

Feel free to share your stories below! No need to tell us the baby's name if you don't want to. I just think it's interesting to see how everyone came up with their baby's name. 

Bonus points for sharing the names that got vetoed during the selection process!

[ladysif]

We opted for a family name for DS1 and then felt like we had to for DS2 as well, but thankfully we think we've found one. DS1's is more common, one of the top 100 kind of deal, but has a lot of meaning in the family. DS2's is far less common, a family name but also cultural, but they still seem to go well together. We didn't tell anyone before DS1 was born and so the feedback was fine, and are doing that again this time.

Names off the list for one reason or other: Jack (know too many), George (damn you Kate Middleton), Soren (doesn't go with our last name well and becoming trendy), Walter (no family history, but we like Walt for short). Apparently we really like old man names.

[Deleted]

This little man will be Pearson Kelly {common Scotch/Irish last name} and we'll call him Pearse. Both are family names on DH's side. Pearson = DH's grandmother's maiden name and both FIL and the only other grandson's middle names. Kelly is MILs maiden name. We have not shared the name with anyone who knows us and will wait until he's born.

Names we considered and vetoed: We love Kelly as a first name but it seems most people associate it as a girl's name so it got bumped to the middle. We were pretty much set on Fergus for a while but just couldn't pull the trigger on that one when it came down to it. Others we considered were Joseph, John, Adam, and Ian, all of which are fine names, but we wanted something a little less traditional.

Had he been a girl his name would have been Phoebe Josephine. Phoebe inspired by the birds in our back yard and Josephine a family name.

ETA:  DS1 is Niko Gregory {hard to say Slavic last name}.   His dad is from Croatia and we wanted a European name that was still simple enough to pronounce and spell in the US.   His great grandfather is Nikola but we just went with Niko, since that won't be confused as a girl's name here.   Gregory is a family name on my side.

[herbavein]

DD was easy - DH suggested the name Carolina, it works in both English and Spanish (which I speak), we both loved the nn Lina, and boom, done.

This kiddo is proving to be a challenge. We have a lot of "Anne" variants on both sides of our family - Nancy, Annette, Ann, Anna - and if it were a girl, we'd do something based on that. Since it's a boy, I really want to pick the name Nathaniel, because it has the "Na" and I really like the name. DH is not on board with that, or my all time favorite - Gideon. The compromise solution might be Matthew, which is his grandfather's name, but I really really really want either Nathaniel or Gideon.

Middle name is easy - we all have the same one (my maiden name). DH changed his middle name to it when we got married.

Question - if we leave the decision to the baby's birth day (as in, assuming that when we see him, we'll "just know") - what if it doesn't work out that way and we still disagree? What happens then??

[maddib]

This little girl will be Abigail Renee. I have always loved the name Abigail and Brielle but my cousins DD is named Brielle so that took it off the table for us. Renee was my moms middle name and is also my step moms middle name so it's a win win. And Brielle sounds kind of cutesie to me at least with Abigail we can call her baby and she can use her full name in adulthood.

[mcp6286]

Chosen name: Hayley Claire

Hayley has always been my favorite name, prob (and this is so silly) b/c ever since high school I loved Haley on One Tree Hill lol. She's pretty, she's smart, she's kind, she can sing (my dream talent)...and she gets the really hot guy in the end. Haha good associations. Plus we don't know anyone with the name so I feel like it's "ours". Her middle name is for my dad, whose middle name is also Clair (without the e).

Names that got vetoed were DH's dumbass pick that made her sound like a stripper (Roxie) and MIL's attempt to get her own middle name in there (Haley Jo).

[lunalovegood]

I consulted the Name Board here for names and got some great ideas. We are not telling anyone we know just in case I change my mind like has been known to happen. For a boy we decided on Harlan James. James isn't necessarily a family name, but it is the last name of my best friend. She has been through everything with me and I am closer to her than my own sister so I wanted to honor her in a way. We recently switched our girl name. We thought we were going with Catriona Marguerite, but recently changed to Ivy Elinor after my grandmother who is not doing well and might not make it until June so I wanted her name to be part of the baby's name.
My other kids all have middle names that are family names as well.

