In general I look for receipts or random pieces of paper I find on the side of the curb on a rainy day. But that’s just me.
My third son, for example, is named Hmmmblehgjlighininah Stornagherighison
A proud Finnish heritage lives on 🫡
That’s so poetic.
My son is Subtotal Tree Fiddy.
Get one of the books with baby name suggestions. Weed out all of the names of annoying uncles and aunts, childhood bullies etc. Let your partner do the same. Then get rid of all of the names that rhyme with something silly so they won’t be bullied in school for their name. Then argue about the few remaining names and pick one or a few. Sleep a few nights, then take a long, hot/steamy shower and commit to it.
(You can doodle around in the book, circle a few names and add a few or your favorite movie characters.)
Don’t have kids, but one important tip to keep in mind for the name is, does the name work on an international basis? So many names in my country does not work at all for when they travel abroad.
For example, a very common name here is Simen. Although an alright name, as soon as pronounced in English it does not sound great…
On a related note, unless there is a very good reason to choose a different one (e.g. naming the kid after someone else) try to pick the most common spelling variant if there are multiple.
“Sir, I don’t think he’s a ‘Susan’”
“That’s because you’re not a linguist, Tucker. It’s pronounced, ‘Shu-shan’.”
I actually met a male ‘Susan’ in Asia once! I never knew quite for sure how he pronounced it!
We have Dung…yeah…
For our kids, we wrote down a small set of rules :
- french origin (with my very french and common surname, living a in french-speaking country)
- kind of rare (I have a very common firstname)
- that would go well or be used in english as well
- that would survive the atrocities of the local heavy accent (teachers and so on…)
- not too long, easy to write
- aesthetically pleasing when written down
We had a couple important criteria for the names we chose. First, it should be pretty easy to yell in case you need to call them, and second is that it’s hard to turn into an insult.
We added the second after a friend named their boy Hurley. Poor guy.
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I come from a family like this and my husband’s family did the same. Coincidentally my husband and I also share the same first letter. Our family gatherings can get confusing so most of us have family nicknames.
This is my grandmother Ursula…
And my grandfather Umbridge. My uncles ‘Uncle 1’, ‘Uncle 2’ and ‘Uncle 3’, and my step-aunt, Ugly.
My mum here is ‘Unfortunate’ (gran and gramp were big Les Miserables fans but couldn’t stand French).
Here’s my brothers Ulysses and Ussher. And my sister Ungoliant. My youngest sister miscarried, you can find her grave over there, marked with her name: Unobtanium.
Oh, me? Pleased to meet you: I’m Umphrey.
For first names we separately compiled lists of names that we liked from whatever sources we could find (Internet lists, books, media l names used in media, etc). We went through each other’s lists and vetoed names that were a hard no. Then we wrote the names out on a sheet of paper in random order in a playoff bracket style arrangement. Each pair had a winner until there was only one.
For middle names, it had to be something that flowed well with the first name. It also had to be able to convey that special sense of “you done fucked up” and disappointment when said with the first name (while emphasizing the second), like “John PAUL”. Finally, candidates were from (mostly deceased) family members.
Names and initials were checked to minimize bullying potential; if we could think of a way to abuse it the name or combination was rejected. For example, Karen would be a no due to current slang usage. Or if the initials would spell ASS.
Last name is single syllable so the first had to be 2 or more. Made a big list of names I liked the sound of and people I admire and let my wife decide from that. Would have been happy with any of them. We didn’t know the sex yet so we picked both a male and female name.
The middle name is Tiberius after James Tiberius Kirk from Star Trek.
Had to keep suggesting them until we landed on a shortlist of names she hasn’t yelled out in frustration. She was a teacher.
“What about ‘Kevin’”?
“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”
My wife and I have first names that start with consecutive letters of the alphabet, so I wanted a name that would continue that.
I’ll be honest, the name we chose (that starts with that letter) came from my high school crush. But my wife was aware from the beginning and I was so introverted back then, especially with girls, that it was never remotely serious. The only takeaway from that was that her name was kinda cute (but ages well too - plus her legal name has a lot of flexibility for nicknames)
We found a few of those “top 1000 baby names for 20XX” lists, and (over the course of a few days) independently went through and picked out any that we liked, then compared lists - surprisingly large number of names on both lists, which we whittled down to a top 3. In theory we were going to wait to meet them and they could have had any of those three, but we had both gotten used to name number 1 by that point so it was pretty much settled.
Middle names were grandparent names.
We used this app called Codo which is a cooperative task list app.
We added all the names we could think of, all the names suggested (dumb or not), everything.
We would take time and sift through the list and check off the names we didn’t want to go with.
Near the end, we were down to 10 names. I started referring to the baby by the names listed and we would further trim the name list based on that. Turns out some names sound great on paper but when spoken, are not the same.
Final days led to the final three and we just had to choose from there.
War of attrition.
We each picked names until we found something we both liked a lot. We both tended towards classic names with standard spelling that weren’t currently popular. One has since become popular but what can you do.
Nothing that rhymes with a body part, one or two syllables, easy to spell and say, easy for other folks to understand and spell without additional guidance.
Sometimes I wonder if picking the name you feel is too popular, is best for not-too-popular (but recognisable) because everyone’s trying the same thing!
List of old family names, plus any we liked.
Removed any we disliked, even for trivial reasons.
Practiced saying them out loud. Could we yell it? Could they be introduced in serious society with it?
Was it the popular name recently?
Are there any family names patterns we liked?
Was it too old fashioned?
Was there obvious school yard taunting capabilities?
Did it have negative connotations?
Are a lot of pets using the name?
