The Mommy Words Name Game (meme)

1. Do you have any cultural or religious naming traditions?

We have no mandatory cultural or religious naming traditions to follow, but we do both really like Celtic-based names and we both come from Celtic origins (Scottish and Irish), though for our first child we didn't actually choose one from that group. (I guess it's got some English origins, though)

2. Did you or your partner come to the marriage with pre-selected names?

Yes. My husband wants our first boy to be a 3rd. I also had a girl's name picked out that I loved, but ultimately, I changed my mind and we didn't use it. It didn't even make my short list at all.

3. Did you consider the sound of the first and middle and last names together? Did this make any sad eliminations?

Yes. Oh yes. And we looked at initials, too so that no "bad words" were spelled out by the initials. Our last name starts with a C so RA and SA were out. One of my favorite names Rebecca Aimee was eliminated because of that combination faux pas.

4. Do you have veto powers?

Both of us had veto powers over things we hated, though I can't veto his "the 3rd" and he takes a step back to girls' names if I insist.

5. Did the baby naming cause arguments?

Not really. we have a lot of similar tastes. And while there are some beautiful names that really don't fit with our last name and his logic ultimately made sense. We didn't fight but there were a lot of "really? you don't like that?" questions.

6. Do you think it is easier to name boys or girls?

Boys. We have a MUCH shorter list for boys than girls.

7. Did you eliminate names because of people from your past or present who you don’t like or because a certain image comes to mind.

Yes!!!! There are a few names I would have put on our short list in a heartbeat, but one of us hated because of negative associations.

8. Did you / would you survey your children to get their thoughts on the name?

Nope. We are much too opinionated to let other people decide what gets to be our decision. We only have the one kid, so far, and we already made the decisions on our next child whether a boy or a girl.

9. Did you tell people the name or possibler names before the baby was born or were they “in the vault”?

We were planning to take 2 secret names to the hospital and decide then. But when it became apparent what the final answer was around 7.5 months, we went ahead an announced it. But we stipulated that we didn't want to hear any negative feedback at all - the decision was final. We also stipulated that we controlled the the nicknaming options - there were some obvious nicknames that we hated, so we wanted to control of that.

10. Did you use baby name books?

Yes! I have a collection. But my favorite, by far is The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg. She also has a website full of information and runs a weekly blog. Laura's book doesn't deal with meanings, so I also have a couple of name dictionaries, since meanings are very important to us. 100,000 Baby Names is my most comprehensive.

Drumroll Please…What did you name your kids and why? Well, here, I call her The Fuss. But, obviously that isn't the name on her birth certificate. :)

We chose a very classic name. My qualifications were that I loved to say it over and over, that at least part of it (first or middle or both) had to have a nice meaning, I really wanted to have an association with a song, and I wanted us to just feel right. Her name is related to my husband's name and she has his initials. Her middle name is the name of one of our favorite female historical figures (and my husband is a history buff, so it's even more important). I had a requirement that her name not be in the top 50 of the several previous years Social Security popularity stats. Her middle name is in the top 10 and if it wasn't, we might have actually reversed the order of them. :)

This Meme is brought to you by Brittany of Mommy Words.