ETA:  DH vetoed so many names during the selection process and he is notorious for not bringing names to the table.  He vetoed Naomi at the very beginning because it spells I moan backwards.  No idea if this was a thing when he was a kid, but I had never thought of it that way.  I chalk it up to guys are weird...

[alayne926]

Team Green here....if this LO is a girl, we will use the girl's name we picked when we were pregnant with DS-Sophia Ann. I know Sophia is pretty popular, but we do not know any in IRL and I only know one person on FB that named one of her twins Sophia. We will call her Sophie.

For a boy's name, we are having more difficulty. I think the front runner is Caleb William, but we're not 100% set on that, though.

DH really wants Josephine for a girl and the nn Joey. I am trying to get on board so that we have two names for each and then we can decide when we meet this LO.

We do family names for middle names. DS's middle name is Emmett (my dad's middle name), Ann is MIL's middle name and William was DH's grandpa's name.

I LOVE DH's grandpa's middle name-Bailey, but I feel like it's more common for a girl's name.

[wegrowsheep]

Mar 4, 2015 9:50:14 GMT -5 herbavein said:

DD was easy - DH suggested the name Carolina, it works in both English and Spanish (which I speak), we both loved the nn Lina, and boom, done.

This kiddo is proving to be a challenge. We have a lot of "Anne" variants on both sides of our family - Nancy, Annette, Ann, Anna - and if it were a girl, we'd do something based on that. Since it's a boy, I really want to pick the name Nathaniel, because it has the "Na" and I really like the name. DH is not on board with that, or my all time favorite - Gideon. The compromise solution might be Matthew, which is his grandfather's name, but I really really really want either Nathaniel or Gideon.

Middle name is easy - we all have the same one (my maiden name). DH changed his middle name to it when we got married.

Question - if we leave the decision to the baby's birth day (as in, assuming that when we see him, we'll "just know") - what if it doesn't work out that way and we still disagree? What happens then??

I wanted the name Anna for our first, but it was "too plain" for DH, so we decided on Annika.
I have zero boy name ideas that DH loves, so if it comes down to the wire, I might just fill out that form when DH leaves the hospital room for a few minutes...

[Deleted]

We chose Maya Luna for our baby girl for a few reasons. First being that we wanted a Hispanic name and second because of our love affair with Mexico. I've always been fascinated by the ancient Mayan civilization and last year we got married on the "Riviera Maya", which is part of the Yucatan Peninsula and also an energy vortex. It's a deeply spiritual/magical place and DH and I have a lot of special memories there.

Luna means moon in Spanish, and the moon represents the Goddess. DH and I are bohemian at heart, so we really wanted the baby's name to represent that, yet still look good on a resume. Maya L. OurLastName does all of that.

We've shared the name with our family early on and we haven't had any real issues. My MIL wasn't a fan of her middle name, but we told her it was a done deal. She hasn't really brought it up again. Everyone else has told us it's a lovely name. We all refer to our baby by her name, and it makes me feel more connected to her.

Bonus: for a boy we decided on Nicolas Alexander (nn Nico). Maya was my first and only choice for a girl so there were no vetoes there. One of the boy names I really like that got vetoed was Axel.

[lunalovegood]

Mar 4, 2015 10:11:22 GMT -5 @littlebee said:

We chose Maya Luna for our baby girl for a few reasons. First being that we wanted a Hispanic name and second because of our love affair with Mexico. I've always been fascinated by the ancient Mayan civilization and last year we got married on the "Riviera Maya", which is part of the Yucatan Peninsula and also an energy vortex. It's a deeply spiritual/magical place and DH and I have a lot of special memories there.

Luna means moon in Spanish, and the moon represents the Goddess. DH and I are bohemian at heart, so we really wanted the baby's name to represent that, yet still look good on a resume. Maya L. OurLastName does all of that.

We've shared the name with our family early on and we haven't had any real issues. My MIL wasn't a fan of her middle name, but we told her it was a done deal. She hasn't really brought it up again. Everyone else has told us it's a lovely name. We all refer to our baby by her name, and it makes me feel more connected to her.

