Please excuse my edit
It is very common for one’s name taste to evolve with time. That’s why families with children spread out over the years nearly always arrive at a different style than the one with which they started. In my experience, it’s usually from trendy/whimsical/common -> serious/formal/striking.
When you join a site like nameberry you accelerate this process by several orders of magnitude. You began to develop your own philosophy of naming, your become much more aware of trends and style families, and you learn oodles about individual names & their perceptions.
As everyone with a child has said, once the abstract name is attached to a tiny living human, it takes on a great deal more significance. The name becomes your child, and to imagine changing it really takes a lot of guts. I don’t think serious name regret is as much of a problem as these boards can make it seem.
Yes! My thoughts exactly.
I tend to really love uncommon, distinctive names, but sometimes I get a little carried away and later am repulsed by choices I once adored. I’m concerned that this is going to happen with a name I actually put on a birth certificate!
But, I think my rule of thumb will be that the name will have had to be on my “really love the name” list for, say, a minimum of 6 months to a year or so. [name]Kinda[/name] like how they say you shouldn’t get a tattoo you haven’t had in mind for at least a year? I think this will be easy enough for me to accomplish because I’m pretty addicted to this site and names are on my mind a lot now, and we’re not even TTC yet. I think by the time we actually have to make a decision, there will be several possible choices that I will have loved/liked for a long time. And hopefully DH will be on board too, haha.
It seems like name regret would be most likely soon after birth. A name that seemed great on paper might wind up not working on an actual person the way you’d hoped. However, after the name has become a part of your child, I think it would change. Like you might really hate a name but fall in love with and marry someone with that name and then it has such a positive association for you that you see that as part of the person you love and can no longer be objective about it. I’m sure many people on here have a niece or nephew whose name at first made them cringe but now has a special place in their heart because of the lovely little person it’s attached to.
I was worried about name regret because I do have a tendency to like unusual names and then change my mind about liking them a month or so down the road; example I liked [name]Cordelia[/name] and then changed my mind completely about using it.
I ended up sticking to names I’ve loved for a long time and have personal meaning behind them. If I ever had more kids, I’d do the same, stick to names I have loved for years so I know I won’t regret it. It doesn’t mean I don’t play around with wild combinations in my head still though. 
Pregnancy turned me into a name nerd so I didn’t have a stash of names I loved for years. Well, I had always liked [name]Jane[/name], [name]Jeanne[/name] & [name]Joan[/name] but my husband vetoed those!
I picked a slightly unusual name with personal meaning behind it & don’t regret a thing!
My list for potential future children changes all the time, but I will never regret any name I actually use because it becomes that little person!
[name]Even[/name] if I picked something thst suddenly blows up in popularity or gets a less-than-positive pop culture reference I feel you should never regret or talk negatively such a part of your child’s identity really. The name you pick is more than a representation of the parent’s taste once it’s bestowed on an actual human.
That said, if I became a mom at 18 I would’ve picked something crazy cause I valued distinctiveness above wearability! I am really glad I made the choices that I made! It’s like the purse I would’ve bought at age 18 would’ve been cheap & bright…but at nearly 30 I am more about classic and utilitarian with a twist! But obviously your child isn’t a purse…but i guess their name should be as durable & wearable as one?
As weird as it is, people tend to inhabit their names. I named my son [name]Mason[/name] (before the craze) and loved it for years beforehand (family name). It was common before but not ubiquitous. Now it is EVERYWHERE. And I’m kind of ashamed of it, but [name]Mason[/name] is such a [name]Mason[/name] that I can’t imagine him being anything else and that helps me come to terms with it. He actually wants to create a [name]Mason[/name] army, which I’m sort of excited about.
[name]Even[/name] if you do have to deal with name regret sometime in the future, you could always change the name if it’s early enough in tthe child’s life to do so. Especially if the name doesn’t suit the child. If you know what I mean.
I read somewhere that there’s a grace period on changing a newborn’s name without paying a fee, but I don’t know if that was an accurate statement or wishful thinking. It may vary from state-to-state anyway.
Exactly! There are some names that I’ve always liked - although my choice in them may have wavered, they were always on the list. But there are some names that were on the top spot for a short period of time and now I look at them and think, “WHY???” For example…[name]Kenneth[/name]. I liked that one for a long time and now…I mean, it’s a fine name, but I don’t think I’d ever consider it. Which is why, when I’m naming my future children, I’ll probably choose the names that I’ve always liked as opposed to infatuations.
I can understand your concern and worry. He’s the great thing about babies (well at least most of them) they have TWO parents. So you probably won’t be alone in choosing a name for your child. That’s someone else to run all your name ideas by and to help you decide what might be the perfect name. I tend to find that thought very comforting when I start to worry.
