JFF - How Did You Come up with Names for Your Kiddos?

Updated on March 01, 2011
B.B. asks from New Haven, CT
18 answers

We are having the toughest time agreeing on a name. I figured it would be interesting to see how other couples did in this department!! Did you agree right away? How did you finally come to a decision?

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C.F.

answers from Pittsburgh on

Before we got pg, my husband and I agreed that *he* would need to be Thomas, III and *she* would be Juliet. We knew another young girl with that name, and I'm a bit of a Shakespeare buff, so we loved it. As soon as we found out she was a girl, we were so excited to have a name planned out. And then when she was born, we were like, "Oh, good. She's gorgeous. Good thing we picked a beautiful name!"

2 moms found this helpful
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M.!.

answers from Columbus on

You ladies helped with my 3rd child. I had posted on here for suggestions. We didnt know the gender and was set on a girls name but not on a boys name. Someone suggested Greyson and I fell in love with it. We ended up having a girl so we changed the spelling and now have Gracyn Mae.

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A.G.

answers from Houston on

Both of my little girls were named for my mom (who passed away when i was 8) She died because her heart couldnt handle pregnancy and delivery, and even though she had many failed pregnancies she kept going and had three kids. Her name was Gwendolyn- My first born has the same name, only i added an n "Gwendolynn", While i was pregnant with my second I found out the house i grew up in was going up for sale, so me and my husband bought it right away, even though it was not in our budget. The first summer, (while i was still pregnant and trying to decide what i would name a girl), some lilies bloomed at the side of the house, 1 white, 2 pinks. The neighbors confirmed (although i remembered)that it had been my mom that planted them and they had not bloomed in years. We decided to name our second daughter "Lilly". I didnt know what sex i was having till i gave birth, and we had no boy name picked out at all. We were going to decide it upon meeting him, but luckily for me, i had another girl, and thats exactly what i wanted.

3 moms found this helpful
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A.B.

answers from New York on

When we found out I was preggers we already knew what to name it if it was a girl. When we found out it was a boy my hubs lost his ever loving mind and started suggesting Hawiian, Scottish, Welsh(we are none of those) and the name Kha-lel (Superman's real name!) not kidding. Anyway, that's when I said you are now vetoed and I will come up with a list and we'll pick from there. My sister added to the list and we picked her choice. Hubs wasn't upset when I pointed out I am aware you want originality but naming our son Keanu Kha-lel Broderick isn't fair to our little bundle of joy he concurred. Post your list and ask for votes. Good luck

2 moms found this helpful

D.M.

answers from Denver on

In my experience, you have to either keep putting them out there until you agree or wait to meet the baby to decide. My husband loved girls names that I thought sounded like "b*tchy rich girls" and we had some similar issues with boys names....so you know, even couples with SERIOUSLY different ideas about names can get to that "a ha!" moment!

2 moms found this helpful

E.G.

answers from Daytona Beach on

I think they are stripper names, because my husband is the one who thought of ours! Renee, & Vanessa

1 mom found this helpful
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T.C.

answers from Colorado Springs on

Naming children is very difficult because it is such an important thing! All our children have family names as their middle names. I wish we had put more thought into their first names, but mostly we just picked what we liked. We still like their names, but if we were doing it today, we would chose names with excellent meanings rather than just what we thought sound good. Have fun!!

1 mom found this helpful

T.C.

answers from Austin on

My husband and I were really overthinking things for awhile. We were looking for a name very logically. First, we tried to find a name ending in bert that would match family names of Albert and Robert. We looked at all the meanings in baby books, searched for something that sounded more italian than mexican with our last name, considered which names would sound good when yelled out the back door or looked good as a signature. About 5 hours before my son was born, we finally decided on using a combination of my husband's middle name and mine(my maiden name). It was perfect.

I didn't end up having a girl, but the way I picked a girl name was completely different. It came to me in a dream, written on a piece of paper. Giula. I've never seen it in any books, but it sounds like a variation of Julia.

1 mom found this helpful
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K.P.

answers from New York on

We knew the "boy name" right away... my son was due on what would have been my husband's grandfather's 100th birthday and they were very close, so "John" was a no-brainer. My father and my husband's twin are both "David"- John David, but we call him JD... easy!

As for a girl name, well... we still haven't picked one out, but we'll see what happens when we're ready to use it! My husband LOVES Christmas, so wants to name a girl Nathalie, I like it, but not shortened. I love the name Sarah, but there are already 3 in his family. We go back-and-forth.

