How to Avoid Baby Name Remorse
Sitting down to write about Owen’s birth day today brought memories of my pregnancy rushing back. Choosing names for our children has always been a BIG deal. We now have six children, four boys and two girls, and I can happily say that I like all of their names and they fit each of them to a “T” (as in Thompson).
I was a little sad when this post on baby name remorse showed up in my reader today. I was sad because this is not the first time that the phrase “baby name remorse” has been bandied about in the past few weeks. Apparently, more and more parents are regretting the names that they carefully (or not) selected for their children.
I’d like to say that naming our children was easy as pie. But, that would be a lie. People close to me know that the naming process in our household lasts about 41 weeks, give or take a week or two. The fact that we did not find out the genders of the first four children before they were born complicated things a bit, as we had to hash out and argue over two possible names. This last pregnancy, we decided to find out gender ahead of time, but were thrown for a loop when we found out that our one baby was really two baby girls.
But, we don’t regret any of their names. Why? We set up three simple rules at the outset for naming our children.
Rule 1. It has to be a recognizable name.
- That means that we were not open to made up names, place names, food names, or music names. We scoured the Social Security top 100 names lists for as far back as they go, and pretty much only chose names that consistently appeared on those lists.
Rule 2. No androgynous names.
- Even though my favorite Aunt is named Pat, and I have a good friend named Jamie, and a favorite co-worker named Chris (all women), we decided to steer clear of names that would lead to confusion on something like a class list or camp cabin roster. (True story, I knew a girl in college named Jamie and she was assigned to the boys’ cabin at camp.) Our babies are born with so little hair AND long eyelashes, that it is hard to tell at first glance if they are a boy or a girl, I wanted the name to make it ABUNDANTLY clear.
Rule 3. No non-traditonal spellings.
- I’m not a fan of creative name spelling. While it may be cute to have a kid named Syntheeah, she is not going to appreciate spelling it out to people as an adult and pointing out that her name is really Cynthia spelled funny. Remember, the baby you name today has to live with that name, and its spelling forever.
So, these may not be your rules, but a good way to avoid baby name remorse is to set up SOME rules early on in your child bearing career.
And what are the names we chose, that we’ve never regretted? Andrew, William, Owen, Ethan, Elizabeth and Emily.
Chime in! What did you name your children? Do you have name remorse? Do you have naming rules? I’d love to hear from you!
Granted our little guys have only been with us a year but we really love their names and are happy with our choices. We wanted recognizable names but not common. By choosing old school names that are not in the current cycle of popular names, I think we achieved that. I also used the Social Security listings for the last century. Abraham and Winston were not in the top hundred for the last several decades. And no weird spellings for us either. People know how to spell their names because of the familiar historical and biblical figures.
Those are awesome names!
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Great advice. Our choice was further complicated by having to choose a name that fit these criteria in two languages. We accomplished this using a family name that happened to be a diminutive for a family name in france too (Milo).
I know how worried you were about the name Milo before e was born. I think it suits him perfectly!
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Ha! You know me! I love those androgynous names.
Alexandra was Wade’s choice and we never called her Alex, everyone else did though. Taylor was my choice, I had loved it forever!! Then having Alex & Taylor, we couldn’t have a girly name for #3. I wanted Devin, he wanted Dylan.
I think making the girls feel strong in who they are is important with androgynous names. In Alex’s class this year there is a boy named Taylor and a girl named Dylynn.
Those were OUR rules:) other families will differ. But setting up ground rules at the beginning helps avoid remorse. I don’t think you regret those names at all. And it is true, once you start a pattern, you have to stick with it. After four very traditional boy names, we could not have named the girls Heaven and Princess:)
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I agree with your points! One thing that I’ve read now that we’re having id twins is to avoid naming them names that start with the same letter of the alphabet. I guess the Duggers wouldn’t agree but if you think about it, legally when it comes to documentation, there could be two P. Atkinsons living in close proximity, and choosing 2 names starting with different letters would help to avoid that complication.
I also personally won’t name my twins “rhyming” names, as it could infringe on their sense of individuality, but that’s just my preference.
Yes, we broke the rule as both of our twin girls have E names…however, Elizabeth goes by Lizzie:) We knew she would go by Lizzie or Betsy, so we were lest concerned about first initial. But yes, we did not want a cute set of names for them. What names are you considering?
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With girls I guess it can be a little different because chances are at least one of them will get married and likely take their husband’s last name, so problem will be solved lol.
