Growing up I had all these wonderful names I thought I’d name my children, only to find out my husband had his own ideas. 
The names that we agreed on also fit certain criteria.  Traditionally spelled (by American standards), can’t remind us of people with traits we dislike, not already used in the immediate family or the first through second cousins (which is hard in our family) or even by close friends, one name (either first or middle) has to be a saint or derivative of a saint’s name and a boy’s name can’t be currently in use in the family.
The daughters were easier to name, the sons we finally agreed on their names the week before they each came (even then it was questionable).

My husband and I have a hard time with this, as we do not agree on very many names.  I want to start picking names right away, and my husband drives me nuts wanting to wait until the baby is born.  Like you, we only had a girl’s name picked out with the first, who was a girl, thankfully.  I chose the first name, Jeanne (pronounced ‘Joan’), and my husband added Kateri. 
We only agreed on a boy’s name the second time around, and had a boy.  I REALLY wanted a Maximilian, and my husband thought I was nuts.  I agreed to it as a middle name and tagged on Joseph in front.  However, I called my baby “Max” through out the pregnancy (w/o knowing for sure that it was a boy), and it grew on my husband.  My son’s name is Joseph Maximilian, but goes by Max.  With our third, we were down to the wire and had only sorta agreed on a first name if it was a girl (we don’t find out ahead of time).  It was a girl, and even after the delivery, we had not agreed on a middle name.  I was so upset at having had to have a c-section, that the name thing wasn’t so pressing.  We narrowed it down to two, and called the godmother, allowing her to choose.  And now my little Lydia Rose is ten months old!
Naming our babies is something I have, unfortunately, in some ways come to dread.  I know what I want, and my husband either doesn’t like it or wants to wait. We do agree that both names must be those of Saints, so at least we have that!

For our first we had a girl’s name all picked out but were struggling for a boy’s name. We wanted something Irish but that wasn’t already used in my husband’s enormous family. We settled on Aidan because it wasn’t too strange but was all Irish. I was convinced we were having a girl anyway. Well, we had a boy and named him Aidan (this was in Feb of 2003). Aidan was the #1 boy’s name that year…go figure. Now there are Aidan’s everywhere. With my other 3 pregnancies we once again struggled finding a boy name we loved…thankfully we had three girls (Elizabeth Ann, Sarah Josephine & Emma Catherine). I completely adore the name Gabriel for a boy but my husband would never go for it. I’m with Amy, I start to dread the naming process as soon as I find out I’m pregnant.

We are having a heck of a time coming up with names for #8.  Since we don’t know boy or girl until the wonderful day, we have to have some ideas for both.  All of our other boys have names that begin with ‘J’—-this was not planned, just happened as they were named after saints, grandfathers, uncles, etc.  But now the boys are insisting that if the baby is a boy he MUST have a “J” name too…...hummmm.  And my husband is leaning towards Paul and the feiminie variations of that with this being the Year of St. Paul…..

I will let them—hubby and kids—figure it out….I’m busy growing a baby right now!

You asked for opinions….well, I just wrote an entry about this very subject over on my blog last week. What I wrote was precipitated by seeing our Sunday bulletin welcome a new family to church whose children’s names are Kaylahna, Kyler, Kadin, and Kaleah. The entry is called “In Defense of Normal Names.” Some might not agree with my opinions, but I think baby names are something people need to think more about these days because some names that are being chosen lately are guaranteed to subject a child to a lifetime of embarassment and confusion.

We have fun coming up with names. We have been told by many different people that they really like our kids’ names so I guess we are pretty good at it. Like Arwen, I am the name presenter and he acts as editor. One of the things he is really good at is pointing out not-so-obvious bad combinations. I loved the name Anya Mara until he added “Get set. Go!” I love names from other languages but we seem to be specifically drawn to French names for girls. For boys, we like relatively short names with long vowel sounds.

Ours had to be Christian names, ideally a saint’s name and the middle name had to be a family name.  We never did agree on another boys name, which was a good thing because we had a son, and then three daughters in a row.  I still love all my children’s names, but if I had to do it all over, I’d tinker with their middle names.

