I am just interested to know everyone’s stories really.
Just to make clear I am not pregnant.
So my question is when choosing your child’s name did you(and your s/o) pick the middle name you liked best first and then choose the first name or the other way round?
Did it differ for different children?
[name_u]Or[/name_u] did you pick between two completely different combos?
For us, the first name was our focus. I did think a lot about her middle name too but more so after we’d settled on a first name. I knew my partner cared a lot less about middles and that I’d be able to choose what I wanted (within reason), so that was something I thought about mostly on my own alongside our more avid search for the right first name. Once we had that I was able to pair a couple of middle name options I had in my mind with it and decide what worked best.
I see a lot of people on here have a different middle for their different first name options; that wasn’t something we ever did because I only really had 2-3 middle options that were meaningful to me and that I wanted to use (and, initially at least, lots of first name options). That’s the same for me this time (I’m pregnant) - I have two or three middle name options that I shift around to match the various first names I’m currently contemplating (I say ‘I’ and not ‘us’ because my partner seems to dislike everything at the moment!).
Hope this helps!
Good luck finding a name for your second baby!
It was different for each child with me.
With my oldest we picked the middle name first. It was very meaningful to both me and my ex-husband. For the first name we decided we wanted an Icelandic nature name, and Hjörtur had been on my list for ages, it was also honoring someone who was very important to me. It sounded good with the middle name we’d chosen ([name_m]Emmanuel[/name_m]), the moment we put the two names together it felt perfect.
Naming my second son was a struggle. I was divorced and had a new SO by then, so looking for the perfect compromise between our styles had to start all over again. I was also struggling with anxiety during my pregnancy and kept thinking that everyone was going to hate the name we’d chose. We knew we wanted the baby’s middle name to be an Icelandic nature name, because of the connection to Hjörtur, but we hadn’t chosen one from our list yet. Only very late in my pregnancy we decided on his first name, [name_m]Barnabas[/name_m] (him being born almost 5 weeks early forced us to speed things up as well 
). When we had his first name, we looked at our list of middle names again and chose the one that worked best with [name_m]Barnabas[/name_m] and had the best meaning.
With the twins it was different for each one of them. We decided very early on that we wanted [name_m]Leonid[/name_m] as a first name, and decided that we wanted Pythagoras as a middle name a little later. They sounded good together, so that was baby A’s name. For baby B we decided on his middle name first, Zakynthos, and I went into the delivery room with different options for his first name.
Thank you! I’ve been meaning to ask you how to pronounce hjörter
For our first, we bounced around first names before even really thinking much about middle names. We figured we’d use a family name for the middle, so we’re weren’t too concerned about finding the perfect middle name or perfect combo.
For finding the first name, we had discussed the styles we liked and set some loose parameters for what names we wanted. For example, we knew we didn’t want to use any super long names for our kids because our last name is 10 letters long. We also wanted to use names that are easy to spell/pronounce because our long last name gives people trouble. And, we wanted names that weren’t uber popular because my DH and I both enjoyed not having to share our names with so many other people in school (DH hasn’t met another person with his name and I only had one class in college with someone who had my name). That’s how we settled on [name_f]Ada[/name_f] [name_u]Marie[/name_u] – it fit all the parameters and we loved the vintage vibes! We adore her name so much and get lots of compliments on it.
Now that we’re TTC for our second, we’re looking at names with the same parameters that also have that old-fashioned/vintage feel to them. It’s definitely a bit harder the second time around but I think we’re starting to get down to a shortlist for either gender 
Hjörtur is pronounced KHYUR-tur, with ch as in the Scottish loch but a bit less harsh. You can listen to it here: Hjörtur pronunciation: How to pronounce Hjörtur in Icelandic
Though most people here just say YUR-tur, even my SO (he doesn’t speak Icelandic).
I had a list of first names and a list of middle names and we played around with combinations, but ultimately the first name was the focus.