It may not be hard for everyone, but it was hard for us!
We had a girl name from the very beginning. Ariana in case you need a good girl name.
But had the hardest time with finding a boy name. Each boy was born without a name. I am always amazed when people know the name months before they have the baby. Or sometimes even before they are pregnant!
With T1 he was 6 weeks early so we had a good excuse. He was named before he left the hospital.
T2 was 2 weeks late and we had a list of our top 10 and I had been whispering the name I liked in DHs ear each night. When DH said he looks like a C. I suddenly wasn’t sure. But in the end indeed he was a C. He too left the hospital with a name.
T3 was 1.5 weeks late and we had a list of 40 names. Names like Zeus and Shark Boy (thanks to suggestions from T1 and T2) The name I really wanted – Gideon – was relegated to his middle name. He went home from the hospital without a name, but a few days later we went back to fill out his birth certificate. It took awhile to figure his name out. I still sometimes wish we went with Gideon. I guess I should have been whispering it in DHs ear. But at least it is one of his names.
I have been on the hunt for another boy name for years, just in case!
How about you? Was it hard for you to come up with your baby’s name?
With both our daughters we tried out a bunch of names beforehand but purposely waited until they were born to name them. We felt like we needed to officially meet them before we named them. A good thing, too, because with DD1, we named her our top pick, but with DD2, we ended up naming her something that hadn’t even made the top 10.
As a different note: I always think it’s weird when someone says that your middle name is not your “real” name (not that you said that, but that’s kind of the idea here). Your middle name is just as real as your first. I actually went by my middle name until I was about 11, when I decided I hated it and switched to my first. Several of my siblings also go by their middle names. So it’s not too late to start calling #3 Gideon! 🙂
My 2 older boys and I have tried to switch and call #3 Gideon, but it doesn’t really work after a few years with a different name. But it is true, he could always decide to switch – I think if the desire came from him, then it could work. :O)
I have a harder time with boy names as well. We didn’t find out the baby’s gender with either baby. With DD1, we had a girl & boy name picked out beforehand. With DD2, we had a first name for a girl picked out but didn’t have a boy name. (Good thing she was a girl!) We didn’t have a middle name picked out, but my husband’s aunts thought we were looking for a middle name. They were emailing all these suggestions & one actually stuck out – so we used that as middle name. Now I’m in my 3rd pregnancy. Maybe it’s intuition that this baby is a boy, but I feel an urgency to figure out a boy name. We have some possibilities, but I think we will wait until the baby’s born to decide for sure.
“We didn’t have a middle name picked out” ….what I meant was that we weren’t planning on having a middle name.
Do you still have the boy name from your first pregnancy?
I agree, for me it was nice to see the baby before picking out the name. It helps to see if it fits.
With our first, I knew what her name would be forever. I told my husband before we were ever engaged. Fortunately, he loves the name. It took 5 years to have our first child. My first girl would be Leata (Lee-tuh). My mom’s sister’s name was Leata and she died of meningitis when she was 3.5 years old. My first daughter was names after her. My husband chose the middle name, which is his mother’s middle name.
With our second, also a girl, we had a very hard time naming her. She was born 7 weeks early, very suddenly and unexpectedly. She didn’t have a name when she was born but she was born on my grandmother’s birthday. My grandmother’s first name is my name so I didn’t want to name her Sarah like me. Her first name is the same as our doctor’s last name, Taylor, and her middle name is my grandmother’s middle name.
Our third was a boy and he was named after my Dad, Mark. His middle name we just chose because we liked it. We knew his name since before we were married also. We both liked it.
Our fourth and last child was also a boy. We decided we liked the name Luke and knew from about halfway through my pregnancy with him. His middle name was chosen because my Uncle died on Christmas suddenly while I was pregnant with Luke. We gave him my Uncle’s first name as his middle name.
I love that you used family names that had great meaning to you.
I did use a family name for the middle name of my first son.
I don’t think it is hard….It can be hard to agree with your spouse about it but a lot of that depends on your relationship and that varies a LOT. The more people you want to please or feel that their input is important (in-laws etc) the harder it gets…you can’t make everybody happy. I was born to hippie parents who gave me a hippie name that didn’t define and sometimes made life hard…eventually I changed it legally but a name is ephemeral just like our time here on earth.
I agree the more people you tell, the harder it can be. Everyone’s “input” can make it harder.