When we were naming our children, the first two were easy. We loved the name Aiden way before we even started
thinking about trying to get pregnant. Before our second came along, I’d fallen in love with the name Kyan and it stuck. Two kids named, no sweat.
The last two didn’t come so simply. We poured through books and websites, played with names of family members and considered every name under the sun ending with an ‘N’, before deciding on Jaxon and Devin. Jaxon was influenced by my favorite movie of all time, Steel Magnolias, although we didn’t want his name shortened to Jack. Hence, the ‘X’, which is still a popular topic of discussion amongst the traditionalists in our families. I’d been fond of the Devin since I met a little boy on my school bus with the name 20 years ago. Luckily, the hubz liked it, too.
Still, even after we’d made our choices, we went around in circles with 10 other name alternatives before officially settling.
Sifting through names for your baby is one of the most fun or frustrating jobs on expecting parents’ to do lists. There are so many things to consider. Should you honor a family member? Go with a theme? Should heritage be weighed in as a deciding factor? Make something up? Buy a baby name book and make a list, then exercise democracy and take a vote?
There are so many options, literally hundreds of thousands, and it can be a real challenge to find the perfect moniker for your little bundle. Nine months sometimes doesn’t feel like long enough to choose a name your child will live with for the rest of his or her life.
It’s a big job, but there’s help of all sorts in books and online. A couple books I like are:
Cool Names for Babies by Linda Rosenkrantz and Pamela Redmond Satran – It lists the names by categories and themes and is easy to navigate through the thousands of options.
The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg – This is a very modern take on baby names and considers popularity over the last 100 years, the image associated with the name and offers additional ideas along the same lines.
If you’re an Internet kind of individual, you might enjoy these sites:
Social Security Online – If you like following or steering clear of the trends in your area, you can find out what names are popular nationally, by U.S. Territory, by decade or even by state. If you’re expecting twins, you can do a quick look up and see what names parents have been choosing when they’re seeing double.
Alternative Baby Names – This site has a lengthy list of names, broken down by origin from African to Japanese and by categories such as Bad Boy, Elvish, Biblical and many, many more. It’s a fun site and makes the search for specific kinds of names pretty simple.
Baby Name Genie – If you’re a twist of fate kind of parent and have had enough of digging for the perfect name for your bambino, you can enter your last name into a generator and it will give you a clever combo that will look nice on birth certificate. This site also offers other advice on baby naming as well as a forum to chat with other flustered name-searchers.
Image Source: flickr.com/photos/kaatje/243834320/
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