My husband and I are trying to get pregnant (not pregnant… yet), but I’ve been thinking about baby names. I’m a writer and I know names are very important. So now, I’m having some trouble. I have a great name picked out for a daughter, but I’m having some real issues with a boy name.
I’m looking for a traditional name (no Jaydens or Keeleys or anything). Also, I don’t want it to be super-common (no John, Thomas, etc.) I like Edwardian/Victorian/Early American names. Maybe even something from our heritage (We’re both rather Polish and German) that doesn’t sound too oddly foreign. I’m trying to avoid names that are “making a comeback” because I don’t want my kid to be the fourth Theodore in his class (yes, I love that name, but it’s rising quick in popularity). The other consideration is that my son will have the middle name Raymond (family name on my husband’s side) and a lot of the traditional names I’m finding are heavy with the "R"s, which make the name sound clumsy. (Arthur Raymond, Edward Raymond, etc.) And because of that William is off the table… I’m not having a “Billy Ray.”
I know this is early, and I know I’m picky, but geez, this kid will have that name his whole life. I don’t want him stuck with something that sounds awful or on the contrary, something that he’ll just blend into the wall with. Baby naming is hard.
Any suggestions for names or good websites? How have parents here come up with names for their kids that … well … work?
I’ve always wanted to name a boy Abraham. (My boyfriend wants Frank. FRANK?!) You can call him Abe as a baby, which is cute. There is an “r”, but it’s not intrusive. And I love Mr. Lincoln.
My advice? Don’t overthink it. Pick a name you like and be done with it. You can’t control what other parents are going to do, and even if you do all the research in the world. I had the same angst going on when I named my son (born in January of '92), and finally chose “Kyle” - which got me a lot of “what an unusual name!” while pregnant.
He was one of 3 Kyle’s in his kindergarten class. There are 0 in the class one year ahead of him. It was just the year when it finally became a popular name in the Midwest (although it had been growing in popularity in the rest of the nation for some time before that.)
Don’t expect to control the nicknames, either. One reason I picked Kyle was that I’m not a fan of most nicknames. Robert, I like, Bob not so much, Michael is nice, Mikey makes me twitch. Kyle, I figured, couldn’t be made into a nickname. Uh-huh. I think by about 3rd grade, he was going by “Ky”. sigh
With my daughter, we had a name that I just love (Caileigh Morgan) and I just resigned myself to the fact that Kaylee, Caylie, and Kaley were likely to be her classmates…and again, I was wrong. There’s a Callie (short a), but no other Kaylees or anything else pronounced like that in her grade level. Guess I lucked out by being a bit behind the times for the name’s popularity.
So pick a name you like that sounds good with your last name and let it go. You’re going to use it more often than anyone else, after all.
I will be obsessing about this as well, sometime in the near future hopefully. Write a big list of names you love, then just check the current trend for each one here and pick one that isn’t too popular at the moment, and isn’t rising too fast.
There is a bit of lore in my fathers family about a great aunt or some such, removed a bit, who had so many children she didn’t know what to name the last one so she did not name him. Everyone called him ‘Buster’ until he went to school and the teacher knowing his name was not really Buster asked him what his real name was. He replied “Percy Orville”. No one knows why he chose Percy Orville but that was his name for the next 86 years. I have seen his gravestone. It says Percy Orville.
Agree, I have an Alex. He is the only Alex in his class of 200. A name that is popular, has been popular, will always be popular - a name we went into daycare with saying “its fine if he’s one of four” - and for some reason, not popular in his time and place.
On the other hand, my daughter has a friend named Lita. One of TWO Litas in the class. Never heard of another one, but there are two in her classroom.
Choose a name you like, think about nicknames and don’t worry about it. Trust me, life doesn’t end because there are 12 Jennifers in your graduating class.
Choose a name you like, and think twice before running it past people to see what they think beforehand. They either love it, in which case great - or they hate it which can spoil it for you. People rarely say anything once the baby’s born so consider keeping it a secret until then.
For me we needed a name that would scan in both English (Australia) and Italy. Boy From Mars was fond of names which sound terrific with an Italian accent (Francesca, Monica) but sound crap with the Australian drawl: Fraaaaann… Italians can’t handle H sounds well either - so names like Heath are 'eath.
I also had a few rules about names not ending in a letter the next name begins with (they run together), no alliteration (No Bianca Bxxxx), and careful with rhymes.
Also check out what the initials stand for - Baby From Mars was originally going to be Gaia Helena Bxxxx - until we though GHB wasn’t a great nickname. She turned out to be Gaia Sophia Bxxxx which I am so happy with, and glad I spent months wrestling with different name combinations. Cute now, but an elegant name she can grow into and pretty uncommon.
Nymbler is a good site to get ideas for names which are similar to those you like. The Name Voyager graphs name popularity over time.
Now all I can think of is names with an R! Gregory, Andrew, Patrick …
What about Paul, Joseph, James, or Nicholas? I’m fond of traditional names, too, but now that I’ve taught for a while I’m afraid there are few names without negative connotations for me.
You might search out online or in a bookstore a baby name book called Beyond Jennifer and Jason, Madison and Montana. The authors have grouped together boys and girls names into various categories and are quite clear about what names are obsolete, current, trendy, and upcoming. Fascinating reading! But yeah, pick a name you like and be done with it, no use overthinking it. So what if there are other kids with that name? The Jennifers of the 80’s managed to differentiate themselves with nicknames and such, in classrooms.
In Korea, parents used to name daughters literally “Last Daughter” (Mal-ja) in the hopes that the next kid would be a son. Probably not what you’re looking for.
I came in here to suggest this site. If you really can’t think of a name you can go on there and put whatever parameters you want (Start with this letter, Don’t start with this, This many syllables, traditional, Hebrew, etc) and it’ll give you suggestions.
I like looking at names with an obvious bump in popularity and seeing if there’s a reason for it (Arial has a bump in the early 90s and is having another small one now. I think it’s because of the movie. The first bump by the women who had children when the movie came out and now those girls who were young when they watched it are growing up).
Edwardian &/or German? Albert, Alfred, Herbert, Frederick, maybe Jergen. (And that’s Yergen, not Dzhergen!) No R’s? Try Alwyn, Malcolm, or Gavin if you like the British side? More generically perhaps Paul, Dennis, Edmund, Philip, Sigmund. For more continental, maybe Kai or Rolf? Wolfgang is OK, I like Amadeus myself.