Bonus: for a boy we decided on Nicolas Alexander (nn Nico). Maya was my first and only choice for a girl so there were no vetoes there. One of the boy names I really like that got vetoed was Axel.

I so love Luna!  I tried every which way to make it work, but it just does not sound good with our last name.  Very beautiful name!

[Deleted]

Mar 4, 2015 10:11:22 GMT -5 @littlebee said:

We chose Maya Luna for our baby girl for a few reasons. First being that we wanted a Hispanic name and second because of our love affair with Mexico. I've always been fascinated by the ancient Mayan civilization and last year we got married on the "Riviera Maya", which is part of the Yucatan Peninsula and also an energy vortex. It's a deeply spiritual/magical place and DH and I have a lot of special memories there.

Luna means moon in Spanish, and the moon represents the Goddess. DH and I are bohemian at heart, so we really wanted the baby's name to represent that, yet still look good on a resume. Maya L. OurLastName does all of that.

We've shared the name with our family early on and we haven't had any real issues. My MIL wasn't a fan of her middle name, but we told her it was a done deal. She hasn't really brought it up again. Everyone else has told us it's a lovely name. We all refer to our baby by her name, and it makes me feel more connected to her.

Bonus: for a boy we decided on Nicolas Alexander (nn Nico). Maya was my first and only choice for a girl so there were no vetoes there. One of the boy names I really like that got vetoed was Axel.

DS1 would have been Maya if he had been a girl.  I love nature related names like Luna, Willow, Juniper, Summer, Winter, etc.... but there just aren't many for boys.  We briefly talked about River but our last name ends with -er so it didn't work.

[bendherova]

H is Czech, so we went through all of the traditional Czech names that have an english equivalent. We've done this for both of our babies. Both DH and I have difficult to spell in the US first names (but go to Paris or Prague and we're in!), so we wanted something easy to spell.

We narrowed the list down to our favorites, and it really came down to 1-2 both times.


Czech ppl have no middle name, so we chose the pattern I was named with for ds1. my MN is my aunt's. DS1's middle name is my BIL's name, and we chose to use the Czech spelling. DS1 is Andrew Tomas. (Andrew in czech is Ondrej)

For DS2, we're deciding between the masculine form of my sister's name, Michelle/Michael, or my Poppop's name, David. Right now I'm leaning towards Michael. I could change my mind next week though. So, Luke Michael or Luke David. (Luke in czech is Lukas)


We haven't told anyone what DS2's name is yet, bc we're not 100% on the MN yet. They all liked DS1's though.

[megd893]

I love this thread Thanks @littlebee
We had a girl name chosen when we were team green - Sophia Marthese. Sophia/Sophie is a beautiful name and we don't know any directly - plus DW is in love with it. Marthese (Mar-TEZ) is my mothers name, which both honours her (and our relationship) and my Maltese heritage that I'm super proud of.

HOWEVER - we're team blue! DW loves Jacob (who'll get Jake) and our nephew (that we see 2-3 times a week) is Jack... too close. We loved Nicholas, but I really dislike the nn Nicky for a little guy. I wanted something different but not U'neek. We've settled on Leo, for his first name. Strong and simple with lots of lovely connections (there is a Saint Leo, Leo the constellation, Leo the lion, Leo the brave...). K is going to choose the middle name and is tossing around 3 with no decision likely until he's born. Lawson (her maiden name), Thomas (my dad), Gilbert (her grandmother is Gilberte).
Family has been very warm to Leo as the name. We've said if he comes out not looking like Leo - he'll be something else, but that's what we're calling the belly now

[erbear]

We chose Amelia Parker. I wanted Charlotte Amelia or Amelia Charlotte to honor my grandfather (Charles), but my H hated it. We were close to settling on Amelia Jean (which I don't like) when I randomly suggested Parker and H loved it. I toyed with Amelia Ruth for a few weeks ( grandma's name), but we've stuck on Parker as her mn. I forget how we found Amelia.

We've only told a handful of people and they like it. My family doesn't know, as they're super opinionated and NEWP.

[mrskblack11]

burp.