We'll see!

1 mom found this helpful

A.F.

answers from Chicago on

Oh wow- we went through a crazy process of reviewing the baby book individually - coming up with a list of names we each liked, then seeing which ones we had in common and choosing our favorites off our own lists and each others. We narrowed down to 20 then started whittling down. With our daughter, we ended up with 2 - one was Irish, one Italian -- she came out looking not so Italian so her name is Caitlin Michele. With our son, we did the same thing and ended up with just 1 name we liked that was in common at the end - William Michael. So now we are onto Baby #3...I am 28 weeks. We went through the same process and came up with 5 names for first names but my husband wants to use his grandpa's name as the middle name (he passed away when my hubby was younger -- the name is Ernesto) - ugh. Not much sounds great with it, so we have been delaying a bit. We had a great girl's name picked out this time because I was convinced it was a girl but the 20 week U/S says differently. *sigh*

1 mom found this helpful
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B..

answers from Dallas on

We did agree on all of our names. We knew we wanted Hebrew/Biblical names. Our process was really easy!

Bahaha, Elizabeth!

1 mom found this helpful
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S.S.

answers from Cincinnati on

I just always liked the name nicholas, his full name is nicholas richard james. richard for my hubbys father and james after a good friend of mine I have known since I was 5

1 mom found this helpful

M.H.

answers from Raleigh on

I looked through a baby book and threw out every name I even semi-liked, knowing that my husband would probably shoot down almost all of them. Honestly, we have 3 girl names that we like (one I like more, one he likes more, one we both like), and 2 boy names (although one is clearly the winner, the other is more or less the consolation prize). As for middle names, we yelled the first name with any of our choices, and found ones that worked well together. They also happen to be familial, so that was kind of nice too!

1 mom found this helpful

T.B.

answers from Bloomington on

With both, I looked through a baby name book and listed all the first names I liked. Then gave the list to my husband and he circled his favorites. Then we just picked our joint favorite. Then we brainstormed middle names that sounded good with the chosen first name. We choose family names for both or our son's middle names. Oldest is after my Dad and G-pa. Youngest is after my husband's G-pa.

1 mom found this helpful
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B.B.

answers from San Antonio on

For our son's name we went back and forth forever before finally deciding on Ryder. Then, the morning he was born, I took one look at him and burst into tears. My DH and OB looked at me and thought I was still in pain 9even though I had an epidural and C-Section and was completely numb), but I just looked up and sobbed "He... doesn't... look... like... a.... Ryder.....", so we went with Jackson, which was actually 4th on our list.

For our daughter, we knew the middle name was Ann, which was both of our mother's middle names, and we decided to wait till she was born before choosing her name (not wanting to repeat what had happened with our son). For almost 30 hours she was "baby Girl", until we decided on her name together from lists of names we loved (luckily we both like classic names), Madeline.

1 mom found this helpful

J.L.

answers from Los Angeles on

We had only really talked about 1 girls name, because we thought we were having a boy. We had two good boys names picked out that we liked. Surprise! We found out the sex and it was a girl! That one name just sort of stuck. Only a few people liked it, most tried to talk us out of telling us it was a stripper name, prostitute name, and that she'll get teased.
Then we added more names in memory of my dad, so she has 6 in total, and I heard tons of lectures about that as well. All her names have meaning behind them, and are very special....which is why we decided on them.
=)

1 mom found this helpful

E.S.

answers from Asheville on

My last name was N., originally O'N., his is Stuart (from Ireland, then to Scotland and back to Ireland) we wanted Celtic names to go with them. One daughter is Brennan E. and the other is Victoria Rose. (french was also Celtic way back)

1 mom found this helpful
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D.S.

answers from Houston on

me and my first sons dad did an elimination process. now on my second we tossed around names and i noticed he got restless when it rained real bad. so we went with a name because of this the division was brandon rayne and storm and we couldnt decide so we made a deal if he was born when it wasnt raining it would be brandon rayne and if it was raining it would be storm. well it wasnt raining when he was born but I was in labor for 20 hrs and he just decided in 5 minutes it was time I went from 60% contractions and dialated at a 4 after 20 hrs to he was out in 5 minutes so dad walked up and said we have to name him storm no other name so he was named storm it started raining 30 minutes later a severe storm with a tornado warning in it. we did live in tornado alley at the time

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