As for you, the name George came to my mind, especially with the pronunciation of your last name.  It sounds so masculine! 

A good way to figure out what names are popular in your neck of the woods is to ask around at preschools and kindergartens.  I remember when we signed our son up for preschool at 3 (10 years ago) his teacher commented that she had never heard his name before (an Irish name) and wasn’t sure of its pronunciation.  About 5 years ago the name exploded (because of a very popular HBO series) and now it’s all over the place.

Sometimes you may think that you are being very ahead of the curve, but you just never know what is coming around the corner!

To Kim F.,
Can you guess what my 13 yr old son’s name is?

We’ve had a hard time with boys names too but we have six boys and here’s the names they ended up with…
Matthew Scott (Scott is dh’s name)
Alexander Burke (Burke is Grandpa’s name)
Johnathon William (william, another Grandpa)
Maximilian Richard(Richard, another Grandpa)
Xavier Joseph Roman (Roman, another Grandpa)
Scott Alan, Jr (no explanation needed except why did we wait 6 boys to have a junior-I though he was going to be a GIRL!!!)

Everyone has a saint name and a family name.  I think if I had another boy, I’d name him Henry, or Benedict, or Michael, or…...  But really, six boys right now seems ENOUGH.    especially since 4 are teens.  yikes.

After waiting over 4 years and getting a call that a six day old boy was waiting for us to come bring him home—we chose Matthew - gift of God—his middle name is the name given to him by his birthmom.
Our daughter’s name is name for the Blessed Virgin and St Agnes as during our battle with infertility we always referred to our hoped for child as Agnes—-a name I didn’t like but I eventually decided that if God would give us a daughter we’d name her Agnes—so we kept my promise when He blessed us with her.

Well, the night we flipped a coin regarding the last name issue, I won naming rights to all children, so my husband gets no say.  (I do allow him to give me his input, but the final decision is mine).

My standards are:
Irish first or middle name.
Saint’s name - even if it’s the Gaelic translation
Must be within reason for pronounciation

Our son is Eamon Michael.  I think our next will be John Paul - the only non-Celt name.  I don’t know that I’d be able to get my husband to sign a birth certificate with the name Aiofe on it for a girl, though…...

Cool. I’m also a bit of a baby name geek, moreso than my wife is. I’ve kept up a written list of possibilities for the past few years, and I think it’s fun to discuss.

We have two children at present. Our first is named Elijah Lewis (the first name being an indirect Rich Mullins reference and the middle name being for C.S.)

Our second is named Mary Elanor. Arwen, you can probably figure out the middle-name reference on that one.

I’m having a tough time picking a name this time around - our first girl. My oldest son, who’s 5, wants to name her Pretty. Yeah, we won’t be asking his opinion on names any more either.
Good luck with the name picking!

Well my daughter wanted to name her first younger sibling “Smelly Dog Breath” and her second “La-la-la-la” so we definitely vetoed those two  

We ended up with Daniel Albert (after his father), Nicole Elizabeth, Gianna Teresa, and Maria Teresa.  All four children have Saint Names that also have a family connection (grandparent, born on the feast day, etc). 

For three out of four we went into delivery with three name selections for girls and three for boys.  When our fourth child arrived 7 weeks early by emergency c-section we were caught a little unprepared… Good luck!!

Oh, I’m all about geeking over names! Since you’re familiar with the Name Voyager, are you also familiar with its creator’s baby name book, The Baby Name Wizard? It has a popularity graph, “brother and sister name” suggestions, and a short blurb about each name. It’s one of my favorites for relaxing reading!

Our naming rules are very similar to yours. First name because we like it, and the more uncommon the better (although not strange). Middle name to have some family or saint significance. And the name can’t be too high-flown and whimsical because our last name is an ordinary name which grounds everything.

Our children’s first names are Adelaide, Stuart, and Daphne. If there’s ever a fourth, we’re currently considering Timothy and Eve. But of course that could change before there’s a baby. I wear names out before I get to use them.

I understand the pressure of not having the name decided. You might could give us a hint about the style you like and we could throw out some suggestions. (She says, barely containing her geekiness.)

