How did you name your kids?

[EmilyF]

What are your kids' names? What influenced the naming of your children? Did you have rules or guidelines? If you don't feel comfortable putting their names on here you can still participate, just answer whatever questions you can.

My boys are Levi Thomas and Patrick Jonathan.

Are rules:
The name had to be ageless. Some names are cute but I can't imagine them on a grandmother or grandfather.
They had to be gender appropriate. No boys named Sue
They had to be the typical accepted spelling. My husband is Graig. No one can spell it and he often gets called Craig.
They had to pass the in trouble, graduating from high school and presidential inauguration test.
They had to be out of the Top 100.

No real regrets but I wish I'd know that people wouldn't know Levi's name. He gets called Eli and even Ivy (what?!). And I wish I'd known that Patrick was a character in Spongebob. An ugly pink blobby one at that.
What about y'all.

 

[3girls2dogs]

I just picked names I liked. My youngest was supposed to be a boy. At least the doctor kept telling us she was a boy. So my husband wanted a junior, so she was supposed to be Sean. When she came out and was a girl, we just named her Shauna.

 

[Linnis]

DH and I didn't like the same names. Then we both were reading something we both enjoy and we said "Ethan!" and that was it. We didn't know until much later that it's been a popular name the last couple years. His middle names are family names we wanted to pass on.

 

[~Mrs. A2J~]

Our kids names are Katheryn Elise and Liam Ward. Hubby and I have always had trouble agreeing on names so the first criteria was the name had to be something that the other didn't hate. The names had to be gender obvious and tried and true names. The middle names are family names.

 

[llghoney]

I wanted something that had meaning so Grace it is going to be. Started to name her Gracie but like you said that didn't sit well with me with her being older. The middle name we are still undecided on but I came across Cayla last night that I'm leaning toward. I also look at the intials. Couldn't name her something with a A because her intials will be GAG.

 

[guitarragirl]

My boys are named Gabriel and Jonah. I'm really drawn to Biblical names. Names with strong meanings are very important to me. I vetoed Cameron a few years ago because it meant something pretty lame. Jonah means dove, but his middle name is Ariel...which means Lion of God. We are thinking Elijah for a third boy.
Oh, and I just wanted our kids names to sound educated, and not trendy.

 

[Beth1231]

lighoney, I think Grace Cayla sounds beautiful.

Anina Faith got her name from a baby name book of unique names. My husband found it and said "Honey, what about this one?" I saw the name Anina and the meaning "answer to prayer" and I knew we were done looking. The next day I came up with Faith for her middle name. I needed a pretty, feminine sounding name to offset our harsh-sounding, masculine last name. And Faith goes with answered prayer

Our choice had to be something away from the top 100 also. Anina isn't even in the top 1,000 so we accomplished that for sure.

 

[Assisi]

My personal pre-reqs are that the names be Biblical or saint names. My husband and I are both named after saints and I really like that. I particularly like the way that Clare of Assisi (who I am named for) lived out her faith and trusted in the Lord, so I love being named for her. I want to give that to my children too.

My children are named after St Gabriel the Archangel, and St Francis of Assisi. The names we've picked out for our new baby are a Biblical name for a first name and as a second name a saint's name (not from the Bible), but I won't share for a few more weeks.

 

[jennyren]

With Keira, we just liked the sound. It means black haired and she was born with a ton of it, now she's blond as can be.

With Raiden, my husband chose the name from a video game (mortal combat I think). It means god of thunder. He started out as a meek and mild little guy but now that he's in his two's he is very loud and dramatic.

With Caden Cai I wanted something with strong meaning. Caden means Spirit of Battle, and Cai means Rejoice. I don't think it's coincidental that this baby laughs, smiles, coos more often than I've ever seen a baby do. He's ready to do battle by rejoicing in the Lord.

 

[sparassidae]

Isaac- didn't have any boys names in particular, so went to the Bible.

Emily- always loved the name and was determined from a young age to name my first girl this name.

Adara- character in a fiction book that we both liked.

Jael- love the OT story! and think it's a pretty name.

The boys and girls name we have ready for #5 are both biblical names.

