I’ve always been quite the experimental namer, starting as early as 3 years old. I won a teddy bear playing a game at the State fair that year, and that bear’s name was [name_f]Zoe[/name_f]. [name_f]My[/name_f] favorite choices at seven years old included [name_f]Emma[/name_f], [name_f]Sabrina[/name_f], [name_m]Christopher[/name_m], [name_f]Felicity[/name_f], and [name_f]Serenity[/name_f]. I was writing stories at that age featuring characters with names like [name_m]Bartholomew[/name_m], [name_m]Talon[/name_m], [name_m]Tigris[/name_m], [name_u]Hadley[/name_u]. I invented a lot of names as well, only to discover that they were real names. I started writing down my favorite names along with explanations regularly in a list at 11 years old; at that time, I loved [name_m]Jared[/name_m], [name_u]Mackenzie[/name_u], [name_f]Holly[/name_f], and [name_f]Lorraine[/name_f]. I’ve continued that to the present day, and I will into the future. It’s so great that I have real records of my name style progression through the years 
It’s so interesting to look back and see how the choices have changed, and what has stayed the same. So…how has your naming style progressed?
[name_f]My[/name_f] naming style when I was younger was quite different than my current style. I liked quite trendy names, I just didn’t realize it at that time. In high school I loved [name_u]Avery[/name_u], and [name_u]Madison[/name_u], and now I consider those much to trendy for my taste now. I prefer names that are a bit more classic, and have special meaning to me and my husband nowadays, see the names in my signature for examples. 
When I was younger I liked long super-feminine traditional names (the opposite of mine). As I got older I liked the uber-traditional Catholic “saint’s names” tied to my family tree. Now I tend to be a little more creative, looking for names that aren’t top 50 and a little different, but still traditional. Family names are still important to me, but instead of just going with [name_m]Patrick[/name_m], I might look to the middle name [name_m]Edmund[/name_m] for something a little different or to surnames for the middle. [name_f]My[/name_f] favorite boys name is [name_m]Ronan[/name_m] [name_m]Forrest[/name_m] ([name_m]Forrest[/name_m] being the surname from a branch of my family tree), which is a bit different (for me at least) from [name_m]William[/name_m] [name_m]David[/name_m]. I find girls names impossible. I’m not into staples [name_f]Victoria[/name_f]/[name_f]Elizabeth[/name_f] like I used to be but am not quite in love with any if the girls names I do like ([name_f]Johanna[/name_f], [name_f]Persephone[/name_f] ([name_u]Penny[/name_u]))