—Sara.

P.S. Your own name isn’t one you stumble across terribly often, although thanks to Peter Jackson and Liv Tyler it’s more mainstream now. Have you enjoyed having an out-of-the-ordinary name like Arwen?

—Sara

I developed a new view on names after volunteering to help with the photo shoots for our parish directory.  I had to have everyones name, correctly spelled, for the directory.  This is when I realized that some people can give their name as ” James”, or “Bob”, others have to say ” That’s Teresa without an H”, and still others have to say ” Thats Leigh - L-E_I_G_H”.  Ever since then I am partial to names that can only be spelled one way.

As someone who has grown up saddled with an extremely hard to pronounce birth name, my only requirements, sadly, when naming my own children were that it had to be easy to pronounce and it had to be what we would call them, not some variation or nick name.  I’ve spent my entire life having teachers/doctors/bank tellers and the like desperately try to pronounce my name, asking it’s origin, etc.  As a very shy person, I find all the extra attention my birth name begets very embarrassing - especially when I was in school.  After all the thought my parents put into choosing my name, they (and everyone else who knows me) has called me Nikki since the day I was born.  Go figure : )

Oh, I forgot…when we got back home with our son Matthew (comment #10) we found out that we first held him in our arms and became his parents on the feast day of St.Matthew…so we think it’s the perfect name for him.

We go for biblical or at least saint names for first names.  Middle names are usually chosen for beloved family members.  We have a Joseph Gregory, an Anna Rose, and a Renee Marjorie.  It’s time to come up with names for the one due in March.  We have to choose both boy and girl names since we don’t intend to find out the sex.  Mostly, I propose names and my husband rejects the ones that remind him of “someone he once knew and didn’t get along with.”

Naming has never been easy in our home.
Aside from being a name we agree on and having at least one saint’s name we don’t have any requirements. Most of our children have one name of a family member but not all.
It gets even more interesting when you have much older children with real opinions. Our kids don’t get a vote on the new baby’s name but that doesn’t stop them from putting in their two cents.
Our last baby was three weeks early and unnamed until he was a few days old.
For my dh and I girls have always been easier than boys as we have similar taste in girls names.

We’ve ended up with:
Katherine Sara
Jackson Alexander
Ian Laurence
Grace Juliette May
Emma Rose
Benedict Blair
Lucy Maria
Tristan Karl

We never have trouble picking names!  Except for the first baby, we’ve only had to pick out one name each time because we’ve just used the other name we picked out for the last baby but didn’t use because of gender. 
We like “old-fashioned” sounding names and always pick a name with at least one derivative of a saint.  Generally, middle names have been chosen to honor family members (grandparents or great-grandparents). 
We have a Clara Mary, Aidan Early (Early is an Irish last name passed down from first-born son to first-born son back five generations; and although Aidan is popular now, it is a very old Irish name—and there is a St Aidan, too!), an Eleanor Audrey and a Maximilian Joseph.  We’re expecting number five in December and we’ve picked Greta Jeanette or Henry Blaise. 
My husband (an engineer) has this goofy numbering system for picking a name.  I tease him for it, but it only takes a couple of weeks (if that) to choose a name after finding out we’re expecting. 

Our son is Jacob Henry.  Jacob because it was the only name for a boy we could agree on and Henry for my father-in-law.  And for all that “Jacob” is so high on the list right now, we’ve only ever met a few others.

Our daughters are Anne Elizabeth and Abigail May.  Anne is in honor of Anne Shirley and Elizabeth because I’ve always loved that name.  And the night before we went away for our 10th anniversary, to a B&B;named “The Abbey” in Cape May, New Jersey, my husband joked that we were going to make a girl and name her Abby May. 

There are now 3 other Abbys in our parish Kindergarten and all four of them are in the same Daisy Troop!