For us the rules are: Must have a decent meaning (although we don't pick based on meaning alone), and if it's a biblical name it must be a 'good guy'

 

[Neenie1]

Daniel - we liked the name, and the meaning. (God is my judge)

With Emily - it was so hard to pick a girls name we both liked. This is the one we both liked. IT's a very very pretty name, although I think there are way too many Emily's and given a 2nd chance, we would probably pick something else. (her name means Industrious - hard working)


As far as rules go, it has to go with our last name, if it is a name of someone famous it has to be someone who we admire or does good things in the community or whatever (so I would never name a daughter Paris) Same goes for Bible names, I would never name a son Judas for example.

 

[JulySheMustFly]

We wanted names that had gender neutral possibilities so that if we had a girl who was not as girly as her name that she could go with something more comfortable for her and same for a boy.

Oh, and we didn't want the first name and our last name to rhyme. Our last name ends with a "Y" so it cut out a number of names that we liked.

Pirate's name was chosen to reflect my husband's heritage. Bird's name was to reflect a portion of my husband's name since we didn't think we'd have another child. Bear's name is simply beautiful and we agreed on it from before we were even married or considering children.

 

[Wrexscar]

My wife dreamt an angel came to her and said you must name the child Joel, I wasn't that keen but remembering the lesson of Zacchius I said how about as a middle name?
I wasn't struck dumb so it must have been okay.

 

[lucypevensie]

We had to both like the names. Obviously. But this is harder than it sounds for some couples. Like us

It might be easier to make rules about what you DON'T want which you both agree on. Things we agreed on:
No surnames as first names
Nothing hippie sounding
Nothing trendy
No creative spelling
Normal but not super popular
Names with good derivatives or nicknames.
Nothing with a lot of S sound - had to blend well with our last name.
Ages of the names have to blend [no Henry(old) Kaden(New) or Elizabeth(old) Madison(new), for example]

 

[-~Truth_N_Trust~-]

we went with bible names, actually, bible books, and a nice meaning, with personal significance and family names as middle names.
My children are Ruth Ana and Ezekiel Peter.
Both names were chosen before we fell pg...

 

[Meshavrischika]

I named Elsa myself though her formal name is Elizabeth Ashley (wanted something she could make a choice on since Elsa is an unusual name - I just thought Ashley went well)

DH and Elsa named Randi Hart (my husband's dad, and he are both Randy, though I call him Todd) which is a family name all the way with Hart being his grandmother's maiden name

 

[PegasusOnFire]

My oldest is Corey Lee (gender neutral since we did not know the gender)
DD1 Christian DeAnn ( I always wanted to name my daughter Christian, and DeAnn is my mother's middle name)
DD2 Mary Louise (I was 12 weeks pregnant and God revieled to my husband that we were haveing a girl and her name was Mary, Louise is my MIL's middle name.)

First boy will be Jerrald Vern IV after his dad, grandpa, and great grandpa.

 

[seamonster]

Honestly, I chose the middle name first (Caspian) because I absolutely loved it. It took me several months to finally find a first name that I liked and that sounded good with the middle name. We didn't have any "rules."

 

[Onomatopoeia]

DD1 is Olivia Paige, I just liked the names. If I would have known how popular Olivia was, I would have chosen something different.

DD2 is Claudia Elizabeth. My husband's grandfather Claud passed away while I was pregnant, and we wanted to honor him. Elizabeth is Claud's wife,...we thought it was very fitting.

DD3 is Amelia Helen. After we realized that both our older girls' names ended in "ia"(it took about 3 months), we decided to stick with it. Helen was a name my husband really liked, so we went with it.

Our basic name rules are:
not overly popular
has to work well at any age
tradition spellings only
nothing trendy

 

[Leanna]

My kids names are in my signature

For boys I'd prefer to avoid the really really popular... but semi popular is okay. We like classic, and now that we have two Bible names we'll most likely name a 3rd boy a Bible name too if we have a third boy.

For girls I avoid at least the top 25, maybe top 50. Its too bad because when I was younger I had always planned to name my first daughter Hannah... but it was in the top 5. I can't do the top 5. Also really liked Emma, and Emily, and basically all of the top 5. Anyway for daughters it has to be obviously feminine to me and not too popular and those are the only rules.

Oh and I like my kids names to seem "right" together... which is a very obscure and personal thing, lol