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 had my son’s name picked out before I even got pregnant (Ryan Jacob). For some reason I am obsessed with baby names. If I can’t go to sleep, I will actually close my eyes and go through the alphabet coming up with a name for each letter. Don’t ask.
The thing that kills me is when couples go back and forth forever with names because “we can’t name him that because so and so has that name.” Haha!
I just want to tell them EVERY name you pick has been taken, even if it’s weird. So name away!
I love that you knew the girl with the initials A.S.S. Poor thing.
Happy naming!
Love that name! <3
I think it is a prerequisite you need to NOT know how to spell to get hired in Starbucks!!
My parents didn’t know if I was a boy or girl until I was born but they had a sense of a boy and a name picked out and when I was born they were 1) shocked and 2) I was nameless until 33 hours after I was born. In the Jewish religion they name after the dead. I was named after my dads mother who I never met.
We shared our baby name with everyone! Tanner McKinely. Also it helped my 5 year old step-daughter talk about the baby too.
As for funny … my husband was a Marine for four years. And his name means warrior. So for awhile, he was focused on finding a warrior name for our baby. I felt like I was going to give birth to a future Hercules. As for picking a name, I casually threw out the name “Tanner” and he said “yes. that’s it.” And that was it. No more questions or discussions.
Another cute story is that my stepdaughter woke up one morning and said, ‘I had a dream that my baby brother was born and he was a girl. ” uhmmm …. ok. 😉 We will see if she is right in less than 4 weeks.
i love the idea of keeping it a secret until after the baby is born! I remember people asking me nonstop and I politely said that we didn’t want our choices to be changed by someone’s opinion or feedback! Our top 2 pics were Reegan & Drake! We were pretty much sure it was going to be Reegan but I told my husband I wanted to wait until we met him… Well after a few hours of him being in the world we decided on Drake because Reegan just didn’t seem to “fit him”. Strange how you know after such a little time of meeting of your baby! It works out great now because I don’t know one other kid named Drake currently! (We didn’t want anything popular!)
Naming seems like a tough decisions. My husband and I have a rather odd & long last name so I want to pick something out that’s short and memorable haha 🙂 (when the time comes but not soon! haha)
On the “easy to say and spell” point, one thing I read was to make sure your child doesn’t have the same letter at the end of their first name and beginning of their last name, because then the names blur together and are awkward to say.
My parents hadn’t heard of this, obviously, but now I know why my full name sounds so weird.
We’ve had our boy and girl baby names picked out since I was 6 week pregnant. It was just easy for us! We’re pretty decisive people and don’t flip flop a lot on choices which helped I think. We were like that with our wedding choices too, easy peasy. 🙂 I’m not finding out the sex ’til the baby is born so I won’t know what name we’re using until the baby is here. My husband is going to find out the sex though so he’ll know. Hopefully he can keep it a secret. We are also not sharing the baby names with anyone. I feel that we need to meet the baby before fully committing to the name. What if the baby comes out and doesn’t look like the name you’ve chosen? We chose short easy to spell names as the baby will have a hyphenated last name of Swanson-Hanna and didn’t want to overwhelm them with a really long name to spell.
My husband had a name picked out before we were even married (it was over 2 years into our marriage when our son was born). His family uses Biblical names for the first name and a family name for the middle name, so we were glad when we realized “Corbin” is actually a word in the Bible. So our little guy is Corbin Thayne, which I love because it’s different, but not weird and the middle name is a classic (my grandfather’s name).
How fun! With our first it took awhile to decide on a name. We decided on Brock Dominick (middle name after my father) but we did joke with people and tell them we were naming him Brock Lee…some people caught on faster than others! With our second I knew right away, even before we knew it was a boy we had named him Miles Sylvan (sylvan after my husband’s grandfather). Have fun! I’m sure whatever name you choose will be perfect!
My first language is French (yay Canada!) and for some reason, francophone Canadians have a hard time with names that end with -a. It changes into an -uh sound! Why? I have no idea! So I tried to avoid any name that ended with an -a. So it didn’t end up sounding like Jessic-uh!
