I have been in love with names since i was a kid. I love how names can be pretty, beautiful or ugly all while have meaning too.
But i HATE it when i find a name that I like and tell a close friend or family member and they dislike it! I believe it takes a little time for a name to grow on people… people need to be more open minded to names!
I am married and we don’t have children yet. When the time comes I plan on giving 3 separate names to friends and family saying “Here are the 3 names we have picked out. We will choose when he/she is born”
has anyone ever done this that you know?? does it really help the nay saying??
I just think that if someone asks you while your pregnant what are you going to name your child, and you say either
[name]Marcus[/name]
[name]Gary[/name]
or [name]Richie[/name]
chances are the friend will be pleased with at least one of them and wont give a turned up face when present them to her…
Please let me know what you think…
PS those are my cousin’s names not my love names
I made the mistake of telling ONE friend ONE of my names I liked while pregnant w/ my son, and she made a horrible face and expressed her displeasure. From that day forward my DH and I told NO ONE what the names we had chosen were. When baby was born we announced his name and no one has ever said a bad thing about them. We plan on doing the same for the next, b/c I do think it limits nay saying, and I just don’t want to hear about the reasons other people don’t like our taste. I do definitely try to chose names that I think other people will not absolutely hate or make fun of, for the sake of my child, but do not want to listen to all the petty reasons people don’t like a particular name : )!
I will not be sharing our name choices with anyone other then on here until after the births of our future children. My husband is very close with his parents and he wanted their help in the name selection process for our first daughter. He didn’t want to put forth a whole lot of effort in the search while I was making huge lists daily (trying to find something he liked…) so he would just ask his mom’s advice. I adore my ILs but I honestly don’t care what they think About the names of our children. I felt like this was our experience and it wasn’t fair of him to share it with them. So all future children will be announced after they are born.
I learnt my lesson from my first pregnancy - NEVER tell anyone your names!!
As i have put on these boards before - we had chosen [name]Nathaniel[/name] and [name]Theodore[/name] for our twin boys, and despite my insisting peoples opinions didn’t matter, the odd faces and high pitched ‘[name]Theodore[/name]??!!’ responses eventually got to me. At 28 weeks (ish) we decided on [name]Oscar[/name] and [name]Fintan[/name] and that was that. We never told anyone - we just introduced them with their name, which they completely embody!
This time round i have told everyone, i am going to be more bold than i was last time, and i don’t care if you don’t like it - i’m still keeping mum tho!!
I wouldn’t even give three names. I keep my mouth shut when it comes to names I like. I think that giving three names is more dangerous than giving one. The people may feel like they need to talk you into the one that they like. Also if your mom loved [name]Gary[/name] and you picked [name]Marcus[/name], you may hear about it for longer than you’d like.
I’d absolutely not share my name choices with anyone, not even best friends and esp. not family (except here lol)! Too many people are way too opinionated and really, its not their child. I don’t care if you knew a [name]Gabriel[/name] who was a horrible person or pulled your hair in school, or an [name]Eliana[/name] who was a cow- those names are beautiful to me and my husband and given these might very well be our future children’s names, its none of your business. One of my friends told me everyone would pronounce [name]Gabriel[/name] as “[name]Gabrielle[/name]” and call him [name]Gabby[/name]!! It still makes me mad! Honestly, she gave her son a tongue-twisting name and I never said anything to her about it, so she needs to keep mum on my choices and respect them. Telling people your names just invites stress into your lives. In our case, we’re also from two extremely different cultures (Eastern European and Middle Eastern) so we have to work extra hard to find a name both sets of grandparents can pronounce and that won’t upset either set of parents for being too ethnic either way- name discussions will just add to the tension so we’ll just announce it when baby has arrived and people have no choice but to respect it.
Yes it does! We didn’t tell anyone our son’s name until after he was born. You don’t have to deal with the sour faced [name]MIL[/name] or the sister who says “oh I don’t like that at all” and having to know that they hate your child’s name for the rest of his/her life. We will not be telling anyone our choice this time either (until she arrives). My [name]MIL[/name] was just here the other day spewing name after name and I smiled sweetly for an hour and said no, no, no.
We my first child everyone had an opinion about my daughters names, also everyone asked me what i was planning on naming her. I felt like it was rude to say, “I am not sharing that info” so I had name decoys. A name decoy was a name I like, possibly use it as a middle name but not the NAME. When i txt msg a friend, from the hospital, my sons name she txt back, “is that a joke!” People can be rude.