Well, our first born we decided to name after St. Gerard Majella (since she was an answer to our novena!), and we are also fans of family names.  So, had she been a boy, she would have been Gerard Michael, but ended up being Eva Majella (after hubby’s grandma who passed away about the time we found out were were expecting).  After you give your firstborn a middle name like Majella, you can’t really give the next one a really common one.  So, our second born would have been Charles Borremeo had she been a boy, but ended up Charlotte Merici (after my grandma who passed away and St. Angela Merici).  I always get comments on their middle names…

We have a very German last name that strikes fear in the hearts of people who have to pronounce it, so I insist on first names that everyone knows how to say.  (although I have been surprised to see how many people misspell Michael.)  This works out to picking relatively common names.  My other rule is no incredibly ethnic sounding names (unless they are German as well.)  That is just a prejudice my dad instilled in me - no Sean Rodriguez, no Donatella O’Keefe, what have you. The first and last have to match.  I realize that people do this all the time, I just have my dad’s voice in my head going “What kind of name is that?” 

I love naming stories. My parents tried out names on then 2 year old me when Mom was pregant with the baby. They wanted me to be able to pronounce my future brother or sister’s name when people asked and our family doesn’t do nicknames.

I have similar naming priorities, but when we were picking out our daughter’s name, it came down to a process of elimination (knocking out names from the other’s list that we didn’t like), and then we ended up with one of the most popular names today.  This wasn’t our intent, and we didn’t realize it until after she was named, but nevertheless, Olivia’s name fits her.

I like to pick obscure saint names.  For a boy, we had considered Cassian.  Also, Alaric.  Both are a little unusual, though.  Truly, it seems harder to find boy names that are classic-yet-unusual.  Good luck!

We only have three children. But, none of the names are similar. My oldest is a girl and we named her Růženka. Which is a nice Czech family name. My middle child is a boy named Brett. And my youngest a boy is named Henry. I love all of their names even though they don’t follow a theme.

I have too many rules for naming to list here, but here are some of them. They can be bent if we are inclined, but I probably won’t. With regard to your first rule, I agree but only with respect to society in general. In Catholic circles there are so many Josephs, Benedicts, Sophias and Lucys that I would hate to give up those lovely names even though they are popular. Besides the four rules that you mentioned, first, middle and last name can’t all be the same number of syllables; no names that cousins already have (and maybe siblings: there are two names that I wouldn’t mind using); the last letter of the name can’t be the first letter of the next (like James Smith or James Samuel), and if the baby is born on a saint’s day that we like we want to throw that in as well. For girls, I would like each of them to have a first or middle name from the Roman Canon (I doubt I will have seven girls, but you never know): Agnes, Anastasia, Agatha, Lucy, Cecelia, Felicity and Perpetua, although we probably would use the Latin for two: Agneta and Lucia.

We have a very hard time agreeing on boys names, but there are lots of girls names that we like. When my son was born we didn’t agree on his name until about a week before he was born (and he was a week late!) but then JPII got really sick. I really wanted to name a son after him before he died so we added John Paul in as an extra middle name. So now depending on how you look at it my son has either two or three middle names. Since then my husband and I have decided that even though it is hard to agree on boys names, there are so many that both of us like that we want all of our children to have two middle names. Who couldn’t use an extra patron, anyway?

I am a huge baby name geek, as well, and I love it when we all get together like this

We have two boys and two girls, and our standards are as follows:  There has to be a saint’s name in there somewhere, there has to be a familial connection, it has to sound traditional (even if there is a slight spelling variation), and it has to reflect the kids’ cultural heritage (Celtic, Scottish and Welsh specifically). It’s also good if the name means something nice, not something like “crazy eyed wild child’!

My husband is Scottish, and it is a huge tradition in his family to name the children after people in the family (he likes to joke that that’s why there are only four names used throughout Scotland! )

I wouldn’t say that we had trouble selecting, per se, but we definitely take our time deliberating over the names.  The only one we “knew” from the start was my first son.  His name came to us both early in the pregnancy and we were sure about it (and we never found out the babies’ genders pre-birth).

Our oldest is Mary Catherine, named after Our Lady and my mother, but since birth we have called her Mollie (a traditional Celtic nickname for Mary). 

Our first son is Simon John, which is a combination of my maiden name and his paternal grandfather’s name. 

