Naming the baby?

nicolejoy

nicolejoy

Registered User
How did you decide a name for your baby? I'm 6 months pregnant and we're having a total nightmare on names. We know the gender (had it confirmed 3 times so far, so we're pretty confident) - so we only really need to decide for ONE gender at least... but I always had this idea that there would be names that we BOTH really liked. Or names that one of us LOVED and the other one liked. But instead, any name that I LOVE, he can't stand, and vice versa!! The "best" that we can do is to come up with names that we both are ok with - but neither of us actually LOVE or HATE...

Did anyone else have that problem with naming your child?? How did you resolve it?? My husband says that as a last resort, he'll just let me name the baby - but I really want to find SOME way to name the baby together...

I have to say that for us, this is harder than any of the baby shopping or anything like that!!! We just have totally different tastes!!
 
Our method involved expecting to have more than one child, but for the first child one person gets the first name, the other the middle name. Reversed that for the second child.
 
Were you both happy with that arrangement? Did your hubby like the name that you picked, and did you like the name that he picked??
 
I also started off in the same boat as you Nicole; my husband liked names and hated, and vice-versa.

Instead, we tried to agree on or discard various types of names and work from there...
1. Do you both want to use family names, or pick new names?
2. Do you want to work with names in your family's ethnic background?
3. Do you like the trend of last names used as first names (Connor, for example)?
4. Long first names, or short? Is there a short version of something that you both like?
5. Work out which letters of the alphabet (for the start of a first name) sounds best with your last name, and really go through those choices in a name book.
6. Do you mind using a name that is very popular at the moment - or would you rather go with something a bit more classic (Elizabeth, for example). Ive found each country has a website which ranks how popular names are, which is good guidance for the 'no' list if you dont want a name that everyone else is using.

Hopefully you get where Im going with this. The name of the game, pardon the pun, is to find categories you can both agree on (and also rule out). Once my husband and I did this, we were able to agree and be happy with names we both liked pretty quickly.

Best of luck,
Sarah
 
we had the same problem trying to agree to anything. We had two rules that it had to be a 2 pr more sylabel name becasue our last name is only one sylabel. We wanted traditional names instead of of made up names with weird spellings that are so popular now. We both agreed on these points. Every name I suggested he didn't like, and my husband wouldn't go throught he book to say what he did like. Picking a name was very stressful and not fun and I thought it would be fun! Finally I made him go throught he book and make a list of the names he liked, as did I and one of the names match both lists so that was what we picked for a girls name. he never did get through the boys names (we were sure it would be a girl). In the end we had a boy and no name, so he took 2 names off of my short list and I picked between them. I really liked the name but worried for about a month that my husband didn't really like it and that we picked the wrong name because we had done it on the fly, but then I got over it.

Our second child was harder because now I also needed a name that went well with the first child too. We picked a boys name very easily but had no girl name( becaseu he still wanted the one we picked the first time, but I didn't like it anymore). Luckily it was a boy again.

We picked English first names and English family middle names and My husbands paretns picked their chinese names, so each child has 4 different names on their birth certificate. Picking the chinese names was a whole fiascoe too because his parents would not agree on anything so they each made lists too, He dad picked the first child, and his mom the second

Good Luck!!!!
 
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My husband is Chinese as well - so we ALSO have to think about Chinese names too!! I want one which sounds ok in English... My husband had a guy at his school called Wan King Man - I want to avoid ANYTHING like that!! Hopefully come up with something that actually sounds somewhat NICE in English... we're designating my husband's parents to write us some suggestions as well...

For the "English name" on the birth cert, I want to JUST write the English name, NOT the romanisation of the Chinese name. Is that ok?? Does anyone know?? I want to give an English first name, an English middle name - but NOT write the Chinese romanisation. Then when it says "Chinese name", JUST write the Chinese name in Chinese... Is that acceptable over here??
 
I think the key is to keep throwing names around right up until the end. Eventually you hit upon one that you both love. I don't think either party should compromise on the name, you both have to love it. It helps if you both see eye to eye on whether you like old school names or popular names. And don't tell anyone, particularly mother's as they will always disagree!
 