I like to talk with family and friends about names very early in the naming process, maybe even before we find out the gender. That way I can get a feeling for what is precieved as “really wierd” and what is pleasing to peoples ears. It also helps me narrow down the list. It is nice when someone points out a bad association with a name that I hadn’t thought of, or notices that it doesn’t flow with our last name. But then when I have the list narrowed down I stop talking to people about it and only discuss with my husband. Then announce the name when the baby is born.
I think that strategy gives people the satisfaction of having some input but they can’t turn their nose at your final selection.
I also like discussing my names with my sister and [name]SIL[/name] so I don’t accidently steal a name that they love. So far we haven’t had much overlap in names we love but it is good to make sure!
I wouldn’t even give three examples though. When people ask “What are you naming the baby?” what they really want is to get you to listen to THEIR opinions. So when anyone asks me that, I just say “Oh I like a LOT of names. What are your favorites?” They will then try to convince you to name your child [name]Brittany[/name]/[name]Mavis[/name]/[name]Harold[/name]/Lynkyn/whatever their favorite name is.
This puts you back in control. They are suggesting names to YOU, which YOU can either shoot down, ignore, or use, as you please. When YOU do the suggesting this gives them the idea that you want their approval.
Something else I have done (my strategy depends on the person and my mood!) is make up names that I know they will hate. For example my mom makes sure I know her favorite names are things like [name]Jenna[/name], [name]Nicole[/name], [name]Jessica[/name], [name]Ashley[/name], [name]Whitney[/name] … very 80s. When she asks what my names are I tell her something like [name]Brunhilda[/name] Brooklynetta.
It does not eliminate the naysayers though. When I introduced my first daughter as [name]Clementine[/name], one of my aunts blurted out “Is that negotiable!?” I basically had to stare her down and tell her “NO, it is not negotiable, because it is MY baby.” Everyone else backed me up, even the ones who didn’t like it either! Saying it after the fact is so rude that others will support you, which might not happen if you seem to be asking for opinions beforehand.
I do ask online strangers about associations and possible puns, and the flow of the first and middle names together.
Ooh, you’re smart, I love the idea of turning the question back on them.
I am pretty selective about who I tell during the thinking process and as it happens when we settled on both our girls names we told no one. I too am easily hurt by someone saying ‘Yuck, you can’t name your baby…whatever’ (which actually happened to me with [name]Clementine[/name], such a lovely name, but I couldn’t get the tone of the critic’s voice out of my head.) I doubt everyone loved my first daughter’s name at first, it’s a bit of a head-turner ([name]Frederique[/name], we call her [name]Fred[/name]), but no one said anything negative. And SHE loves her name now (she’s 7) and we love it too. The good thing about this is that after that big surprise, everyone was really excited to find out what our second daughter would be called ([name]Una[/name] [name]Pearl[/name]) and that excitement continues for this bubba.
I did have a friend who gave her son a lovely name, contemporary flavour but old names and her partner’s best friend said (after the baby was born) ‘Oh well, he can always change it.’ I think this barbed comment said more about this guy’s jealousy about his bestie moving on to a new stage of his life and leaving him behind than the baby’s name.
I agree – don’t even tell them your top three choices unless you genuinely want feedback. Somewhere in my pregnancy I figured this out and stopped running name ideas by my mom and close friends. I realized that I didn’t really care what they thought, I was just looking for validation. When someone didn’t like a name, it really made me conflicted about whether I could use that name. So the husband and I tell people we have a boy’s name picked out and a list of girl names to take to the hospital, but we want to keep it all a surprise. I think it’s more fun that way. In a few days from now we’ll get to tell everyone whether we have a boy or girl baby and what name we’ve chosen. I can hardly wait! I do have to say that people will pressure you to tell them what names you’ve chosen. It’s weird. [name]Just[/name] stay strong, smile and tell them it’s a surprise!
Wow, I’m really impressed with all these comments. I always thought it was practically obligation to talk about names. When I see a gf pregnant, I always ask- just trying to be polite. But I never thought people could be rude about it. You all have such good and interesting ways to deal with it.