Our third is Anne Amelia, named after St. Anne, her paternal great-grandmother, and myself.

And our youngest is James Robert, named after St. James and my husband. Also, James is a long popular Scottish name and a variation of my husband’s grandmother’s maiden name as well.  We call him Jamie, the Scottish nickname, and the one that is easiest for his 2 yo sister to say!

Good luck and have fun with your name choices. God Bless!

I always thought we were taking in a list of carefully tested baby names and waiting to see the baby before choosing a name. But some time after our last baby was born, my husband admitted that he’s pretty much named the babies the second he saw the second line on the home pregnancy test.

Our eldest is named Charles after my father-in-law, which is a tradition in my husband’s family (every oldest son is named after the grandfather). However, we had the options of using his name as a first or middle name, so I had a list…my husband didn’t. As it was his first biological relative ever (he’s adopted), I let him choose and thought he chose perfectly.

We had never agreed on a girl’s name, so I did feel quite happy that we didn’t have a girl!

When I was pregnant with our second child, the eldest was 3 and he immediately started calling the baby Echo. Which was cute and kind of significant. Then he inexplicably switched to Elizabeth…inexplicable for me, not so inexplicable for my husband, who put the notion in the kid’s head. Anyway, I would say, “What if we have another boy?” and our son would say, “Elizabeth if it’s a girl, Elizabeth if it’s a boy.” Fortunately, she was a girl.

Third child was more difficult. We picked out a couple of boy’s names right off (John Columkille or hmmmm….what was the other one?).

On girl names, we just couldn’t agree. I was pining over Mary Clare, Mary Kate, Mary Francesca, Mary Flora, Mary Margaret, Mary this and Mary that. My husband had “a good reason” for rejecting all of them. He suggested that we were being teased enough about naming our kids after British Royalty without putting a Mary into the mix. But he wanted Victoria, so I think the real problem was that we’d just become Catholic (like the DAY before I got pregnant), and his evangelical protestant family wasn’t happy about it and was making derisive comments about “how CATHOLIC” we were, getting pregnant like that…

As the pregnancy drew to an end, I settled on Mary Fran(cesca) or Flora Christine, and my husband was still pushing for Victoria. But we had an early, traumatic delivery that was hard on me and the baby. When it was all over and I was shaking in my hospital bed so badly that I couldn’t even hold the baby and in dire need of sleep, I told my husband to name her whatever he wanted and dozed off.

When I woke up a little while later, expecting a Victoria, he handed me Laurel Christine. A lovely compromise between Flora and Victoria, since laurel is the floral symbol of victory. It means “Victorious Follower of Christ.”

Although I admit, I hated it for about a week. I like it now, though.

Oh, Arwen, what I really meant to say was that Columkille is an awesome saint’s name for you to consider. Pronounced COLL-um-keel, it means “dove of the church.” Sometimes its rendered Colum or Callum, or even Colin (as in Firth).

He was an Irish saint who was a great lover of books, and I know how much you treasure reading. He is my husband’s patron saint. There are a couple fascinating legends about him, including one about him copying a book out of Scriptures because he loved the Bible so much (and getting in trouble for it) and another about him taming the Loch Ness Monster, which any little boy would love to hear about. Our favorite is the story about how he came to love books because he once “ate a cake made of letters.” Every year on his feast day, I make Rice Krispie treats, but I replace about half the cereal with Alphabits. My kids love to be able to eat “cakes made of letters.”

My husband and I both favor ‘classical’ childrens names.  We tend to pick a first name we like and then look for a middle name that fits. One name must be of a Saint.

Oldest dd is Natalie Marie -my husband liked Natalie and I wanted some varient on Mary- we thought Marie sounded best

My fil died when Natalie was 1mnth so it was decided that our first boy would be named after him (Edward Storey)

Next child was Sarah Rose-  During the pregnancy we had decided on Sarah Anne but when asked for the baby’s name my husband blurted out Sarah Rose and I decided that it sounded better.

Third child was Theresa Anne.