Moreover, my married name is Blizzard – you’d be surprised how many people ask me how to spell it. So my husband has always been a fan very original names (he likes Reicker for a little boy) so Elianne seemed like a happy meduim – I haven’t heard Eli-Uh-n yet!
That’s a good idea not to tell the name before the baby is born! I’m 13 weeks and we already know our boy/girl names, we actually decided the day we found out! Both are “old” names and definitely not popular today. Maybe it would be best to keep the secret!
I have a Liam( he’s 7, when he was born it was way down at number 45. I cringe everytime I see it at the top of lists) Fionn ( Gaelic for Finn, named because when my husband first saw him he said he has huge hands like Fionn McCool some Irish myth) Brayden(which we tried to combine my fathers name Brendan and my FIL who is Breen, Gaelic for Brian) and I just finally got my girl,Adelaide,who we call Laidey and now collectively call all four Three men and a little Laidey. We never have names decided until we are leaving the hospital and social security is hunting us down to pick a name. All of our children have middle names that are names after a grandparent.
You should check out nameberry.com I’m still completely obsessed with that website and check it all the time.
I love classic names that aren’t super popular right now.
I’ve never been one for cutesie or “different” spellings of names (I have a cousin named Darek, and I always want to call him Dalek, which is a villain from Doctor Who. His name spelling annoys me to no end, but not my kid), but ironically my name, Rebekah, is apparently the unusual spelling. When I was a kid, there was another girl in my class with the same spelling (Biblical spelling, Christian school), so when I got older, I didn’t realize that Rebecca was the most common way to spell it. And it’s a good thing I go by Becky, because most people see Rebekah and it gets them all confused! I don’t get it, but I grew up with it.
I was never one of those women who thought much about having kids, but I knew that if I ever had a girl I would want to name her after my Dad and I also love 2 middle names. Well here I am with an almost 8 year old daughter named Billie – after my Dad, Bill. And they have a very special relationship. As I do with my dad. Her two middle names are family names too. Old school names. Hazel Maude
We didn’t share our names with our first child for quite some time either. Then we had a lot of friends that started to get pregnant shortly after I did and hen we started sharing because we didn’t want anyone to “take” our names. We told everyone we had 3 girl names and 3 boy names (we didn’t find out what we see having) and shared all 6 names even though we knew which ones it would be.
When it came to #2 we shared right away. I have a Claire and Max.
I think it’s great you are keeping the name to yourselves! I’ll just be excited to hear what it is when the time comes. 🙂
My son’s name is Lucas James and while popular, will allow him to get name toys at stores. My first name is Lauryn and my husband’s name is Derrick. While popular names, they are both spelled uniquely and neither one of us could find name keychains, cups, etc. I was always so annoyed and bummed when everything was spelled Lauren:(
We did not share his name until after he was born. I want to keep that a secret between my husband and I. We didn’t completely have his name picked out until after he was born. We didn’t share because like you said, we didn’t want the joy and meaning stripped. People can be so mean.
About two weeks before I was due with my youngest, we still could not agree on a girl’s name (gender was a surprise). I was so upset that we didn’t agree so we sat down to pick a name. Everything he suggested was too high on the top baby names list. So finally he was like what rank is Reagan (our first) and then he doubledthe ranking since this was our second and there was Hayden! We both at the same time went “hmm. Hayden. I think I like that” and we just knew.
P.S. looks like we have similar rules and tastes for names. My rules are – Not too popular, but not made up. Use the most common spelling. Can’t be too easily made fun of (like initials). Middle name must be a family name.
Reagan Cecilia and Hayden Marie.
My husband is a huge baseball fan. Thank goodness we had girls because he really wanted to name a boy Honus!
I love that you have ‘rules’ for how you will name your baby- I feel like I need to copy/paste these for the future 🙂 I couldn’t agree more with all of them!
