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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My married initials are B.S. Not my favorite thing in the world but I keep my middle initial in there if I have to initial anything (BMS). But if my husband says something totally ridiculous I’ll call him out and say “that’s BS” and he jokingly throws back “No, YOU’RE B.S.” so there’s some fun in it.
My first name, Brigid, was my mom’s confirmation name, which she loved and gave to me. People always spell it wrong and I’ve gotten Brittney, Ingrid (????) and Beth when I try to introduce myself.
My sister’s name is Caroline, brother-in-law is Jason, so I took CAR(online) + (ja)SON and nicknamed their baby Carson as soon as they found out they were expecting. When they were still deciding on names but kept using the nickname Carson and it just stuck when he was born!
We are planning to start a family in the near future and have already discussed some boy names. My husband’s initials (first and middle) are J.S. His parents did this as he grandfathers name is J.S. He wants to keep that tradition alive and continue with the J.S.M. initials. He said that is his only request on baby names. haha. My middle name has been passed down from my mother, so that trend will continue if we were to have a girl too.
Good luck! can’t wait to find out!
My little mans name is Connor Kingsley. Kingsley is a family middle name so we knew we wanted something that went with that. We also loved that Connor is easy but really not too common. Best of luck! <3
I absolutely feel ya with the initials–my first/last name initials are PP and I got picked on for that in elementary school. It was not fun, although I used it to my advantage in high school (yikes, feels forever ago) when I ran for student council and used it for my slogan–Do your business, vote PP…complete with a cartoon of a little boy sitting on a toilet 🙂
But long story short, I understand the pain of having inconvenient initials and I’m sure your little one will thank you one day for thinking about that in advance!
We named our daughter Julia (after my husband’s mother who died many years ago!) Best decision ever! I love it! Boys names are tricky! I can’t even think of one at the moment!
I don’t have kids, but when my sister-in-law was pregnant with my first nephew last year we drove her absolutely CRAZY trying to guess the name. We guessed every name we could think of probably twice, but somehow no one guessed what it acutally was.
They named in Graham James Fager (my last name is really similar to yours) and when they finally revealed it after we were born we were all just like wow… that’s so perfect. I loved the fact that they kept it a surprise even though we were so annoying with the guessing!
Feel free to steal the name if you like it… Graham Fagan and Graham Fager could be buddies 🙂
I hear you on the last letters hang up–
I’m AliSON MaSON and it drives me nuts sometimes. People SAY they don’t notice—but I’m sure they’re lying. 😉
My future mother-in-law had three boys and when she was done having kids she named her girl dogs all the baby girl names she never got to use. It’s funny hearing them talk about their old dogs growing up Gretchen, Lily, and Meagan! Also, I have a girlfriend who is naming her baby girl Sadie! Super cute for pups and babies 🙂
haha – my mom did this with the boy cat she got after me – his name is Thomas! hehe
We didn’t find out what we were having when I was pregnant (my fiancé’s wish, not mine) so we stressed about finding a boy and girl name that we loved. We never did settle on a girl’s name so it was a relief when we ended up with a baby boy! My fiancé’s family has a tradition of all boys being given a name that starts with “s” so we went with Sutton, which is my fiancé’s maternal grandmother’s last name. As a middle name we chose William, after my maternal grandparents’ last name. We love that we have never heard of Sutton as a first name so there isn’t likely to be more than one in his class in school, yet it isn’t some crazy weird name. :)!
Love that! Sutton is such a cool name!
My best friend – two of her cousins were pregnant and the same time – due ~ 2 weeks apart. They were both having girls and kept the names secret. Babies were born healthy and strong, and BOTH named Sydney. 🙂
Luckily they have different last names, but talk about confusion!
Names are so challenging. Our first didn’t have a name until the day after she was born (Lucy) and it wasn’t even one of the contenders we went to the hospital with. Our second little girl is due in 6 weeks and we are struggling. Sometimes I find it amazing that I have the authority to name another human. It’s all so permanent.
Now that we have Lucy, I have all sorts of new rules. I like that her name is short so don’t want a crazy long name for the next one. I also like classic/traditional and not overly popular though that is getting harder to avoid. Plus I have tons of cousins (39 on my dad’s side alone) and I’m committed to finding a name we like that hasn’t already been used by a close friend or family member.