Fourth child- we finally have our Edward Storey

Fifth child is Claire Louise- My oldest wanted the baby to be named Claire and I liked Louise when a SIL suggested it.  If it was a boy he would have been named Joseph Landcaster -The name my husband picked for his confirmation name when he entered the church last Easter andmy husband’s middle name- I thought if one boy has a weird middle name, we might as well give the next boy a weird middle name as well.

We have the same basic rules as you.  We ended up with

Alexander Michael
Emily Katherine
Madalyn Elizabeth
Natalie Grace
Simon Christopher

Names I love are Charlotte, Amelia (wish we’d named Emily that), Molly and Audrey

Boys: Liam, Xavier and Blaise

Good luck!

Martha,
Your comments made me laugh!  Here in NJ there are lots of Irish/Italian combos so you hear a lot of Sean Oliveris or Francesca O’Briens.  But I hear you, my last name is Anglo/French and I insisted on an Irish first name for my son.

I do love the German name Greta for a girl though!

Ugh. I’ve had a half-written post on Molly’s name for the last month. It’s as hard writing the post as it was picking her name! BAH.

So far we have five Irish and a German:
Bridget
Karlyn
Timothy
Gretchen
Liam
and
Eamon.

The proposed names for Eamon were:
Atticus (yes, from the book)
Aloysius (grandfather)
Tucker (mother’s maiden name)
or Gianna
Fiona
Anna Elizabeth.

I don’t know if we’ll go back to the list for the next one or come up with a new roll call, but they are all pretty out of the ordinary.

Well our first child we did not know the sex and were lucky we had a girl because we never agreed on a boy name.  Our daughter’s name was going to be Ava-Grace Maria but when I saw her she was Shelby Clare. My
husband is not Catholic but is southern and he loved Shelby because of the movie Steel Magnolias whereas I picked it as a derivative of Michael, my father’s name for his first grandchild and Clare obviously after Clare of Assisi. My husband demanded naming rights of our second child which we found out was a boy. His number one criteria was initials that could be used as a nickname. After our son went 8 hours without a name before my husband decided to agree to my suggestion of Joseph Patrick. Named for 2 of my favorite saints. Now we are due with number 3 in May. After our son went without a name I relieved my husband of all naming responsibilities. This baby will either be William Christopher the alternative my husband was considering with my son. In addition to being saint names and both family names the name William Christopher is also the name of one of our favorite actors, the actor who played Father Mulcahy on MASH. And if this baby is a girl her name will be Leah Mary Helena after the biblical Leah, our holy Mother since her birth would be in May the month of Mary and St Helena the mother of the Emporer Constantine who led the search to find the true Cross.

We have similar naming standards.  I also was careful to name each child with a different first initial, which has been VERY helpful.  I just use their initials, C, J, L, or G, on my notes to myself, the calendar, etc. 
I always wanted a Joseph, in honor it is fairly common, and now everyone else calls him “Joe,” which does not sound like what I intended.  His middle name is my maiden name.  If I did it again, I think I would make all their middle names my maiden name, or at least a family surname.  My third boy is named George after my husband’s late father.  It is not a common name for this generation, and George loves it!  For one thing, he has the COOLEST saint…we are talking dragons and swords here.  Also, it is wonderfully traditional, and there are Georges everywhere in history and books.  We were big on Curious George items for a while.  Now we like George Washington. 
Arwen, George sounds great with your last name, and it is a good, traditional name!  I vote for George!

With our six children we ended up using a bit of a theme:  Our four girls names all end in “a” and their middle names are Marian related.  Our two boys are both named after Popes and their middle names are related to Saint Augustine, who, along with Saint Monica, is one of our special family saints.

I enjoy the names people give their babies, but nicknames always enter.  Our # 2 son, Daniel, we had planned on calling Danny. But even as a tot he wouldn’t answer to it.  He would only answer to Dan, which was what his year older brother called him. I think his first full sentence was “My name’s Dan!”
We know a girl that named her boy Eyezayah Mikel.  Hate that spelling for a great name.

Great post!  I have two boys, Matthew and Luke.  I love those two names, although having them both in the same family is like a blanket invitation to make evangelist jokes (when he got Luke’s birth announcement, our parish priest wrote an email asking, “If you have a fifth boy, will you name him Acts?”).