Our last name is Kruse (pronounced like cruise) and we always joke that we should name a little girl “Anna” (pronounced like On A) … Anna Kruse. Ready to set sail! 😉 We’ve also decided we have to stay away from seasons… Summer Kruse? Autumn Kruse? HA!
I feel like there is so much responsibility in choosing what someone will be called for the rest of their life! No pressure!! I know you and Ryan will choose something absolutely ADORABLE though- I am just SO excited for you guys!!
I laughed out loud about Summer/Autumn Kruse! That would be amazing! My best friend’s last name is Poole and she said names like “Gene Poole” are definitely out — HA!
I agree that keeping it secret is a good idea. My husband and I decided that when the time comes, we will pick the two top contenders for our baby and then decide when we see its face. I think we will just know which one fits.
As far as baby name stories, I was actually named after my great-grandmother who had the same birthday as me. She passed away when my grandfather was little so I never knew her but I’ve been told we are exactly alike!
Good luck on the naming front!
We went the route that I picked out the first name and my husband had full say over the middle name. Of course we could rule out anything we absolutely hated, but ultimately it was our own decision. My husband picked a middle name I absolutely don’t like and I still bring it up (5 years later!) because my cousin ended up naming her daughter the middle name I absolutely loved! So…if you have strong feelings for a name, definitely tell Ryan!
Also, my daughter’s name (Charlotte) was not in the top 20 list of popular names 5 years ago, so you never know if your kids name will be popular. We were probably doomed that Sarah Michelle Gellar named her daughter Charlotte right after our daughter was born and now Chelsea Clinton…we’re screwed. But, it was my very favorite name and I’m glad we went with it 🙂
We did tell people our name ahead of time. I think once you’re confident in the name no one is going to say anything. Just don’t tell them names when you are in the considering stages! We confided in our parents and my in-laws were very quick to tell us how horrible one of the three names we were considering was. Once we said with certainty what our name choice was noone said a word. It was also nice we could have monogramed things and the baby name on the shower cakes and everything.
My last name is “Lott” and my mom always loved the name “Noah”, except “Noah Lott” didn’t sound too promising for my brother’s future so she chose other names. haha!
Haha!!! That’s amazing. 🙂
Although family names aren’t a big deal in our families, I still wanted to use a family name. I love the ideal of tradition and a name with meaning and significance. However, our options for male names from our family were limited as they included: Luther, Manuel, Earle, Edward, Alfredo Luigi (we laughingly considered this as an ode to my grandfather), Adie Odie (seriously), and so on. Fortunately, we landed on my husband’s grandmother’s maiden name and named our little man Sawyer (middle name Mason, after my dad).
I totally agree that keeping the name under wraps is really important. It does suck the joy from the whole process when you tell someone the name and they respond with “Hm….that’s interesting…” or “Really? That’s a girls’ name.” The name you choose will be perfect for your little one and shouldn’t be subject to the (often critical) opinion of others.
I totally agree with you. I dislike trendy names and I hate when people choose an odd spelling “to be different”. My maiden name was Nowak, pronounced Novak (it’s Polish) and it was pretty annoying to explain that to every teach I ever had. I would never want to do that to my kid for no reason.
My initials are CEE, but apparently another choice for my name was Emily until my mom decided the initials EEE would be too much. The choice of name if I was a boy was apparently Geoffrey after a character in a book that my mom really liked. But it turned out her OBGYN had the same name so that was nixed – it’s a good thing I was a girl!
My first name is a rather unique spelling (although it’s becoming more common now) and while I could never find key chains or pens with my name printed on it I always kind of liked that it was unique (but not too out there).
When my cousin was pregnant with her second son her then two-and-a-half-year-old wanted his brother to be named Bob Basketball after Bob the Builder and his love for playing basketball.
He had Benjamin picked out for my youngest son. When he was born and we looked at him, he was not a Benjamin! We named him Jaden, which is nothing like Benjamin!