But yes, your naming style is going to change over time. Probably most drastically in the first few months when you start trying out names you never really considered before. I wouldn’t really worry about it too much until your pregnant, until then just have fun roaming the forums.
If you really do have name regrets, you could name your baby a family name. Like after your favorite uncle, your mother. You can even name him after your husband/boyfriend! Or even a best friend!
When I was twelve, my favorites were Cabbie (short for Cabrina), [name]Donna[/name], and [name]Rita[/name]. And [name]Sandra[/name] and [name]Jo[/name] and [name]Don[/name]. I hate the name [name]Don[/name], and Cabbie/Cabrina, [name]Donna[/name], and [name]Rita[/name] was okay to me. [name]Sandra[/name] I still like, and same with [name]Jo[/name]. My favorites change a lot, but some names have been my favorite as long as I can remember.
If you really are scared of naming your baby something you will dislike later, name him/her a family name. Like if your favorite grandpa’s name is [name]Phillip[/name], name him [name]Phillip[/name]. If your mom’s name is [name]Hillary[/name], name her [name]Hillary[/name]. Etc, etc.
Yes, with time I have come to regret the middle name of my second child. At the time [name]Nicholas[/name] [name]Ivan[/name] Rosansky sounded great and [name]Ivan[/name] was meant to be a play on [name]John[/name] which was a brother of my (now ex) husband.
Now I think [name]Ivan[/name] is dreadfully old fashioned and somewhat weird. As [name]Nick[/name] named his first son the same name I guess he does not regret it 
When I was pregnant and someone asked what we were going to name our daughter, my husband and I got a lot of positive responses to the name we picked. Now that she’s here and someone asks what her name is, I get responses that are not so nice, or the polite smile and nod. At first I felt we had made a terrible mistake and I actually dreaded introducing her. I thought about changing it but there isn’t a single name I can think of that would suit her better than the one she has. She is who she is. My husband and I still love her name and I’ve just decided to not worry so much about other people’s opinions.
So yes name regret is real, but I wouldn’t let it keep you up at night.
Names are really funny… Before I got pregnant with my eldest son I KNEW he was going to be called either [name]Gabriel[/name] or [name]Samuel[/name] - but once I was pregnant I found I detested the names. We ended up giving him the name [name]Tristan[/name], which I had previously vetoed as being “waay to fairytale”. Same way my OH vetoed the name our second son was to be called first time round ([name]Noah[/name]).
But I found that each time I found the name I wanted my child to be called I just ‘knew’ and it felt right. Well almost… My OH picked our eldest name and it took some time to get used to (I wanted [name]Noah[/name]!), but then our second was born and we had two names: [name]Caspian[/name] and [name]Noah[/name] and we just knew and said as soon as we saw him “He’s a [name]Noah[/name]!”
Hormones CAN affect your name choice - so we always try to have two name choices ready just in case the one we’ve picked seemed great in theory, not so much in reality. + We have the infamous “Tesco-test” where we imagine standing in our local supermarket calling out the name - so many names have been crossed of our lists that way!
This exact situation occurred to me. My husband’s name is Kev1n, which I don’t particularly like at all, but I love him and thus, the name has softened to me. It kind of helps that he hates his own name…
I’m not worried about name regret at all. For one, I am super picky on names and there are only so few I “love” (as you can see in my signature) so there is no way I can have regret since the names I pick I love.
I think it also would be hard to regret a name later on. If you’ve called your child [name]Luna[/name] for over a year, it would be hard to regret the choice since that is now who she is and you love her no matter what. That’s my take on it. If anyone has name regret, it’s most likely a few days after she or he is born, maybe up to a month, but after that it would seem unlikely since the name has become him or her. This is all my opinion though.
I agree with the suggestion to use a name that has personal meaning, like that of a close relative, if you’re worried about your tastes changing too much. A name you like could come and go but the positive association to someone you already love isn’t likely to change.
I would never name my child something that I just recently started loving.
Like [name]Cosima[/name], I’m sure that’s just a name crush I have right now and I would probably regret naming a daughter that later.
On the contrary there is [name]Ingrid[/name] which has been a favourite of mine for a good while now, I don’t think I’d regret using that.
I have a touch of name regret. I still believe the name I chose for my daughter is beautiful, but after she was born, I kept starting to call her by her middle name, just automatically. My mom caught me once and said if I want, we could just call her that. I was too overwhelmed and emotional to make a decision, but I wish I had said yes. I still have to catch myself sometime from saying the wrong name. But both are beautiful, so it’s OK.