Naming a baby is just the first in a long line of decisions you make for your child. And over the past five years, my husband and I have had the opportunity to name three boys.
What pressure!
It has become progressively harder and harder to name our children as they have come into the world. Now that we are expecting a fourth (and have decided not to find out the gender beforehand), we are faced with the toughest decision we’ve had yet! Choosing yet another set of boys names AND coming up with girls names as well.
Naming Criteria
Having taught school for seven years and trying to decipher the first, middle and last names of hundreds of children, I came up with specific criteria by which our children have to be named:
- Intuitively easy to spell. It’s hard enough to learn the English language without throwing in a name that’s hard to spell. Not to mention, who wants to go through life with a name no one can get right?
- Not terribly common. It’s not always easy being John #3 or John F. throughout your entire school career (and beyond).
- Gender specific. In my experience, there aren’t quite as many questions or roadblocks when someone’s is name “Catherine” vs. “Casey.”
- Short. My married name takes up two lines on my driver’s license (enough said).
How We Decided on our Current Children’s Names
Son #1 – A Name We Liked and Tribute to Uncles: We decided on our first son’s name before we were even married. My husband and I first bonded over our love of movies, so Harrison (inspired by Harrison Ford) seemed to be a natural fit. His middle name, Wayne, is in honor of my husband’s two uncles who share Wayne as a middle name.
Son #2 – A Name We Liked and a Tribute to my Grandfather: Our second son was going to be James David (James because we liked it and David in honor of my grandfather who passed away when I was young), until I started teaching during the 2010-2011 school year. For the very first time I had a student named James in my classroom. There was nothing wrong with 7th grader James, he wasn’t a troublemaker or anything; however, I decided quickly I did not want to have a son share a name with a current student. We already told our friends and family the name choice and were faced with telling them about our change of plans. Good thing we hadn’t had anything monogrammed! Clark David arrived and now that he’s three years old, I cannot imagine him as a “James.”
Son #3 – Good Family Friends: I was convinced that baby #3 was a girl, due to the enormous difference between that pregnancy and the other two. When it turned out that #3 was a boy also, we had a difficult task of coming up with an original name. Luckily we didn’t have to look too far, and Reid Wilson is actually named after two very good family friends.
Obstacles in the Way of Naming Baby #4
Not Finding out the Gender Ahead of Time
There are hundreds of baby names to consider should this child be a girl. The only thing we are sure of is that if it’s a girl, she will share my middle name. Because we have never seriously had to think about naming a girl, the possibilities are endless, and that’s a huge problem! My biggest fear is we will have two names picked out and when presented with the child for the first time, decide that the names we picked out are absolutely not right!
What if it IS another boy?
Our three boys have great names … to follow up with a fourth, well, it feels like our choices are extremely limited. We’ve already used our favorite names, several family names and honored friends. What’s left to choose from?
I am sure all this worry and anxiety is for nothing. Because, as with our other three children, either my husband or myself will come up with the perfect name and at that point we will just know. (And as I think back, I do not remember one tiny bit of disagreement over those choices, nor do I remember who actually spoke those names as choices first.)
We plan to keep these name choices secret this time around; I actually saw the cutest pin on Pinterest with a photo of a swaddled baby wearing a “Hi, my name is …” sticker.
Everything is going to be a surprise and I could not be more excited!