My brother has some (very strange) friends that couldn’t decide on a name for their son, even after he was born. While they were in the hospital, a nurse told them that in the state of Kansas you have 1 year to change the name… so these people decided it would be funny to name their kiddo Soda Pop. Yep. First name Soda, middle name Pop… Obviously their families were mortified that they would do such a thing, and insisted that they change it, which made the parents dig their heels in the ground and insist that they would name their child whatever they wanted. So there is a poor child out there with the name Soda Pop. Kinda makes Reagan Megan Fagan sound pretty good! 🙂
We’re having a lot of fun coming up with boy names, too. And I totally agree with that advice you got – we feel like sharing a name we love will only open us up to some potential negative feedback, and we want to pick what we love. Once people see the name attached to an adorable little baby’s face, they’ll love it regardless : )
My parents wanted to call me Nikki (I am so not a Nikki), but the day I came home from the hospital, their neighbors bought a dog and named it Nikki. So they stuck with Nicole!
I definitely agree with not telling people. We told a few people who told a few people and soon our whole family knew…And everyone has an opinion on the name….at the end of the day though when you are holding your baby, you will know the name and it will all click!
Personally, I think I have a unique name that is not too “crazy” haha.
My name is Coral and when I was younger I wasn’t too fond of it because in elementary and middle school, when my science classes studied “coral reefs” everyone would look at me and smirk. Looking back, it could have been worse, but I was shy at the time. But now I LOVE my name and how unique it is. I always get comments about how beautiful my name is. It’s simple but unique. I’m also from and live in Florida so it’s appropriate for the area haha.
Picking a first name is hard. We chose Bennett as our sons middle name but going to the hospital we still had two front runners for first names. We didn’t choose until we saw him. I made my husband call him by both names and had him pick. Also, whatever name u choose…plan on saying it A LOT…esp. The first few months. 🙂
It is SO overwhelming naming a person…I thought I had my names picked out since I was a kid but when it came time to really buckle down, I panicked! We actually had two names going into the hospital and waited to see her to name her.
We had the same list, basically. We wanted easy to spell and say but not too trendy, and we needed to be careful of initials! We chose Audrey and it just feels right.
My husband and I flipped a quarter in the delivery room to decide our baby name. I was equally fond of both of the names we had narrowed it down to and just couldn’t decide. I lost the flip and her name become Ada. We also kept our short list of names fairly quiet. As morbid as it sounds, cemeteries are great places to look for classic and unusual names. Ada was my great-great grandmother’s name that we noticed on her tombstone on Memorial Day.
I agree to cemeteries being a great place to look for names – they tend to be unique and old fashioned. I’m glad I’m not the only one who has done this!
My son is Camden. I had loved that name since I saw it on some list after I found out he was a boy. I couldn’t get my husband to commit (or have any other contenders) finally he agreed at the hospital. It’s nice to have a partners without strong opinions. 🙂 I would tell people we hadn’t decided yet. I would recommend telling family members if you decide and make sure they can say it. My father-in-law pronounced in “can dum” forever and finally can kind of say it right. Not something I thought I’d need to do! I’m a teacher and agree to stick with something easy to spell and give them a name you are going to call them by.
My son is Callum Jacob. Callum was a name we both loved – and not super common, which was important to us as well. Jacob was my grandmothers maiden name, and it meant a lot to be able to honor her.
This topic is SO near and dear to my heart right now. My husband and I are having a boy in May and we’re still discussing names. The whole “not popular” names questions is driving me crazy right now. I’ve always said, no popular names, but we both REALLY like a name that is fairly popular right now!! I’m so torn that the other day I actually searched “is it bad to name your child a Top 10 name”. Not surprisingly you get all sorts of reactions that go to both extremes. Needless to say it didn’t help with my coming to grips with it. 🙂
Girls’ names starting with “E” are so popular nowadays! Within the past year, my friend named her baby Ella, another friend named her baby Emma, my cousin’s baby is nicknamed Ellie (short for Penelope), and my pregnant coworker is thinking of naming her baby Ellie.