My older son’s name is Jacob. And sometimes I think it wasn’t the greatest idea to give them names that both start with JA because people are always accidentally calling them by the other one’s name. Even me! Oddly enough, I usually call my youngest Boo. I’ve called him that since he’s been born. And I call him Boo more than Jaden!
We took a long time to name our first and started discussing names before we were even married, during a 20 hour road trip from Fl to TX. When I was 4 weeks pregnant (before we knew) we toured the capital and heard a story about Andrew Jackson and how in his 60s someone tried to assassinate him twice. The gun misfired twice. So he took his cane and tried to beat he guy to death and had to be pulled off. We loved hat strength and named our first son Jackson. At the time it wasn’t nearly as popular as it is now and we loved it was strong but unique. At least it’s still strong though heard everywhere (whomp whomp). But I do look at my son and can’t imagine him being named anything else. His middle name is Wyatt. My husband is a firefighter and trained with a Wyatt who meant a lot to him. Jackson Wyatt 🙂 my first baby boy.
For our second i really liked the name Oliver and then around 10 weeks I really wanted to name him Andrew. So his name is Andrew Weston (Weston after seeing the Westin hotel on the 20 hour road trip ^).
It’s funny. If Jackson had been a girl he’d have been Lana. But by the time we had Andrew my husband didn’t like the name any more so if Andrew had been a girl he’d been Olivia. And now we have a totally different girl name for number 3 if were lucky enough to have one haha.
I have a lot to weigh in on, haha! I was totally thinking about initials with our girl, especially since we were giving her a middle name with a vowel – so it was _.A.M; it was never going to be an ‘H’ name haha.
We wanted something different, but not totally out of the norm; something that almost sounded like a regular name, but not quite. So I’ll first tell you what her name actually is (haha!): Nia (pronounced knee-ah).
I actually found the name when we were waiting in our midwife’s office for our appointment and loved that it means ‘purpose.’ The husband actually didn’t want that to be her name until two weeks before I was due and then he said, “yup, that’s definitely her name if we’re having a girl” – umm, thanks for acknowledging it when I found it weeks ago? haha
We already do have some troubles with her name though: people assume I’m saying “Mia” but again, it’s close to the common name thing, but still unique and different. And when people see it written they think it’s Nye-ah. Oh well, she’ll straighten them out because she knows how to spell her name and when you ask her, “What’s your name?” She responds, “N-I-A” lol
We also liked classic names, but something that wasn’t on the “most popular” lists. We went with Bennett William. I love that Bennett can be shortened to Ben or Benny, but it isn’t Benjamin. We weren’t telling people the name, so my husband kept telling everyone we were naming him Magnus Ver Magnuson. Since we work together and he was so adamant about it, people really started to believe it. We called him Magnus until the day he was born!
UGH so over those popular names! jackson is so over done
i love the name brendan for a boy, but it ends with an -an…it doesn’t sound too bad with fagan though! and as an added bonus it’s irish 🙂
We had the same rules as you! We had a boys name picked out almost immediately, girls names were much harder for some reason. The day we found out we were having a girl we looked at a list of 25 classic names and each picked 3. Then we told each other our picks and the only one we both loved was Victoria. So we stuck with that! Tori for short.
these are such sensible considerations! can’t wait to hear what you guys choose. i also love James — it’s long been one of my fave books of the Bible, and such a classic name — i didn’t know it was popular again. Lucas & Luke & Eli & Liam & Alex & Jackson…love all of those, such a bummer they’re so popular and a few are surprising to me, as i don’t hear them very often. i inadvertently named a baby when i was 3 years old, randomly enough: my mom’s friend was absolutely convinced she was having a boy — like, had sent out messages to people saying only buy boy stuff, it’s def a boy — and she had a girl, and she was so crushed and embarrassed and hadn’t planned for it at all, and apparently in an attempt to try to cheer her up, my little self was like, “i love Crystal Gale (singer) because her hair goes to the floor. you should name the baby Crystal.” and the woman was like…wow…yes, okay. you can name my baby. haha so crazy right? and the funny thing is, i don’t even like that name. 🙂
I’m a fan of the classic names as well! And it is always so funny to see how baristas misconstrue names, pretty entertaining!