I’m 12 weeks 1day today, so it’s still SO early to decide on names. Hubby and I have talked about it a little, I tend to like more “traditional” but not weird names. My older kids are Evelyn and Nolan. So far we’ve thrown around the names Sylvia, Estelle (Stella), and Marla. For boys Koby and Brody are what we’ve come up with so far. Not sure I really like the boys names together because of the “rhyming” thing, so chances are we’ll find some other names by the time they’re born. I like Koby better (just because it’s rather “original”) so Brody will be the more likely name to get nixed.
I vote for Marla, if that counts!
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We’re still very happy about how we named our kids. The only one that causes confusion is Zach, people are always calling him Zachary. While it drives Dan and me crazy, I think Zach’s used to it. Emma’s name is enormously popular, but I wouldn’t change it for a million dollars.
I remember when your Ethan was born, how worried Matt was that we’d mind that you named him Ethan.
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We decided we wanted traditional names for the girls but also common/popular names. I nevr could find pencils with Pamela or even Pam on them. However, WI all of the “new” names, it is hard to find Elizabeth, but Emily can usually be found.
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I remember when I was first pregnant, my water had broke and we were on our way to the hospital. We were living in Burnsville at the time and were crossing the Minnesota River on our way to United/Children’s Hospital in St. Paul. I looked at Matt and said you know that this baby is going to be a boy as we do not have a boys name pick out yet. (for whatever reason this moment is etched into my memories) We couldn’t decide if we wanted to go traditional or be a little different. After our baby boy was born we ended up going traditional, but not for the US. We used the Germanic spelling and named him Dominik.
Now with the second one we knew it was a girl and she was going to be named Kahlynn. She got here and once we looked at her there was NO WAY she was a Kahlynn. I am so glad that we thought about it once we could hold her and look at her. She is a Natalie.
I agree that your baby’s name is one of the most important choices that you make for your child and it should not be done lightly. Give it some thought as they have to live with that name for their lives!
She is totally a Natalie!
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I have some baby name remorse with Layne’s name. I did not know that it was also a girls name. I also did not know there was a female pianist named Layne Larson. I really wanted my boys names to be masculine and a little unusual but still familar.
Eileen, you are young enough to have three mo to name:) (ducking)
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I’m a man of remorse, so if I had it to do over again I would name our six:
1. Matthew
2. Mark
3. Luke
4. John
5. Mary Ellen
6. Mary Margaret
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Matt, that’s funny! My rules were similar to yours. My husband never had to spell or pronounce his name and I always have. So my conditions were that you had to be able to spell it, pronounce it, and know if it was a boy or girl. And now we have Joseph, Matthew, and David. I wouldn’t change any of them! I love your names as well.
No remorse here. I’m definitely partial to traditional names–recognizable names, no creative spelling, no wondering if the child is a girl or a boy.
We had two rules: mine was that everyone had to have a different first initial, and Larry’s was that their names come from the Old Testament (with one exception: dd’s middle name is Anastasia). I also like some non-Hebrew names but with five boys and only one girl, we still had plenty of choices!
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Our rule is has to be a saint, Bible person, or relative (or ancestor). That limits the options. The latter rule opens up some sweet ethnic options (unusual, but traditional), but we haven’t explored all the Greek and German possibilities. We have Claire Marie, Gregory Quinn, Robert Christopher, and Mary Elizabeth. (If Mary had been a boy, he would have been Paul [my maiden name]) Our last name is very Saxon, so the traditional first names work out. We keep the family surnames for middle names.
All the oldest females on my side, going back 5 generations, have Marie for a middle name, so we just had to find a first name to match. My husband named our oldest boy after his dad. Both my husband and my paternal grandfathers are Roberts–and one of them lived long enough to be honored to have a great-grandson named for him. He was really taken back and honored. We wanted to name a daughter for my late sister-in-law, Elizabeth, so we chose to use it as a middle name, so others in the family could feel free to use variations of the name, too.
We don’t find the gender out, so we pick two, and whatever’s left over is saved for the next kid. We were glad to finally retire Mary Elizabeth
There was a very interesting article I read once about how, while there are more”unusual” or “original” names, those names sound more alike than the old, shorter list. Think of all the “Aiden” and “-yler” variations, whereas William, John, and Christopher sound nothing alike. So you have a list of 3,000 names, but they sound similar vs. 300 that sound nothing alike at all.
Personally, I don’t think it’s even right to have baby name remorse. You had at least 9 months to choose that name, and if you wanted, you could have kept it “baby” and then changed the paper work later. I know a name is just a name, but since it’s attached to a cute little baby, I feel like baby name remorse is equal to baby remorse. And that’s really really sad.
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