We finally settled on a name for our baby baby due in 3.5 (seriously????) weeks. It took forever. My husband had so many little rules. He doesn’t like nicknames so he didn’t want a name that could be shortened. Our last name is only three letters and one syllable, so one syllable names were out. The list goes on. The name we settled on is fairly popular, but it’s a name I’ve always loved and we are both happy with it. I was a Lindsey born in the 80’s, he will survive if there is one other kid in his class with his name ;). Now when we named my daughter, we had the name settled two weeks after we found out it was a girl (and Madeline is totally “nicknameable” haha!). It was harder this time. Though the name we ended up choosing was the one I was pushing for from the beginning. Men are so funny!
I have a long first name — Anastasia — which no one ever calls me. I’ve always been Stacie! I love having that little secret first name that blows people away when they find out. I always told myself i’d give my child a long name and then a nickname that everyone knows them as.
I couldn’t agree more about keeping the baby’s name under wraps. My little boy is 4 months old now, and we didn’t tell anyone. His name is Bradley Cole (Cole being a family name). Instead, we came up with ridiculous names that we said we were going to name him, which stuck as nicknames through my pregnancy. For quite a while, he was Garfield and Olaf. It’s fun to see people’s reactions when you tell them the silly names, before you let them in on the joke. I bet baby O’Fagan could be the same way!
I’m pregnant with a girl and Julie was always actually my favorite name. However, my husband has 3 aunt Julie’s so I didn’t want to add another to the mix. I finally convinced my husband what name we should use and didn’t want to tell anyone but he did. Of course, the first thing his sister said was that it was boring and she’d call her ‘so and so’ instead. I was so angry! I agree with you, keeping it a secret and waiting to see if your baby truly fits the name seems like a great idea to me.
I can totally relate to your rule about not wanting a name that ends in “an” because I had a similar weird rule when naming our daughter who was born in March. My last name is Rush and I thought any names ending in “ra” sounded too weird. I really liked the name Clara but thought that Clara Rush was weird sounding because of the two “ruh” sounds back to back.
I thought picking out a name was really stressful and the best and most honest piece of advice I got was from a friend who told me not to worry if we couldn’t come up with a name that we were just absolutely head over heels in love with. She said that she and her husband picked out their son’s name even though they weren’t totally in love with it because they knew they both liked it enough and they couldn’t come up with a better one, and once the name belonged to their little son who they love so much the name took on more significance and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t the “perfect” name. This made me feel south better and less stressed about finding the perfect name. Ultimately we chose a name that we both liked and agreed on and now that it is our daughter’s name we couldn’t imagine anything different!
oops, “so much” not “south.” Silly autocorrect!
Congrats! My husband and I just welcomed our little girl into the world this past December. We found out her gender, but decided to keep her name a secret until she was born. Our friends and family are very opinionated and we thought it was better to keep the name under wraps because once she’s born no one can say a bad thing about it! They’ll be so in love with your little bundle of joy that the name won’t even matter. Can’t wait to hear what you name your baby boy and wishing you all the best during the remaining months of your pregnancy!
I really love the roundabout way my parents named me..or shall I say how I named myself!!
They were actually expecting a boy, but surprise! The ultrasound was deceiving, so they didn’t have one girl name ready to use. Before they knew the sex, they were undecided between two names.
After I was born, they decided to put each name on a small piece of paper, crumble it up and put them separated in my dad’s hand. They lifted my hand over my dad’s and let it drop. Whichever paper I landed on would be it, and that’s the story about how a 1-year old named herself! haha
I’d say Julie is a good name too, so I chose wisely 🙂
I named my daughter Brandi and my mom was not too thrilled with that choice (My maiden name had alcohol connotations, gahhh).
I named my son William Joshua to be called Joshua. My mother told me, big mistake. Folks will call him William. She suggested I reverse them. Well, darn it. Mama was right. His name has been a constant battle and still is to this day.