[tiffbot]

We are team green so have options for both

H is a teacher and we are from a small close knit town/community so we are both pretty picky about choosing names that aren't duplicates, at least in the same generation.

Our boy name H actually came up with before I got pregnant (and thank goodness because DS we had a hard time with boy names!). He liked a nickname from a book and while I don't think I like the nickname enough to use that, I do really like the actual name so win with me! The middle name will be a family name from H's side (his brother who passed away after premature birth-if it's ok with MIL)

Our girl name, we actually had one picked out from DS that we were GOING to use. Then one day I was driving through the city and drove by a street that I do drive by often, but this time the name stuck out to me. I brought it up to H, and he wasn't a fan. Well guess who 2 weeksish later came to me and said 'hey how about this name?!' And I replied with 'oh, the one I brought up a couple weeks ago and you vetoed?' lol! He had completely forgotten or tuned me out. The kind of cool coincidence with that is its the name of the street my grandpa (who passed in January) lived on, and the middle name is going to be my grandma's name/his wife's which I had already decided because it's one of my middle names too!

ETA- we haven't told anyone our choices, and didn't with DS either

[Deleted]

Mar 4, 2015 10:31:11 GMT -5 erbear said:

We chose Amelia Parker. I wanted Charlotte Amelia or Amelia Charlotte to honor my grandfather (Charles), but my H hated it. We were close to settling on Amelia Jean (which I don't like) when I randomly suggested Parker and H loved it. I toyed with Amelia Ruth for a few weeks ( grandma's name), but we've stuck on Parker as her mn. I forget how we found Amelia.

We've only told a handful of people and they like it. My family doesn't know, as they're super opinionated and NEWP.

I love Amelia! If baby #2 ends up being a girl she's getting Amelia as part of her name (maybe Isabel Amelia). I like it because Emilia was my great grandmother's name and of course because of Amelia Earhart (my mom is a pilot).

[megd893]

Mar 4, 2015 10:32:33 GMT -5 pbubblegum said:

I lost a bet so DH gets to name the baby. He originally picked out a pet name and I thought it was the cutest thing in the world. Until I googled it a few weeks ago and discovered the true meaning of the word and it is not so cute. I'm really embarrassed because I didn't know and we have told EVERYBODY. My husband is Troll King.
There's really no meaning or significance in any of the names below, I just like them. However, my FIL and my father share the same middle name and we thought it would be a nice tribute to them to give our son the same middle name. It's Zdzisław! Poor kid.

A few names I love are:

Girls:
Hazel (too popular?)
Viola (old classic)
Hannah (fun, but too popular these days)
Ilsa (do you wanna build a snowman?)
Kaya
Kinga (name of Polish princess from 13th century)
Valentina


Boys:
Adam
David
Charles

I don't like any boy names, this is the best I could think of.

Would love to hear thoughts or opinions on my names, especially if you feel that something is way too popular!

I thought we were the only ones who made these kinds of bets!  We've made bets resulting in: the nursery main colour and if we found out baby's sex or not.  

[Deleted]

Mar 4, 2015 10:15:21 GMT -5 lunalovegood said:

Mar 4, 2015 10:11:22 GMT -5 @littlebee said:

We chose Maya Luna for our baby girl for a few reasons. First being that we wanted a Hispanic name and second because of our love affair with Mexico. I've always been fascinated by the ancient Mayan civilization and last year we got married on the "Riviera Maya", which is part of the Yucatan Peninsula and also an energy vortex. It's a deeply spiritual/magical place and DH and I have a lot of special memories there.

Luna means moon in Spanish, and the moon represents the Goddess. DH and I are bohemian at heart, so we really wanted the baby's name to represent that, yet still look good on a resume. Maya L. OurLastName does all of that.

We've shared the name with our family early on and we haven't had any real issues. My MIL wasn't a fan of her middle name, but we told her it was a done deal. She hasn't really brought it up again. Everyone else has told us it's a lovely name. We all refer to our baby by her name, and it makes me feel more connected to her.

Bonus: for a boy we decided on Nicolas Alexander (nn Nico). Maya was my first and only choice for a girl so there were no vetoes there. One of the boy names I really like that got vetoed was Axel.

