Baby Naming Keeps Getting Harder.

i'm ready for the 'original names' fad to die off. a nice name is a nice name, and if it's shared with some other kids, so what? i love classics.
khairete
S.

I think it's best to not think about what is popular or not and go with a name that speaks to you. A name you really love...the way it sounds or the meaning. If you like Margaret why not look at other "older" names. Eleanor is beautiful and one of my favorites. Audrey is also a lovely name. Lydia, Evelyn, or Abigail are also nice older names. Rose. Grace. Oh, I wanted to add I also love the older names Esme and Mabel.

My sister is having a 2nd, & won't know the sex until (my nephew!) is born. In the event that it is a girl, she wanted to honor one of our favorite aunts with the middle name, but not too obviously.

My aunt is Carol, & we are a Polish family. I found a diminutive form of the Polish variant of Carol on www.behindthename.com

I tried looking up Margaret, hoping for the same, but there are not any variations of Margaret, unless you are using nicknames (Maggie, Peg, etc.)

If you go to www.nameberry.com & put in Margaret, they give a number of names that people who like Margaret tend to also like. You have very traditional first names, and many of the similar names they listed are also traditional (such as Katharine, Louise, etc.)

I also noticed all of the first names you have chosen are of Hebrew origin (with the exception of Mia, which is a variant of Miriam, which is Hebrew.

Given that, I went to http://babynames.net/girl/hebrew, & found many.

Some that seem like they would fit in your family are:
Danielle, Gabrielle, Hannah, Jacqueline, Michaela, Naomi, Rachel, Rebecca, Samantha.

A couple that are not as "traditional" sounding, but have wonderful meanings:
Abigail, Davida (pronounced Daveeda), Janessa & Liana

Hopefully some of this helps spark the perfect name for your new little one. Congrats! Praying for an easy delivery & healthy/happy baby girl. T. =-)

Think of a phrase, a word, something simple like "peace" or "lover of peace" or anything, then do a search for "Names that mean....(fill in the blank)." I searched for baby's names this way and came up with some truly spectacular names (I have so many names I love that I'll never get to use).

You can still use Margret if you want to.

Ya know, my oldest is Thomas, or Tommy as we still call him even though he is an adult. In his 26 year on this earth I have never called Tommy and had another child respond. Heck I can say the same for any of my kids even though only my youngest has a more unusual name, Genevieve. She was named after her great grandma. All of my kids were named after family, thank god I have a huge family.

Relax and name your child. Every name is unique because your child is unique

Oh poo on everyone else, just pick from names YOU love.

When we chose our daughters name, we NEVER ever shared or gave hints to what she would be named. We did not refer to list.. Did not care if others had the same name.Remember so many families all the boys and men have the same name.. family names. It has never made sense that women family members could not share names.

The week she was born (she was 3 weeks early) my husband suggested a middle name that we both were surprised that we liked it, so we decided to wait until she was born, take a look at her and then name her.

I have always felt like children will end up with the perfect name for them.

Names that are classic, as opposed to currently trendy, may seem common but you don't end up crossing paths with as many as you think. My daughter is Sarah and, while it's a fairly popular name on lists and I certainly know many adult Sarah's, we haven't really encountered any other girls her age with the same name (she's 3.5). It would fit in well with the names of your other kids. Other names that pop into mind when I see your other kids' are:
Grace
Stacy
Alison
Nicole
Lauren
Lindsay
Ashley

Just pick out whatever name you like and forget about what's popular or other children with the same name.

I like Mia!!!!

When we were thinking about names. We imagined our daughter at each age... Babyhood through adulthood. We played with the name as well for those age groups.

We are pleased. We imagined our daughter at toddler, elementary on through 80 yrs old.

Do what works for you but as a substitute teacher as well, I hate all the planned misspellings on purpose with trendy names.

Think if your trendy named child as a teacher, lawyer, business person etc from 18 yrs old til 100

Good luck. Just don't be too freaky with the spelling, etc. You
Are giving someone a forever name.

Congratulations! Now relax about the name. You have a LONG time to think about it and I'm not sure why you feel the pressure to work this out right now. Could it be the hormones or the added work and exhaustion of being pregnant with 3 kids? Believe it or not, some people don't choose a name until the baby is born and something about her personality jumps out at the parents.

A lot of people go back to "old fashioned" names. My stepdaughter named her child Jane and there are NO other Janes. However, it's almost impossible to get barrettes or stationery or anything else with "Jane" on it. So if that's important to you, stop at those displays of magnets and sippy cups and kiddie note paper to see what's there and then compare it to the "most popular names" surveys that happen all the time. As friends who are teachers how many Olivias and Jessicas they have, and avoid those names.

If other people are nagging you to find out your choice (since you may have already told them you are having a girl), or if Grandma is lobbying you to name the baby after Aunt So-and-so, stop all the conversations until your 8th month! Something will come to you.