Definitely don’t tell your name (someone stole my son’s name and we’d had it picked out over 10 years…hubby’s best friend). Just don’t. And picture a 60 year old with the name you pick. Yeah, I can’t picture a 60 year old Brandi. *frown*
Picking out names is so hard! I feel like boy names are more difficult for some reason. I have two boys – Liam and Logan. They’re popular names but we liked them and went with it. 🙂 My initials spelled DAD growing up. Didnt bother me at all. I knew a girl with PMS initials. I probably wouldn’t have liked that. If we decide to have a third I was thinking about keeping the name a secret until he or she was born. It seems like when you’re pregnant people feel like they can comment on the name choice….even total strangers. Lol Good luck picking out a name 🙂
My parents were going to name me Emily Grace, but then my initials would be EGG… They opted for a family name,
Marie.
I feel like all those points you listed are valid. I haven’t had a baby, but I’ve been told that once the baby is born the baby kind of “names its self – you just know!
Good luck, I doubt you’ll make a “bad decision!”
so smart keeping it a secret, Jewlie! haha…. Starbucks has spelled my name as Miley. Twice.
Funny/sad about the A.S.S. thing. Poor girl. My first 2 initials are M.R. (obviously…haha) and I’ve always kinda disliked that it looks like Mr (mister)!
I was trying to think of names that would have cute initials. I came up with elf (Elliot Landon Fagan) and alf (Alexander Landry Fagan) or oaf (Oliver Allen Fagan) but the last one isn’t really nice so scratch that. Me and then husband made an agreement when I was pregnant that if he got to choose the first name I would choose the middle name and vice versa for our next baby. It worked for us. We didn’t tell anyone any names we picked because it took forever for us to decide plus I didn’t want to know the sex of our first one and the second one we wanted to surprise everybody.
Back when we chose names it was fun to look at the names at the end of a movie…the credits. There is always an interesting name that we liked, or laughed about.
I have a long last name that is hard to spell and pronounce so my parents had a hard time finding a name that went with it. I am also the first born child and grandchild on both sides and my mom got a lot of “I hate that name” comments from my aunt and grandmother. Everyone told my mom she was having a boy (no fancy ultrasounds way back when) and my dad’s side is almost all boys (my grandfather was one of six) so they had two names for a boy and none for a girl. I ended up being named after the student nurse who was with my mom.
I’m half Irish so I love classic Irish names (Claire, Liam, Aiden, etc.), but after reading A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks I fell in love with the name Landon.
Best of luck in the name quest.
Btw I hated my name for 2 decades if you can believe that. It wasn’t until I started watching the tv show Beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton that I started to love my name. Crazy I know. Even though we kept our baby names a secret both times some family members were not happy because we didn’t use any of our family names. I did have a dream early during my last pregnancy that it was a boy and his name was Ezra. I knew it was from God because that name never occurred to me nor were we Jewish. I do love my son’s name to this day. Lastly I thought we were having girls because that’s all I dreamt about while I was pregnant so Summer Rose and Sunshine Ray will have to stay in the vault unless by some miracle I have twin girls before I’m 50. Lol!!!
That’s our 2nd boys name 🙂 We have two girls names, and two boys names. So, should we have 2 sons, one will be Ezra. I LOVE it.
Oh how sweet jv! I hope so. So far I know a few boys named Ezra here in the states. My son’s middle name is Daniel. Since I had the dream and his first name was pretty much picked out because of that his dad got to chose his middle name. I love it. My first son’s name is Christian. I got to choose his middle name since his dad picked the first name. I picked Boazariah. Boaz from the book of Ruth and Azariah from the book of Daniel and just combined the 2.
I have a friend whose son’s middle name is Boaz! Love those names!!
Sweet JFV! it’s so good to know there are others out there with common names like these. 😉
well I’m not sure if this qualifies as funny necessarily, but my parents gave me the initials OCD and didn’t realize it until I pointed it out to them when I got older. It 100% fits me though, and made naming my blog pretty easy 😉 I’m sure you guys will find the perfect name for your little one !
We went with the initials ROAR- but because of our last names we couldn’t go with an E middle name other wise it would be REAR. 🙁 For the longest time we only liked E middle names too! But after we decided on the first name- Rohan- we used it everywhere to test it out. Like when ordering coffee from starbucks. Usually we get no problems.
When we knew we were going to have a boy, my husband and I “narrowed down” the list to about 12 names but couldn’t agree on a first and middle name. So my scientist husband created a spreadsheet that showed all 12 names in every possible combination of first and middle. Amazingly, that helped tremendously and we were finally able to agree on a name. And when he was born, it fit him perfectly!