I so love Luna!  I tried every which way to make it work, but it just does not sound good with our last name.  Very beautiful name!

I thought Luna would be a nice first name, but DH said kids might call her "Lunatic"

[periwinkledaydreams]

Baby girl will be named Jasmine, we are undecided yet on her middle name. I have since I was a little girl had a long list of potential baby names floating around my daydreams, and when I found out I was pregnant I just felt overwhelmingly drawn to Jasmine. I said it to SO at like 8 weeks and he loved it, so there was no further talk of girls names. Boys we had a reaaaallly hard time coming up with anything, my entire lifelong list seemed terrible, and at the A/S we were both like "at least we don't have to figure out a boy name!"

I posted recently on the baby name board for middle name help, and have narrowed it down to 2 choices. I want to use a family name to represent and honor my family since she will take SOs last name. Its down to Jasmine Margaret or Jasmine Charlotte. Margaret is the name of my super hero of a great aunt who was the most badass woman to ever walk planet earth, and bonus, is also my mother's name. Charlotte is also the name of a super badass matriarch, the first traceable female ancestor on my mothers side and has had a book written about her wiles because she was just that cool. Both are beautiful and meaningful and Im so torn, but leaning toward Jasmine Margaret (more personal) and saving Charlotte as a frontrunner if there should ever be a DD2.

I think I just made up my mind while writing this.. thanks!!! Pending SOs agreement, Jasmine Margaret

[nicolec78]

Mar 4, 2015 10:54:01 GMT -5 @littlebee said:

Mar 4, 2015 10:31:11 GMT -5 erbear said:

We chose Amelia Parker. I wanted Charlotte Amelia or Amelia Charlotte to honor my grandfather (Charles), but my H hated it. We were close to settling on Amelia Jean (which I don't like) when I randomly suggested Parker and H loved it. I toyed with Amelia Ruth for a few weeks ( grandma's name), but we've stuck on Parker as her mn. I forget how we found Amelia.

We've only told a handful of people and they like it. My family doesn't know, as they're super opinionated and NEWP.

I love Amelia! If baby #2 ends up being a girl she's getting Amelia as part of her name (maybe Isabel Amelia). I like it because Emilia was my great grandmother's name and of course because of Amelia Earhart (my mom is a pilot).

Amelia was the girls name we picked out.  I just love that name!

[Deleted]

Mar 4, 2015 11:16:45 GMT -5 Kristykristyleelee said:

For boy, we have contenders, but nothing set in stone. We just can't seem to fall in love with a boys name as much as we have with a girls name. Our current #1 is Cade William. William is DW's dad and brothers name. Cade is just something we like. The other name we are toying with is Declan. I think the reason the boys names are harder for us is because our last name has become a common first name for boys. So we don't want to have our child with 2 ambiguous first name/last names...where people always mix it up. Like "Harrison, Jones" - either could be the first name or the last name.

HA!   Jones is both DH & my middle names (his given/my maiden) so we strongly considered using it as this one's middle name too.   Harrison Jones was actually thrown out at one point. 

[periwinkledaydreams]

Oh, and if I can keep it how I want it, we will introduce her to the world by name when she is born. SO can't quite grasp why this is so important to me, and unfortunately HE is the one who's family and friends keep asking if we have a name. No one is asking me! I just really want that special moment of "Here she is! This is Jasmine Margaret LastName!" So far he has kept quiet but they seriously don't stop asking.. like every day.. I so hope he can get on board!

[turtletyme]

@littlebee, we also had Maya on our short list! (We were married in the Riviera Maya too.) It's beautiful!

I picked a lot of names that DH vetoed (Charlotte/Charlie, Hazel, Janina, every Irish name like Aoife and Siobhan...) for various reasons. He kept picking super popular names like Madison and Madeline, as well as names ending in "R." (Our last name starts with "R", this was a rule I made from the beginning and felt very strongly about, I didn't want the kid's name to sound like rarrrrarrrrrr.)

