Choosing a baby name is an important decision. Where do you start? Perhaps, you have always had an idea in mind. Maybe you hadn’t given it much thought before. We checked in with our guest blogger. Louise to find out how she is going about choosing baby names.
How are you going about choosing a name for your baby?
Choosing a name for someone is difficult and not something you should rush into. The main thing for me when choosing a name is that I would like to continue the tradition of having two middle names. My brother and I were both given two middle names (we are both adopted but from different families) and my wonderful parents chose this for us. This, therefore, gives us some more choice, if you can’t decide on just one.
Where are you getting your inspiration?
We are finding inspiration from everywhere, people’s suggestions and my pregnancy app has a page of names from around the world. They are organised by gender then unisex names, books and even inspiration from movies. I have found myself looking at the credits after programmes and films and picking out any names that I like. I have an ongoing list on my phone that I add to if I hear something I like.
What are you avoiding?
When choosing names to avoid, that’s also kind of easy to do. I have a list in my mind of names of ex’s, children I’ve taught, friends children and so on.
We have both decided and agreed on choosing a name that doesn’t begin with a ‘J’ or ‘L’ but that’s our personal choice.
Other advice when choosing a name:
Some advice we were given by others as well as from the Internet:
- Don’t choose something hastily, take your time to decide
- Look up meanings, my friend whose daughters name is Kayra means a ‘gift or blessing’ which is beautiful and I feel this is something to consider
- Consider the nicknames they would have from this name
- Have a look at the family tree, this is something both James and I are doing at the moment. We have already added a few names to our ‘like list’. One of my nieces was given her name after her late grandad, Andi. My second niece was given her name after a nan, Connie. I think it’s very special to name a child after a relative and this is something that means a lot to us both. Following on from this, middle names can also include relatives from the family tree.
- Keep the spelling easy, don’t make it harder for a child to write or frustrating to spell out to others.
- Does it sound ‘smooth’, meaning does it ring well when you read it aloud
Hopefully, this has been helpful if you are also trying to choose a baby name. Please stay for a little while and look at other helpful blogs such as:
10 photos to take before leaving the hospital with your baby