Our criteria are like yours:  Classic name, nothing trendy.  Religious connotation a plus.  Must sound good with last name and must be gender-specific. 
It also shouldn’t inspire any weird nicknames that will drive our poor kids into therapy in years to come.

Also—I don’t know if I’m alone in thinking this—but it seems society as a whole is more accepting of unusual girl names than unusual boy names.  I’m not sure why that is.  At any rate, we definitely wanted something—I hate to use this word—“normal.”

One slight complicating factor for us: I’ve been a teacher for 11 years, and so I’ve seen someone of nearly every name pass through my classroom.  As a result, I have associations either positive or negative for every name in the book.  It’s an occupational hazard I’d never expected—more than one good names was ruined as a result!

Hi everyone!  Thanks for commenting.  This is such a fun discussion!

For those of you who suggested George, I do think it’s a great name, and it sounds good with our last name, and St. George is an awesome saint.  Unfortunately the name George is out of the question for us because it’s the name of Bryan’s grandfather whose late wife was named Camilla!  If we called our little boy George we’d have a pair of kids whose first and last names were the exact same as their great-grandparents.  It would be a little strange, especially for Bryan’s dad, whose only grandkids would have the same names as his parents!

Oh, and Ryan (comment #12) - I have a younger sister whose middle name is Elanor!

Family names:

Frederick Joseph (far up the tree)

William Charles (named after his dad, and I do NOT recommend it - too confusing with administrators)

Kathleen Ann (my mom)

Johanna Pauline (my mom’s mom)

Peter Damian (my brother is Peter, and his uncle is Damian Peter)

Mary Therese (my mom’s mom’s mom was Mary Veronica and we almost went with that, but my sister’s middle name is Therese plus my baby was born in October which has the feasts of two favorite saints named Teresa)

I wanted all my kids to have solid names they could put on a business card followed by “CEO” and not by embarrassed.  “Katie”, my oldest daughter’s nickname, is fine for a cute little girl, but silly for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (no offense intended to any Katies out there).

My husband worked for a man who named his daughters “Abbie” and “Cassie”...not Abigail or Cassandra.  That irks me.

My sister and I had ‘Mary’ in our names a tradition on my mom’s side, grandma and great-grandma. All of my daughters have Mary as a first or middle name:Rebekah Marie,  Mary Elizabeth,  Victoria Veronica Mirjana,  Angela Michelle Marie and Katherine RoseMary Terese.

I’m so reminded of me when I read your criteria for names, as well as DH and I never agreeing on a boy name. Our first child is Lydia, and we are expecting our third in May (second was miscarried). If we have a boy, I’m sure God will have to open the heavens and give us angelic voices singing a name, since we can’t seem to come up with anything!

Good luck!

My rules are that the name must sound “right” should said child be 1) president of the U.S.A. or 2) CEO of a major corporation or 3) a priest/bishop.  Not surprisingly we choose classic names like - Joseph, Patrick, John, Mary etc.  The funny thing is that these names are almost unusual now - especially Mary.  For middle names, we choose family surnames like Blake, or Brice.  One of our sons has a middle name of a great x7 (?) grandfather who fought with George Washington in the Revolutionary war - Winthrop - which the kids have changed into “wind-throw-up” .  John is another John Paul, but his siblings always forget his middle name and call him John Pope

Our rules are
1)that we have to agree to it - very difficult
2)that it has to be a traditional but not too old-fashioned sounding (husband’s rule)
3)has to be a saint’s name or some variation, if a doctor of the Church even better
4)they have to sound right - not too much alliteration or what not.
5)the meanings of the names have to work too - they can’t mean like - defiant one or anything like that.
6)they have to be solid gender names (no girly boys names - my husband’s rule)

We have a Clare Therese and a Gregory Michael.

Clare was the first and only name we agreed for our daughter.  Therese was easy because she is such an awesome saint - and we figured with both of those names how could our daughter be anything but a contemplative nun - lol.  Clare is anything but that.  She also just happened to be be born on St. Clare’s birthday - but we didn’t know that at the time.