We told people ahead of time. I have never cared what people thought so their input did not matter to me at all. We named our kiddo Maxim Roger….mostly goes by Max!
Being Swedish, I have several names – Lisa (Middle name) (Middle name) (Unusual surname). My big sister told my parents “We will name her Lisa” as soon as she was told there would be a baby joining the family. My mom was praying I would turn out to be a girl as Lisa wouldn’t suit a boy very well 😉 My middle names are picked after people in my parents life that meant something to them and/or family names from loved but deceased relatives. Same for my sister. As we have a unique surname my parents wanted us to have easy INTERNATIONAL first names. I moved from Sweden years ago and when I introduce myself as Lisa there is never an issue. I do have to spell my surname but it doesn’t bother me. And believe it or not, Starbucks has named me both Lina (another Swedish name) and Riza!
Haha so funny about paying attention to initials! My Uncle’s initials are G.A.S and find it hysterical, yet embarrassing for him. He’s a guy so maybe he doesn’t care, but definitely keep it in mind 🙂
We don’t know yet what we are having but we have a firm girl name that we both LOVE. A boy name well we cannot agree and the one we like well it sounds like our dogs name. The dog is Bogey (like in golf) and we love the name for a boy of Bode (like Bode Miller the skier!) but I don’t want to be the person that has a dog and a child the same name!
It seems I like names that don’t go well with our last name either- which is Ford. I love Henry and Harrision. So maybe we should just hope for a girl? hahah
Best of luck picking out a boys name!
We have had just a few simple guidelines we followed for naming our children. (I work in an office of Vital Records where birth certificates are filed and we have seen it all!!!)
1. Know how to say and spell it.
2. Not super common, not a name you’ve never heard of (we succeeded in naming our son, but our girl has a name that is pretty common nationwide, but not common in our area)
3. Just a personal preference….know the gender. I just don’t care personally for names that can cross genders.
4. Middle names have family meaning.
5. Names that work while they are both young and old. I don’t want our children to grow up and have a crazy name if they are an attorney/doctor/teacher/nurse!
Son: Maxwell Dale (we call him Max)
Daughter: Amelia Jean Ann (she is only two weeks old…we are debating on calling her Mia or Millie)
My husband and I talked about baby names and even had a few picked out, but we ended up choosing something completely different. My daughter’s name is Matilda Jo. I LOVED the book Matilda when I was a kid and Jo is my mother’s middle name. I mentioned the combo to my husband and he loved it.
We did tell people her name before she was born; we got mixed results. Honestly, it did hurt my feelings when people had a negative reaction about her name. In the end, though, we still loved it and it fits her so well!
Good luck in your choice! I am sure it will fit Baby PBF perfectly!
Amen to not picking a name off the current most popular list! I have had several names in the past that I’ve loved, only to notice that they are suddenly like in the top 10!! GAH! I’ve secretly got a boy named picked out for one day, and it is no where to be found 🙂 Also, the initial thing! And noticing how it would Monogram! You don’t want it to look like B.A.D. or S.A.D. , like an actual word! Ha!
And if the initials are the same as any undesirable acronyms out there! This wouldn’t be a problem for everyone, but my field is German studies and I had considered a name with the initials F.K., and our last name is K., but in Germany FKK is the abbreviation for a nude beach so…NOPE!
I totally agree with all your name guidelines! Josh wants nothing trendy or out there, but I want nothing that is too popular or common so we’re kind of running into some issues with that. haha
We recently named our little lady and actually had a list of about 25 names that we were mulling over prior to settling on Lucy Joy around week 30 of my pregnancy. That said, with all of our indecision on naming a girl, we came up with approximately ZERO boy names! I had total mental block on them! I know you will pick something fantastic, but I can’t be of any great help, sadly. A few sort of classic names I can get behind are Henry, Marcus, Bennett, and William. Also, the middle name Ryan is always an option! Baby naming is so much fun!