Sort of a funny naming story about myself:
My parents originally wanted to name me Lauren, but then my mom remembered that one of her nieces was named Laura – our names would be too similar in her opinion. They instead decided on Kara……failing to remember that Laura’s sister (another niece of my mom’s) is named Kari!
and just like my mom was worried about in the first place, our names have gotten mixed up by relatives my entire life haha 🙂
I’m totally on board with Reagan O’Fagan. Just sayin’ 😉
I totally agree with you! My hubby and I took a while before we agreed on a name 🙂
Next to finding out the gender picking out a name has to be the second best thing! Every thing you mention is exactly what went through my husband and I’s head as well. With my first pregnancy we had decided a head of time that if it were a boy his name would be Daniel Lowell. Daniel is by husand’s middle and his grand father’s first name. Lowell is my grand father’s middle and my great grand father’s first name. Needless to say his name was coming right out of the family tree. And if it were a girl we hadn’t any idea. Low and behold we were pregnant with a baby girl and thus the tossing of names began. We finally narrowed it down to my husbands pick, Emily Lynne. Lynne is my middle name.
With baby two it was a little different. We didn’t have any names lined up other then if it were a boy it would be Daniel Lowell. At the 20 week sonogram we found out it was a boy! It wasn’t until right before he was born that my husband said the name Zachary Daniel. I instantly fell in love with the name. Giving him my husbands middle name. I feel bad when he starts school having the initials ZDA, depending on how the teacher arrangers their class he’ll either be first or last!
I find it neat that both of our childern carry one of our middle names. Both first names are traditional, not commonly used, easy to spell, and easy to make a nickname out of.
Happy naming!!
Oooh ooh ooh! This is so much fun! If you need anyone to help with the voting, I’m game! 😉
Names are kind of funny. I have 3 daughters. The first we named Emily, a VERY common name yet we hardly come across Emily’s in her generation. Our second daughter is Lyla and we run I to other Lyla’s ALL the time. Our 3rd daughter we had a name picked out through the entire pregnancy and then the night before she was born, I read the name Clara and knew I had to change it :). I personally think you just have to go with what you like and what fits with your family. Good luck!! After naming 3 girls, I can’t even wrap my head around boy names.
Picking baby names is so much fun! We picked our boys’ first names based on what we both liked, there was a lot of discussion and one of the keys to choosing a good middle name for us was how it sounds when you have to yell it lol! So we have a Ty Andrew, and an Evin Scott. Andrew is for my mom’s middle name of Ann, and Scott has always been a name I love, and is also my brother in law’s name, so it worked. We didn’t tell people for the same reason you and Ryan are keeping your name choices quiet…unsolicited advice and comments. No matter how careful we were people still mess their names up. People ALWAYS think Ty is short for something…I have even been told not to put his “nickname” on paperwork. We both loved the name Evan, but thought the spelling we chose was fun and unique without being confusing, but people mess it up all the time lol. Oh well 🙂 With the name Jillian I am used to dealing with it. Congrats and good luck on your name choosing 🙂
I shot down a lot of names because of rhyming, too. Even when they didn’t technically rhyme, if they were too similar in the ending letters I said no. My #1 pick was Liam, but my husband was hesitant because of the recent popularity. I convinced him it wasn’t a big deal so we’ve got a little Liam contributing to that number 1 on the top 10 list. And I’ve yet to meet another same-age Liam, although I do occasionally hear the name at the playground. Don’t let the list deter you if there’s a name you really love and keep coming back to!
For baby boy number 2, though, we managed to pick a name not even in the top 50. Opposite ends of the spectrum 🙂
My husband wanted to name our son Dillinger or Bronson. I said no way – I can’t imagine a little baby laying in his crib or in my arms and me calling him either one of those names. Now, 25 years later, I think either one of those names would have been pretty cool. We named him Dillon. I don’t know how I ran across your blog, but I have been reading it for a few years now. I feel like I know you. Congratulations to you both!
My grandmother’s maiden name is Bronson and I go back and forth deciding if it would make a good first name. I love my name but it does require alot of pronunciation corrections. I get alot of “Joshelyn” and “Josh”. Even my father in law can’t get it right!