Gregory is a family name, a great doctor of the Church (actually several of them), and a nice not too popular boy’s name.  Michael - we weren’t planning it, but we both called him Michael seperately by accident in the first few hours of his life and figured that was what he was supposed to be called.

#3 is on the way, so we’ll see.

I do have a funny name story.  After my daughter was born I was out of it and blacking out.  To try to engage me the doctor was asking me questions - she asked me what I wanted to name our child and I replied Gandalf.  It’s a good thing my husband was there or little Clare might have a very different legal name.

I love names! I’m already thinking of names for our next baby (who is hopefully biding his or her time since Second Daughter is only 3 months old!). One of the main reasons we never find out if we’re having a boy or a girl is just so I can have the fun of picking two names.

My husband is not quite as interested. (He’s also the rejecting kind, usually.) I had a mini-crisis at 39 weeks with Second Daughter because we hadn’t picked names yet. Luckily, we spent an hour or so talking through my list and ended up with two good ones—and I absolutely adore Second Daughter’s name (first and middle)!

Fascinating reading—very enjoyable.  It’s so fun to hear how people come up with names for their children.  I have a lot of the same guidelines—gender specific, saint name for either first or middle, no funky spellings, and as a teacher, also have tried to choose names that never had as students—not easy!

I was kind of comforted to see that my husband isn’t the only one who seems to be the vetoing type more than the suggesting type.  It’s a miracle we came up with any names (and honestly I can’t remember how we finally got to some of them) but I have to say I love them all:

They are:

Donovan Michael—Donovan is Irish Gaelic origin, like my husband’s name; Michael for St. Michael and hubby’s best friend.  He was born on St. Joseph’s (Mar 19) so I really wanted Joseph for the middle but as the head of the household and first child, esp. boy, I let hubby choose.  Son loves it, esp. the Michael.

2nd is Talia Marie.  Chose Talia b/c it sounded Italian (our last name) BUT it’s actually Greek for “blooming!”  My husband likes the Rocky movies, which Talia Shire was in—I think that’s where we first came up with it.  If I’d been thinking, I would’ve chosen Rose as the middle name—in fact I think hubby suggested it b/c his sister’s middle name is Rose—“blooming” Rose!—but I really wanted to honor the Blessed Mother so chose Marie.  She (our daughter) loves that she’s named after Mary.  She loves to dress up like her!

We miscarried a 3rd baby very early, which would’ve been born in August, so I like to think of that one as Augustine; I always liked the nickname Gus.  (But hubby would have never gone for that!) Could be Augusta too, since I have no idea whether the baby was a boy or girl.

Our last is Gianna Paulina.  I loved Gianna very early on—for the saint and the Italian origin.  A few weeks before JPII became very ill (this was in ‘05) I decided on Paulina for the middle name and nothing but nothing would make me budge.  Even my mom didn’t like the Paulina…and then at the funeral coverage when she saw the sign “Giovanni Paulo” she realized why I wanted it.  Our Gianna Paulina (who we call Gigi a lot) was born that month.

Thanks for the opportunity to share!
Good luck!!

Mmmmm, names. I could talk about those all day (and probably have, to the misfortune of my hearers ). My husband and I usually take the I suggest, he vetoes approach EXCEPT when it came to the name of our son, which was the only name in the entire world which he really wanted. Everything else I came up with was “That’s a nice one, but I like Daniel a little better.” Since I like Daniel as well, and the only thing I had against it was its popularity (hardly the name’s fault) we went with it; I did choose the middle name. With this one there was no One Name To Rule Them All, so it’s basically boiled down to:

- More ordinary first name, less ordinary middle name so they can use the unusual name if they want, but not if it’s a pain.

- With a girl, avoid the top 100 or so. It’s unfair, but girls’ names cycle so much faster than boys’ that a little Ava or Isabella will be massively dated where a Daniel wouldn’t be so much.

- At least one saint’s name, to anchor the name.

- Russian or Russian-compatible, because I still have the ultimate goal of going back and working there and obviously our greatest concern will be that the kids have names which can be properly declined in Russian .