I love stories of how people picked out their children's names. It took us a lot more time to pick out Teddy's name, but really it was an easier process than when we picked out Tillie's. In late August/early September Tim and I wrote lists of the names we consider for naming this baby. I then complied them into one list that added information on popularity, name meaning and possible nicknames. Name meaning was just for fun and popularity is pretty important to me. We then each wrote comments on each name - basically saying why we liked it, why we didn't like it or just a straight up veto. We don't have identical taste in names, Tim's choices are usually a little more conventional than my choices, but there is a lot of overlap. It's amazing to me that when we made our lists to send to each other there were some of the same names on each of our lists -- out of all the names in the world!
For some reason, deciding on the name(s) ahead of time didn't seem to be such a pressing issue this time around. By mid-September we had a list of 6 girl names and 3 boy names. One of the girl names we liked but knew we wouldn't use and two of them were long shots, so basically it was three and three. When we checked into Triage on Sunday night Tim pulled out the list. He looked at the girl list and said what his pick would be, which had been my favorite the whole pregnancy. (In fact, at this point I would TOTALLY use it for a future girl. I didn't feel that way with the "leftover" names after Tillie was born, which is why I don't have a son named Eli now!)
For a boy, we just couldn't decide between two names. We decided to just take those two names in with us and if it was a boy we'd see which name felt right. (It's kind of funny, with Tillie we had two girl names and one boy name that we took into delivery. This time with an opposite gendered child it was the opposite.) Theodore had been my favorite boy name even before we got pregnant, but there was another name of Tim's list that jumped out at me in September. He obviously really liked it. It was on his list with Tillie and I vetoed it pretty soon in the discussions. Theodore was slightly more popular than I would like (263rd last year) and the other name was not in the top 1000 last year.
After we found out he was a boy we looked at him and had no idea. Tim said, "Let's go with Theodore." Calling him Teddy felt right, but there were a few times while we were at the hospital when we felt like we should have gone with the other name. By that point Theodore was all over facebook and my blog and we didn't want to have to deal with telling people we changed our minds. Theodore feels right now though.
William is after Tim's grandfather. It would have been the middle name for any of the boy names we had chosen.
1 comment:
I love hearing how parents choose baby names as well.
I'm surprised you guys can go into delivery without 1 name firm for a boy and 1 for a girl. I need it set in stone for months ahead of time.
We picked Asa's name the day we found out he was a boy at the ultrasound. It was at the top of our short list. I made the mistake of plastering it on my xanga. Low and behold, another blogger used the same name for her son, even born the same day! We were still debating girl names when we found out baby #2 was a girl. We had a girl's name picked for years, but hubby changed his mind. So we were back to the drawing board. Our families and close friends knew Charlotte's name, but I did not publicly state it this time around, lesson learned!
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