When I was pregnant with my second baby, my older son was 4. We waited to tell him he was going to be a big brother until we found out the gender of the baby just to avoid a million questions. We were sitting at dinner and told Alex he was going to have a baby brother, the first words out of his mouth were “we should name him Jackson, after Jacksonville” (we live in Jacksonville, Florida). We all loved the name and it just stuck, so that is what we named him. Now Jackson thinks that everyone should have a ‘ville’ named after them. He is now 5, and every time we drive through downtown, he will say “there’s my ville”.
🙂 That’s a cute story, and something really sweet that they’ll always share.
Great things to think about – my best friend just had a baby, and their last initial is G. Well, their two first-choice names ALSO began with a G, which they thought would make a cute nickname (Gigi) until three months in, the ultrasound showed that their little girl was a little guy. And wouldn’t you know, they ended up naming their little boy Guy! (But with a different middle initial, actually two, so it’s a crisp name for him to use and be called, but a more substantial full name).
I’ve always loved the names Charlotte and Caroline for girls, but ended up using Charlotte as the title character in a book I wrote, so now I’m not sure about it. Also Schuyler for either.
The HONY buzzfeed was hilarious, Jim Socks lol!! Thanks for sharing… I pretty much have the same criteria as you for naming our child. Something simple, and easy to spell/say especially since our names are Brooke and Scott.
Jim Socks made me LOL!!
We chose the route of not finding out our baby’s gender before birth – which drove SO many people absolutely crazy! On top of that, when asked about potential names, we said we hadn’t decided, or weren’t sharing that information, etc…we were so fun to talk to, ha! You are right – sharing absolutely opens up so many opinions and my husband and I did not want to let that cloud our judgment, plus I think it would have hurt my feelings to hear negative feedback. I’ve known many people who unfortunately had bad experiences with this.
My husband and I really like names that are “classic” and can be shortened to a nickname. We also liked the idea of giving our child a family name as a middle name. Then it got tricky…my husband is a teacher and so initially there were many names that were quickly vetoed (Friends reference! haha) when we started discussing this subject, as he has “bad name association” with certain students. This easily eliminated 5 of my top choices, including my dad’s first name as a potential boy name! (Although he and my dad are super close.) Truth be told, we let the issue rest for quite a bit. I was unexpectedly induced just before 38 weeks and we “got serious” on our way to the hospital, finally agreeing on a boy and girl name. We have a daughter, who has an old-fashioned first name that can be shortened, and her middle name is after my mother:-)
Paul Barrett Fagan = PBF!
🙂 HA! I never even thought of a “real” PBF baby!
LOVE THIS! haha
I’ve thought about names for my imaginary child, but I’ve often then met someone with that name… and then I decide it just isn’t good enough. I was named for my birth month and my ESL mother will sometimes spell it July. Anyways, I’ve decided to go the Lorelai Gilmore route and name my child Julie. If I have a boy… I don’t even know but Sebastian? Although that sounds kind of like a ritzy rich and entitled child.
My soon to be son’s name wasn’t announced in any big way. We did tell family once we decided. I’m not shy on keeping it a secret by any means, but also wasn’t in any hurry to make a big deal about it. I think I put it in a hashtag and people started to notice. His name will be Bayler Bryce. Good luck with picking a name! It was hard for my husband and I to finally agree on a name, but once we did, it felt perfect!
Love this!! I have similar rules for names, because with my name being Stephanie and my husband’s being Christopher, we both ALWAYS are running into people with our exact names! My other rule is what we refer to as the “substitute teacher rule” – as in a sub has to be able to walk in, pick up the name, and pronounce it correctly on the first try! We have a complicated enough last name, I dont want my kid stuck with a hard-to-pronounce first name too!
We have also decided not to share until we give birth (just in case we change our minds!) But also because people get so judgey! The ladies at my office keep trying to name him, and one time someone said the name that’s our most likely choice and some people started hating on it! It had me second guessing for days!