I don’t have children yet, but I have a list of names. I follow a tradition by my parents and want to name them after some heroic figure, so while I like them, they probably sound a little obscure to most people:
I (a girl) was named after [name]Jason[/name] and the Argonauts. My sister was named after a character from [name]Dune[/name]; and my brother named after the hero from Sword and the Sorcerer.
We don’t tell people our names beforehand with the exception of some family and very close friends. (Although I count myself extremely lucky in having super-supportive friends and family. In any other case we wouldn’t tell anyone.)
It doesn’t help that we like non-traditional names, but even with commonplace names, someone will find something to dislike about a name you have chosen, and for some reason they feel very free to tell you so!
If you wait until the baby is born most people will hold their tongues and even come to like the name once it’s on your sweet little one!
I think that like others have said, telling people your possible names in advance gives the impression that you want their input. And those close to you probably think they’re helping by giving honest input - including the fact that they don’t like a certain name or think it’s weird or associate with a mean girl from elementary school. If you [name]DO[/name] want their input, then great! But be prepared to hear positive and negative. When you introduce your baby and his name at the same time, people are more likely to accept/like the name as they have it naturally associated with the actual baby in front of them. Most people will also be polite enough to keep their negative thoughts (if any) to themselves. Either because there are fewer negative thoughts when presented with the actual baby or because the friend is nice enough to keep those thoughts quiet, you don’t have to hear them. And that’s really the point, isn’t it?
thank you for all of your input!
i think my biggest critic is going to be my sister… I have already started to tell her names i like and she ALWAYS gives me the up turned nose… “you like that name??”
i think men are also culprits of the nay saying but at the end of the day they could care less…
we named our dog [name]Carina[/name] and when i told my dad he was like
“Why did you name her that??”
and i said it means cute in italian…
“but we aren’t italian…”
no crap dad! i liked the name…
“oh thats nice”
I guess there will always be conflict when some people name for creativity and others name for taste… but thats the beauty of it!
I had told people some of the names we liked and the opinions just started to fly…
if you are going with a top 10 type of name you will most likely be fine. But if you are going out of the ‘norm’ at all I would just tell people that we decided to not tell people to preserve some surprise for them.
Hopefully once it is on the birth cert. people will pipe down but most likely not. But I figure that at that point it is too late anyways we have already decided … But that is just me.
My future [name]MIL[/name] named her sons [name]Christopher[/name] and [name]Matthew[/name] (which have been in the top 20 [name]FOREVER[/name]), so I’m willing to bet that in a few years when we start talking kids, she’s gonna start suggesting [name]Emma[/name], [name]Jennifer[/name], [name]Michael[/name], and [name]Daniel[/name]. She’s going to be horrified when she meets her grandkids [name]Clementine[/name], [name]Lydia[/name], and [name]Wycliffe[/name]! :o) I can’t wait to see her face.
I’m not pregnant and I don’t have any kids but what I plan on doing is just sending out my long list of baby names to everyone who asks… minus a few of my die-hard favorites, of course. ;o) That, or I plan on doing what orangesunrise suggested and making up some fake names… telling everyone the baby’s going to be named [name]Ella[/name] [name]Madison[/name] or [name]Ethan[/name] [name]Michael[/name]. Most of the people who know me know of my obsession with/taste in names though so there’s no way they would buy [name]Ella[/name]/[name]Ethan[/name]. Maybe if I said I was naming my daughter [name]Lucretia[/name] [name]Isidore[/name] and my son [name]Barnabas[/name] [name]Clyde[/name]…
I don’t know why people are so rude about baby names… sometimes even after the baby is already born! It tempts me to write down all the bad reactions in the baby name book: “Dear [name]Hero[/name], today at 2 weeks old you met your grandma for the first time and she nearly had a coronary! Wants me to change your name to [name]Ella[/name], as if that’s going to happen. [name]Love[/name], Mom.”
I can’t really speak from experience since I don’t have kids yet but it seems like giving three names would be more enticing for people to give their unwanted opinions. I think people would probably tell you which name they think is best, or which name they totally hate. I think you are better off either not telling anyone any of the options and just announcing it when the baby is born, or decide on a name and tell people what it is and be very definite about it.
A friend of mine decided not to tell anyone what they were naming their son until he was born. She made the mistake of telling her nurse at one of her appointments the two names that she was considering and the nurse instantly said, “Oh don’t name him ___, I have known some horrible ___s! You should definitely go with (the other name)!” Needless to say after that she was pretty intent about not telling anyone until he was born.
