When I was 14 or so I made a long list of favorite names. I don’t have it anymore, but I have a feeling that if I were to go back and look at it now, some of them would make me cringe or laugh.
[name]Even[/name] now, sometimes there’s a name I hear and think “wow, that’s fun!” or am really infatuated with for a while…and then a couple months later I am bored with it or find it annoying or silly.
Now that I’m actually pregnant and we actually have to give a child a name in a few months, this thought is a little scary to me. What if we pick a name that is just a temporary crush, and then we’re stuck with it?
So, how do you figure out if you’re being pulled in by a trend or a fleeting attraction? [name]How[/name] do you have confidence that you will continue to love the name in 5 years? I don’t have any names that I’ve been certain about using since 5 years ago! (Especially tricky when there’s a partner in the picture to agree with!) [name]Do[/name] you have names you thought you loved and then realized it was just a crush? Or, alternatively, did you have a name that you didn’t love at first glance, but gradually grew on you to become a life-long love?
I find name crushes for me are usually trendy, or i can’t picture them on a actual child. My true name loves are ones that I could actually picture on my child. Also they are the names that have withstood the test of time. When you think of names you like, what are the first ones that come to mind, or the ones you can envision with your child?
I think you can’t tell. I have number of crushes over the years, and names that stick are:
[name]Melody[/name]
[name]Briony[/name]
[name]Romilly[/name]
[name]Mila[/name]
[name]Lila[/name]
[name]Elena[/name]
[name]Maris[/name]
But I don’t love them as I loved [name]Melisande[/name], or [name]Lucille[/name], or [name]Melise[/name], or [name]Aurora[/name]… These may be temporally crushes, but I will always be more content if I chose one I love, than those I find OK. Even if I loved them for a while.
I think it helps, some, to envision the name on an actual person at each stage of life (baby, toddler, young kid, older kid, teenager, adult, elderly). If you can imagine it belonging to your baby at all those stages, then I think you can feel more confident that it’ll stand the test of time for you. There is no way to be certain, of course, but I find that helpful for myself - if I love a certain name but can’t actually imagine calling it across a playground to an 8 year old, then I relegate it to the “name crush” category for now.
On the other hand, while naming regret is something that happens, I think for the most part, once you have given a name to your child, they grow to fit it and embody it in such a way that you can’t imagine having named them anything else. I think you will continue to love whatever you name your baby because that name will be so wrapped up with his or her identity.
Well, I did the same thing when I was 13/14, and I still LIKE the names, but I probably wouldn’t use them. I would say that my style has matured; my top two girl’s names were [name]Eliette[/name] (which I still think is cute) and [name]Annalie[/name] (which I now find boring), and now my top two are [name]Valentine[/name] (a more recent addition) and [name]Helena[/name] (which I actually used to hate). [name]Both[/name] of these might be infatuations, they’ve only held the top spots (Bumping out [name]Annika[/name] and [name]Summer[/name]) for the last two months.
I can see [name]Valentine[/name] falling off the top for me, but I don’t think it will. It has a great, solid meaning. It’s different/uncommon enough that I don’t think it’ll reach the top 25/50 anytime soon, and plus the holiday and it’s general acceptance as a boy’s name. It doesn’t have any vowel sounds I dislike (ee being my biggest pet peeve) and it’s nice and long.
[name]Helena[/name] is another matter. I didn’t like it at first; I always thought it was rather clunky and not-nice sounding. But then I used it in a story, for a character. This forced me to spend some time with it, type it out, write it out, say it… and in the process I came to love it. It’s harder to let go of something you worked for, and with [name]Helena[/name] I inadvertently put a lot of time and effort into falling in love with it. It wasn’t a ‘love at first sight’ thing, like many infatuations are. It was a process. I think [name]Helena[/name] is here to stay.
I don’t really have infatuation stories. I mean, if a name is an infatuation, it takes me about three days to get over it. At which point it stays on the list, just moves closer to the bottom. Names like [name]Lisette[/name] and [name]Artemis[/name]. Names that fit my style but don’t really strike me the same way as others.
I have thought about this too and there may not be a way to know for sure if you will love a name in 5 or 10 years. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had three top names on my boys list before we knew she was a girl - [name]Oliver[/name], [name]Ezra[/name], and [name]Isaac[/name]. They had all been in my top 20 for awhile and made it to the top 3. Now I know I probably wouldn’t use [name]Ezra[/name] or [name]Isaac[/name], even though they are still in my top 20. I still love [name]Oliver[/name] and would use it but I didn’t know that at the time. What if I had picked one of the other names? I could deal with it but I would know there are names out there that I like more. That’s why I would only pick a name off of my list that I have loved for years. Also, picking a family name is important to me because it makes me love the name more knowing it honors someone special to me.
Oh, well, this hits close to home. I really don’t know. Sometimes I think being a name nerd makes naming a kid soooo much harder. First, I realize that my favorites have changed and I’m terrified of picking something I won’t love in a few years. Second, I over-analyze every name and obsess so much that even my favorite names lose their sparkle. So then I’m always chasing that new name-love feeling, which sometimes only lasts a day or a week. My husband is about ready to kill me.
For me I see how long I have loved the name for, example [name]Charlotte[/name] I have loves since 5 years old. I have had it on my names list officially since 2004 or so. I have never taken it off. I consider it life-long love. A name crush for me is one I instantly like, but it keeps going off and on my list.
I usually wait a few weeks and see if I still like it as much. Usually, for me, a name love has both a pretty sound and one or more other things going for it, like a great meaning or personal significance, while a crush just has a pretty sound.
I had a crush on [name]Melisande[/name] for months. Crush lasted till I found I can’t make any short combos with it. I still like it, just don as much as I used to.
I think you’ll love whatever name you choose even more just by virtue of the fact that it now belongs to the person you love most in the world. I also think the meaning behind the name choice helps you avoid name regret.
We named our daughter [name]Maura[/name]. I have loved the name for years, but that’s not the only reason we picked it; there are lots of names I love the sound of. What made [name]Maura[/name] the perfect choice was that it fit all of our “rules” (Irish to go with our last name, not too common but not unheard of, easy enough to spell and pronounce in English, timeless not trendy, and of course we both like it). It is a version of the name [name]Mary[/name], which also gives it religious significance for my husband’s very Catholic family and honors a number of [name]Mary[/name]'s on both sides of our family tree. So, even if I do start loving the sound of some other name, I’m not going to regret my daughter’s name or wish I could change it. It was and is the right name for her. It ties her to her family, her religion, and her heritage. Plus, she’s just totally my little Momo
I had a “top favorite” name (first and middle combo) for a girl when I was 14 as well. I drooled over that name, I tell you! As the years passed, I fluxed from favorite name to favorite name, but I always somehow came back to that original combo. 8 years later, it is still my top runner, in its double-barreled form, if I ever have a little girl. The first name is in the top #100 (yet I rarely hear of any new ones being born), and the middle name is a word name/family name. I would say that if you can think of names that you’ve loved for at least 5 years, you might have a keeper on your hands.
I’d wanted to name a son [name]Luke[/name] since I was a teenager, and luckily my partner at the time agreed to it. With [name]Elliot[/name], we hadn’t got any ideas on names except he wanted a junior and I refused. We opened a name book and eventually settled on [name]Elliot[/name], even though it was neither of our favourites. I’ve since grown to love it though and I’m in the same situation with this one. No names my partner or I absolutely love, and as this baby was unexpected, we hadn’t even talked about names beforehand much either. But no matter what we choose I’m sure I’ll end up falling for it as I get to know my child, like I did with [name]Elliot[/name]'s name.
