Baby Naming

Naming a baby can be stressful. Once named, a person is stuck with that name for the rest of his/her life (unless they go about changing it, I suppose). There seem to be so many things to think about.

Is this a boy or girl's name? The lines for this are certainly blurring, especially as many girls are now being named what used to be considered boys' names. Peyton is a prime example.

Do the initials spell out anything bad or negative? Having KKK as your initials would be less than desirable I would think.

Will people understand the name and/or be able to spell it? Although I do like my unique name, it is often mispronounced and mispelled. I usually dread going to a new doctor or dentist for the first time as my name has been slaughtered in several waiting rooms. Everyone looks at me as if they are thinking, "What kind of name is that?".

Will my child's name lend itself to terrible nicknames? Some names are just easier to poke fun at than others and you don't your child's name to be one of them.

Will my child be around 15 other children with the same name? Although this isn't the worst thing in the world, I enjoyed knowing that when I heard my name, people were referring to me. As a teacher, it was always a little confusing having two students with the same name. Someone had to use a nickname or have an initial added on.

With Gavin, we had the name picked out before we even knew we were having a boy. Peyton was our second choice, so we had his name picked out far in advance as well. We have not been so lucky this time around.

The name Jason likes most I do not care for. The name I like most Jason does not like because of a little terror child by that name who came to VBS this past summer. The name we both like the most does not go well with our last name, primarily because it spells out a phrase. That's the negative about having a noun for a last name - and a food, no less.

So we made a list of names with their popularity number next to them (from the S.S. web site). We then whittled the list down to eight and ranked them in the order we liked them. We took the name with the best score and have made that the chosen name. What a great story to tell our third son!

We're also having some difficulty choosing a middle name, which is always named for someone. With Gavin we knew what it would be. With Peyton we were deciding between two names. After he was born Jason made the final decision since I didn't have a prference either way. Unfortunately the one we didn't use - and were going to use this time - has been used since then and we aren't sure we should use it now. Jason came up with another idea, but I'm not totally sold on it (and I don't think he is either). It doesn't seem to flow very well, but like he said, who walks around saying their entire name?

I know this probably has you wondering what we are naming our child, but alas, we never tell anyone (the boys don't even know). I will tell you the first name ends with "n", but you could have probably guessed that already!