I decided not to tell anyone yet (just you guys!) bc I am scared of opinions, but we settled on Sophie Doneen. Sophie was DH's beloved grandmother. Doneen is a variant of "Donna," which was my mother's name, and also honors my grandmother Eileen. We were concerned about the popularity of Sophie/Sophia at the moment, but ultimately decided we shouldn't let it keep us from our #1 choice.

[jcprn]

We are team green and are not telling ANYONE the names that we like despite EVERYONE asking when they see us. I just tell them "We have some top contenders". But I don't mind sharing with internet strangers

The inspiration for the names are just that we liked them. We have a solid girl name. I've loved the name Charlotte for as long as I can remember and I think it's cute that she would have the nickname Charlie. It would be Charlotte Grace.

My list for boy names all had the letter "n" as the last letter, maybe it sounded strong to me, I don't know. But in going through both of our lists we collectively liked the names Gavin, Griffin, and Greyson, (see the n's?) but I'm more partial to Gavin with Griffin as a close second where DH likes Griffin and Greyson as a close second. I guess we'll see when Baby comes. DH likes Wolfe as a middle name. DH gets all giddy and squeee about it but I'm not sure how I feel about it...

Some of the vetoed names:
Girl names: I just threw out Isla (eye-la) as a pretty option but our last name ends in -la so I feel like it would sound funny. I vetoed Camber (it's a car thing and DH is a big car guy. He saw on a car show that a guy called his daughter Camber and he freaked out about it) but it sounded too much like Kimber and I have hate for that name for some reason.

Boy names: DH didn't like Benjamin, Landon, Aiden, and Sawyer (look no n!). I vetoed Xander because DH wanted to call him X for short. Nope.

[veggiemo]

Girl name is currently Petra. Other names we have as considerations are:
Elena
Elise
Natalie
Adair
DH loves Ophelia but I think it's too much of a mouthful, so I vetoed.

Boy name-arghhhh. I seriously like nothing.
Current contenders are Arlo and Beck (not Beckett, just Beck). I'm not really feeling either of them.
I don't want another name that ends in N, so that really limits things.

DS1 is Griffin. I first heard the name on a girl who came into our office. Yes, a girl. I thought it was such a strong sounding name. It stuck with me and we ended up using it for DS. We intended to use Finn as a nickname but no one uses it, everyone just defaults to Griff. I don't like Griff so I don't ever call him that, but I knew other people using it was kind of inevitable.

Not a soul knows our names, and no way am I telling. With names like these, we are sure to get a few side eyes and comments. I don't want to hear it.

[nicolec78]

My DH and FIL both go by their middle name, Eduardo. My FIL passed away two years ago and the baby is due 4 days after his bday so we will probably name him after their middle name. Our last name is very hard to pronounce so we have decided not to use their first name, it is very hard to spell and pronounce as well. My grandfather's middle name is James and my father, grandfather and great grandfather are all named Thomas. His name will either be Edward James or Edward Thomas.

[paintdadanta]

We wanted a name that wasn't too common, so when we heard Connor in AC3 - it just stuck and worked well for us. But we actually had decided on a middle name first. Catcher in the Rye has always been one of my favorite books so when I suggested Holden, DH liked the sound of it and really wanted it for the middle name.

Our families love the name, though my grandmother finds the Holden half a bit strange. The best reaction we had was my step-son who wanted to swap his for Connor because "how come he gets to be named after an assassin. I want his name." That was of course followed by how horrible it was that his mother had picked his name based on some random kid getting yelled at in the mall.

[jcprn]

Mar 4, 2015 12:10:55 GMT -5 paintdadanta said:

We wanted a name that wasn't too common, so when we heard Connor in AC3 - it just stuck and worked well for us. But we actually had decided on a middle name first. Catcher in the Rye has always been one of my favorite books so when I suggested Holden, DH liked the sound of it and really wanted it for the middle name.

Our families love the name, though my grandmother finds the Holden half a bit strange. The best reaction we had was my step-son who wanted to swap his for Connor because "how come he gets to be named after an assassin. I want his name." That was of course followed by how horrible it was that his mother had picked his name based on some random kid getting yelled at in the mall.

I LOVE the name Holden for the same reason but DH vetoed that one too. But I'll live vicariously through you and be super excited that your H is on board with it!