For both our babies, we waited until it was born. We thought it was important to meet them and connect with them first ! We came up with a list of names and called them that name for a while and see if it suited their personality and if we liked it ourselves. For both our babies, we waited for the full 42 days before we decided and had to go get them their birth certificates. Don't feel pressurised into giving them a name that you feel is medicore, both you and your husband need to like it.
Good luck !
 
nicolejoy said:
Were you both happy with that arrangement? Did your hubby like the name that you picked, and did you like the name that he picked??
Click to expand...

Yes. But there was some little give-and-take. Sort of rank the choices and see which one comes out on top. But we weren't really far apart to begin with.
 
snap - i had always thought the same and we had major difficulty naming our first son - plenty of girls name but NO boys name that we agreed upon. I hated the name that my husband wanted and he wasn't too keen on the name i really wanted. after the birth he gave in and we went with the name i loved.

for son #2 it was MUCH harder. we seriously did not have one single name that we could agree upon. we knew the gender from early in the pregnancy and were still no closer to having a name by the due date.

thankfully we found a name in a book a few days before he was born.

it would be nice to say that it was a name that we both loved - but it wasn't. it is a name that we both didn't hate......

it seemed so wrong for this to be our only option but neither of us would budge this time.

anyway..this is the name we eventually used. now that it is a little person and not just a name it has grown on us and we both love it.
 
I think that at the end of the day, even if you go for a name you are both only ok with initially, once you see your baby and call him/her by that name, the name automatically takes a different turn and become a name you love because it's the name of your child.

Naming is by far the most difficult thing to decide on!!
 
I never knew it was this hard...

You know when you're young and single and you think about baby names, you think it'd be SO fun to name a baby - and you get all these GREAT ideas of names and all that, whether it's cool names or sentimental ones or whatever... but then you get married and there go all the great ideas ;) ;)
 
We had a tough time, too, because my hubby and I also had very different ideas on names. We have two girls, and I liked really feminine names, and he liked modern/edgy names. There weren't a whole lot of names in the middle ground.

With our 2nd daughter, there was a name that my hubby really liked, but I didn't really like very much. However, after she was born, I spent about 2 or 3 days trying out different names on her, and the one name that I didn't really like was the one that fit her and stuck. Now I love it. :)

Best of luck!

Oh, and as for the Chinese names... my hubby is also Chinese, and we compromised by having an English first name and a Chinese middle name. DH said he didn't care if they had one or not, but considering our kids are half Chinese, I really didn't want them to miss out on that part of their heritage.
 
I am a UK born Hong Konger and my wife is a native Hong Konger. My main consideration was to find a Chinese name for my daughter that translated well in English and vice versa.
 
In my family, we always used first names that were nice, sounded good etc - and the middle names were more "sentimental", so I always wanted to do the same with our kids. I still want to do that... my husband is totally against using any names that anyone in our families have used for the past 3 generations! Which is really annoying because there are some really good names that some of his more distant relatives had but he still doesn't want to use them!!
 
nicolejoy said:
For the "English name" on the birth cert, I want to JUST write the English name, NOT the romanisation of the Chinese name. Is that ok?? Does anyone know?? I want to give an English first name, an English middle name - but NOT write the Chinese romanisation. Then when it says "Chinese name", JUST write the Chinese name in Chinese... Is that acceptable over here??
Click to expand...

Yes no problem, Chinese and English names can be completely different. Not an issue at all.
 
Oh great - mostly I see that on peoples' "English Names", they have the romanisation of their Chinese name - which can look really weird, depending on what it is!!
 
You may also want to look into what the name means, that helped us find the names that we wanted. When our daughter was born we had picked out two names that we liked. She popped out and we both looked at each other and said well she's neither of those, so we then had to find a name that matched her. It's so exciting to chose your baby's name and so important to get it right, so maybe have some ideas, but wait until you see their little face and let them help you decide.
 
We're making a BIT of progress, we've got a few names that we both "like" - hopefully one of them will match when we finally meet baby!!! Chinese names, we've got NO idea... I think that we're gonna ask FIL to help there!! If he gives us a few ideas, we might choose between them...
 
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