Choosing a baby name was one of my favorite things to do during pregnancy. There are so many choices and for some it can be a challenge to agree with their partner on what name to choose.
I had names already picked out before the births of all three of my kids. I have a friend that had a few names picked out, but they waited until a week after the birth so they could get to know the personality of their baby before naming it. I thought that was a great idea. Your child will fill in whatever name you give it, so take off any pressure and have fun choosing whatever name that you fancy.
Something else to think about is whether or not you will share your baby names with your friends and family before your child is born. I loved the name Luke. For the longest time if I was going to have a boy, his name was going to be Luke. Then, my husband’s cousin had a boy and named him Luke, and my friend named his son Lucas. I don’t think they intentionally took the name that I was going to use, but it seemed like there were too many Lukes around. I felt like I needed a different name for my son.
The Baby Name Wizard has a great tool where you can track the popularity of any name since the 1880’s.
The Bump has a very comprehensive list of the origins of baby names.
Enter in any name and read the numerology prediction.
I, too, loved pondering the “name” thing during my 3 pregnancies (adopted daughter from Kazakhstan came already named at age 8 1/2 yrs old :-)…but, I have to say, I wish more families would think about using Mom’s maiden names as middle names for their children. In our situation, for our kid’s middle names, we used my mom’s maiden name for #1, my m-i-l’s maiden name for #2, and my maiden name for #3. (Just used them in alphabetiical order). My kids love the fact that no one can find their middle names in a baby name book. Also…I am a “first generation” American-of-German-descent on my dad’s side, so, I wanted my kids to have German/Germanic first names, so that they would have a connection to that amazing part of their heritage. And…I really didn’t want any duplicate “first” initials (sorry about that, Michelle and Jim Bob)…I wanted each child to feel that they had a special place in the family…so, my husband is L, I am K, #1=GKM, #2=AKM, #3=DMM, and our #4 “take-out” is SSM!!! (We have her the maiden name of our adopted g’ma 🙂 THINK about it! Think out of the box! And, since I am a midwife, I get to be around lot’s of families naming their babies….often, I try to give a suggestion, and sometimes, moms and dads take me up on it! But, I think if I hear of another “Jessica Marie” or “Michael James”,….well…you get my drift!
Love, karla