Picking the perfect name for your baby

One of the most important decisions you will make once you find you are pregnant is that of picking the perfect baby name. Everyone has their own idea of what a great name is, sometimes it is as simple as whatever is currently fashionable as per the top 10 names for the country in the year that the baby is born, sometimes it’s a family name that honors a favorite relative, and sometimes it’s just a name that the mother (or father) really likes.

The baby name chosen will occasionally carry certain cultural significance. This happens often in the case of popular baby names as they are fashionable for a certain period of time and then the trend changes and so you can put babies with those names into a certain decade. Television, and to a lesser extent movies, can influence these trends as certain television shows have characters with names which are “different” and which parents like so this is added to the list of potential baby names. There are exceptions to this however, as there are some baby names which are timeless and have been handed down generation to generation throughout the family.

Whether or not to choose the baby name before the baby is born is a matter for personal preference. There are parents who decide what their baby’s name will be from the moment they have the pregnancy confirmed - and in some cases, they know what baby names they will choose before they are even pregnant! Then there are other parents who wait until the baby is born before naming it. Sometimes this is because they can’t agree on a name, or because they haven’t found one they like, or sometimes just because they want to wait to see how the baby looks before naming it.

Once the baby is born, there’s still time to pick the perfect baby name for your baby. Even if the name was decided months before the birth, it’s possible that having seen the baby, the name will change. When you see your baby for the first time, and hold it in your arms, you may decide that the name chosen doesn’t seem to fit with the baby you are looking at. Maybe the baby has more delicate features than the robust name chosen suggests, or vice versa. It’s also possible that there was someone instrumental in bringing the baby into the world that you want to honor by naming your baby after them - and this won’t be known until after the birth occurs.

Take time to choose the perfect name for your baby, and don’t be afraid to change your mind at the last minute if you feel it’s not quite appropriate, after all the baby is going to wear that name a long time!

Have you ever wondered why we are named this way? Why are some names exclusive for boys while others are only reserved for girls? When searching for naming ideas online, it is expected that links or tables entitled “boys names” or “girls’ names” could be seen. As in real life, we are given names that are distinctive, names that connote the gender of their bearer. A traditional name like Margaret will naturally be filed on the girls list and a kid named Joey would instantly be expected to be a boy.

During the Victorian era, boys and girls wear the same clothes and hair. Gender specific names were important then because it was hard to distinguish which is which without their names. Feminine versions of names became popular in this time such as Albert/Alberta, Christopher/ Christina, Robert/Roberta, and many others. Neutral names were common too such as Carol, Julian and Vivian, but the gender recognition varies among countries.

In Italy, Carmen is a boy’s name while it is more given to girls in America. Spelling was a technique in altering a boy’s name to a girl’s name. One good example here is Dennis, which they spell as Denise. World travel and mass media that rose after World War II made non-traditional, religious names acceptable for a child. However, looking at the popular names during this time, traditional names still remained at the top. During the 1960’s Michael, David and John were on the top 3 for boys while Lisa, Mary and Susan are for girls.

Despite the hippies’ probing on new things, names that are deep-rooted in family history were more favored. Nowadays, parents practice more liberty in giving their babies names that formally belong to the opposite gender. A lot of parents feel that this new custom is absolutely acceptable and practical. However, there are still who are firm to sticking to tradition.
Observing the trend in gender swapping on names, one will notice that parents are more likely to take risks in deciding names for girls rather than with boys.

Over the last century, girls’ names appear and disappear more quickly than boys’ names. Many of them continued to change in form, spelling, pronunciation, and meaning. Boys’ names almost never take on these variations. Furthermore, only boy’s names are given to girls but girl’s names are seldom, if not at all, given to boys. Actually, one author of a baby article observed that there are more Robin girls than boys.

Non-gender specific names are also growing in popularity. Surnames are usually used to create gender neutral names, so are geographic names, like Dakota and Brooklyn. In the recent years, simple words like North and Blaze are being included in the choices. Other names are days of the week, months and plants.

One can have a crash course in history with names. Studying the trends reveal not only the “cutest” or “hippest” names in town but also the popular thinking of the society. Well for parents, it doesn’t really matter what the fashion is. If you really your baby boy named Eve, no one in the world can stop you.

Should you give your child a popular baby name?

When choosing the name for your baby, whether or not to choose a popular baby name is one of the top questions you will face. Although you may like to follow fashion trends in many aspects of your life, it’s possible that when it comes to naming your newborn, you prefer not to follow the current name list, and instead choose something that’s more traditional.

Although popular baby name lists often include some traditional names that seem to be evergreen, they also reflect the current trends in popular culture. By giving your baby one of these names you are placing your child within a certain period of history because of the time frame that this name was popular and the amount of people within their generation who have the same name - for example, Tiffany was not as popular in the 70s as it became in the 80s, and likewise, the popularity for the names Marilyn and Rita are more likely to be reflected in names of the baby’s grandparents’ generation.