Sometimes work expands to fill the time allotted to complete it. When we didn't know our baby's gender until the delivery room, we came up with names pretty easily. Now we know the baby's gender about 2 minutes after conception it seems, so we have so many more months to obsess about it.

Just be sure you spell out the initials with your last name to be sure it doesn't spell a word the kids will make fun of when they see it on the monogramed backpack. My friend's daughter's initials are "REF" and some other kids' initials spell "RAW" or "FAD" - so you might want to avoid that. Otherwise, you'll figure it out!

I found out later that I gave my kid the same name as my step-aunt's daughter (which shows how close we are...or aren't....). I don't care. If you like the name, then give the name. Sometimes the kid will be one of 5 and sometimes the kid will be all alone. What matters in the long run is what you think of it. I personally think that trying too hard to be "unique" is how we got all these weird spellings and names that look like someone fished around in the Scrabble bag. In our case, I wanted to give DD a classic name and it was also a family name. If they have the same name? That's what nicknames are for. We have 2 kids with the same name, on different ends of our family. They are unrelated to each other. We just give them a nickname so DD knows who we are talking about.

I think your children have lovely names! If you go with trends, the trend dies before your child does. If you go with a name that no one else is using, there's always somebody to use it (no copyright ownership on names). Why not just pick a name you like, as you've done before? You make good choices.

Or go through your family history, and jot down the ten names that really grab your interest. Most of what's "new" today in the name game is really quite old.

Margaret is a lovely name. You could use it as a middle name, or use a variation of it.

We used family names for our children. Matthew David is named after my husband's grandfather (whose name was Matthias) and my father. M. Karen was named after me, because Karen is a variant of Catharine/Katherine/Kathryn/Whatever. We were so sure the next one would be a boy that we didn't have a girl's name picked out - but there were several Annes in the family history, it's a beautiful classic name, and we added a family last name for a middle name. Daniel William was named for my uncle and my husband's father (William was his middle name).

Try to find a name that represents your nationalities.

It Does get harder! I had a really hard time with my sons name. I LOVE the name Edison for a boy-but my cousin already chose it. My grandmother had 8 kids with traditional Irish catholic names-so my cousins and I wanted to branch off a little. They all stared before me so there was already Logan, Cooper, Evan, Tanner, Quinn, Annika, Marin, Elaina, Savannah, etc. Etc.
I didn't want to do the Aiden trend-so I chose Kaden. Then found out my ex had a daughter within months of my son he named Cadence (awkward).
My daughters name I had picked out in high school-Annelise (and keeping with tradition the middle is after a family member-Clare....which she likes better than her first...go figure). But if I were to have another I would probably let the kids throw some names out.
Glad I'm not the only one who thinks it's hard!

Your kids have wonderful traditional, yet current names. They also are not too 'matchy' so most will flow. I'm not sure what your last name is, but here are a few names that came to mind (they might be too popular, but I really like):

Hannah
Audrey
Thalia
Lillian nn Lily
Samantha
Eva or Evie
Genevieve
Sarah
Caroline
Chloe

Elena Marie is our choice of name if we ever have a daughter

I think you could still use Margaret, maybe just choose a different nickname. Or one of you uses a nickname for their daughter and the other doesn't?

I like traditional names and names that are somewhat unique, but not weird. Looking at your other kids it looks like you do too. Some possibilities--Martha, Mary, Katherine (Kate), Naomi, Nicole, Greta, Amelia, Erin or Sarah. If my younger son had been a girl he would have been Abigail, but that's gotten kind of trendy.

Our oldest son wasn't named until the day after he was born, although his name came from a "short list." My husband and I had a difficult time agreeing on one finalist, although we had a lot of names we both kind of liked. It was almost a kind of, "Whatever, let's just name him" on my part! For my younger son, my husband basically said I could choose. (-: Both names have worked out pretty well. Watch out for the initials too--sometimes they spell things you'd rather not have to use when you need to use initials. I think I've told this story in this forum before, but when I was practicing law an obese lawyer on the other side had his initials monogrammed on his dress shirt--FAT. I still can't forget that, twenty years later!

I have two rules when it comes to names, regardless the popularity:

1. When you find a name you like, take it to a couple of different friends, tell them the name and ask them to spell it. Choose to use the most common spelling so your kid doesn't have to spend the rest of her life saying her name and then immediately spelling it.

2. Choose a name that cannot be deconstructed into something cruel or gross. For example (sorry BBYMMA2), "Analynne?" Don't choose a name that has "Anal" in it! Or could be deconstructed to "Anal - in." Yikes!! That's bullying fodder right there!

My two favorites are Annalise (my daughter's name) and Madeline (the name I would give a second daughter).

I also like Catherine, Abigail, Natalie, Grace, Lilliana, Rachel, Rebecca, Claire, Chloe, Caitlin, and Zoe.

Good luck!

i like GABRIELLE ROSE OR ANALYNNE GRACE