When deciding to give your baby a popular baby name, consider whether or not the name will still sound good when the baby is grown up. Is it a name which will endure the years, or do you think that it could sound dated - as perhaps the name Doris, which would have been a popular baby name in its time, sounds to you now. Another thing to consider is how many other babies have been given the same name, especially in the area where you expect your baby to grow up in. Do you really want him to be in a class with 6 other boys who have the same name? The positive side of choosing a popular baby name is that you know your child will have a name that will be acceptable by his peers, although a traditional popular name such as Thomas will be probably transformed into something more modern such as Tom or Tommy.

Whether or not you choose to give your baby a popular baby name is very much a personal decision, but more often than not there are outside influences which will also factor into the final verdict as you consider not only the current trend, the future implications and even whether or not it’s a name that a child can grow into adulthood with, but also the other people who will be important in the baby’s life, and whether or not you want to recognise their part by ignoring the popular baby name list and naming your baby after them instead.

Baby names are one of the priority thoughts in most mothers-to-be. Next to whether the baby will be a girl or a boy, this is something that occupies a large percentage of pregnancy baby thoughts! There are a lot of things to consider when choosing your baby name, and there will also be a number of people who will have opinions as to what names you should be thinking about!

Both sets of perspective grandparents will have some suggestions about baby names for you to add to your list, these could be names of their parents, or their best friends, or people who have had some input into your life as you were growing up and who your parents think deserve some recognition for this. Some of the baby names they come up with could be already on your list of potential names; others may be completely unsuitable because they are outdated or just too strange for the culture in which the baby will grow up. Rather than cause any undue upsets, tell anyone hoping to have input that you haven’t named the baby yet, but will add their suggestions to your list - and hope once the baby is here that everyone is going to be so wrapped up in the baby itself that they won’t care what you call it!

The baby name you choose is going to be something that your child will be known as all of its life, so keep in mind that if you decide to keep a number of people happy, and have a Christian name, and three middle names plus the surname, your child is probably not going to be so happy every time they have to fill in an official document in the years that follow! Also try and keep the spelling of the name as simple as possible so that clerical errors can be minimized - on the other hand, if you would like and unusual name for your child, but don’t want to have the child singled out because of it, you could decide to go for a different spelling of a more common name instead.

Above all, when deciding on the baby name you will give your child, think about a name that means something to you. Perhaps it’s a name of someone you admire, or someone you love. Perhaps it’s a name that seems to connect somewhere within you. Perhaps it’s just a name that comes to mind the first moment you look into your baby’s eyes. Whatever the name is, as long as you can’t think of any reason why it would give your child any problems in the future, then that’s the baby name that should be top of your list, because it’s your baby and one of your happiest rights as a parent is to choose your baby’s name.

Choosing Baby Names in a Multi-Cultural Family

Despite the fact that choosing baby names can be exciting project, and one to which most pregnant women give much thought during their pregnancy, if the woman is in a multi-cultural family, then the choice of baby name takes on a life of its own. Once the initial joy of consulting a book of possibilities wears off, dread and fear of never finding something that will make all family members happy takes over! Although the choice of a baby name does fall to the parents, there are a number of additional problems that can fall on a family which has more than one nationality to consider, and which are in addition to the pitfalls of choosing a name which none multi-cultural families need to avoid.

The first thing that must be thought about is the country in which the child will be raised. Baby names on the top 10 most popular names in the USA may not appear on a similar list in Europe or Asia. There are sometimes reasons for this, the most important of which is that the country will not have names on it which are difficult to pronounce for the people who live there. Not all countries who use the alphabet pronounce the letters of that alphabet in the same way; this means that the way you write the name can also decide how the baby name sounds when spoken by the people in the country in which you live. Some names fair better in translation around the world than others!

Some cultures have a need for baby names which have some form of religious significance, and this will greatly influence the opinions of some family members. Another factor will be a cultural trend towards always naming a child after a family member from a previous generation - a name passed down through hundreds of years. If you are a person who believes firmly in following traditions, then this probably won’t be a problem, but if you have a preference for modern names, then this could create friction within the family that is still an issue when the baby graduates college! Even if the tradition within the culture/family is to give the same middle name to each child, this too will raise issues as the first name will have to be something that easily connects to this imposed second name.

When faced with a situation of needing to please everyone, including yourself, do your homework. Find baby names that are going to be acceptable to both respective families and cultures, and are ones which you can live with. If you feel that you don’t really like any of them, check the family tree on each side and see if anyone did stray off the traditional path and pave the way for you to do the same. If this fails, see if you can reach a compromise where the baby will have the traditional first name, but a non-traditional middle one so that everyone can be happy about the baby name and look forward to greeting the baby when it arrives, this way the baby will have a right to choose which name to use when it becomes an adult.