It seems to be the norm these days that expectant parents find out the sex of their child(ren) prior to birth…so I assume that, for the most part, only girl OR boy names are debated during pregnancy, not both (except in the case of opposite-sex multiples).
My husband and I didn’t find out the sex for our daughter, and won’t for the next baby either, but he wants to use the boy name we decided upon if our daughter had been a boy since I have yet to come up with a different name that he loves more. I’m just not sold on the whole idea. Although I still like the name we picked (but unfortunately not as in love with it as I was when we decided on it), I just don’t feel right about using it. I know that it is silly, but it feels like a runner-up name since it was originally going to be used for another child, and I’m not wild about that. The alternative, though, means that we will need to pick two names for each and every child that we have…and it was hard enough to agree on one name in the first place (we have VERY different taste in names)! Perhaps I just need to post on the boy names forum and get a name suggestion that he can’t turn down
What are your thoughts? Would you use a name that was intended for an older child on a younger one? Or did you find out the sex and debate girl only/boy only names?
Or maybe this fretting is absolutely worthless and I will end up having another little girl Problem solved!
[name_m]Just[/name_m] tell me I’m being ridiculous.
We had surprises both times. [name_f]Penelope[/name_f] was the name we would have used first time around. I personally wanted to debate it all again but only because I wanted to discuss names again for another nine months! I got to discuss (and wobble over) boy names instead.
Instead of looking at it as a re-used name I thought of it that the name was still there, waiting for it’s recipient
We will most likely use the boy’s name we had chosen for my daughter if this baby is a boy.
The way I see it, we didn’t choose that name for our daughter or for our first child, we chose the name for a boy baby or for our first son. It’s not [name_f]Lillian[/name_f]'s name, it wasn’t almost [name_f]Lillian[/name_f]'s name, and it’s the name we agree on most.
I actually always kind of wondered why my little brother has a name that wasn’t even on the list of potential boy’s names for me.
I’m in a similar boat as you. We do find out the gender, but they can be wrong, so we try and pick two names.
With our first the girl name was easy, we had one picked years before we conceived. I had decided on a boy name, and my husband was unsure, but it grew on him slowly.
Second baby, also a girl. Talked names for the whole nine months because we struggle to agree and we never agreed on a boy name.
Now baby three is on the way. He has finally decided he wants to use the boy name we’d picked for baby one. But I don’t love it anymore. It’s so popular, I’m sick of hearing it, even though it’s a great name. And I do kind of feel like our eldest daughter “owns” that name. Like, it’s the name of her masculine side, or something. I don’t know, obviously I’m ridiculous.
I totally get your point. We have three girls and found out the genders at 20 weeks and properly discussed names from there on (though I had my own discussions in my head for boys and girls from the start!). None of the runner up or close contender names made it to the baby 2 and 3 lists from the baby 1 and 2 lists. They just didn’t have any magic anymore once they had been passed over the first time round. I get ya, it’s weird, but I get it!
I totally understand what you mean. We didn’t find out the gender for our first two children, so we had both a girl and boy name picked out. We had two boys, and I wouldn’t use the names we picked for a girl on another child. Also, none of the names on our list for our first made the list for our second child, and it was the same with our third son.
[name_m]Ah[/name_m] thank you for the validation, berries! I was feeling so odd wanting to start from scratch again (perhaps it is also the name nerd in me, wanting to peruse new options this time around) especially since it would be simplest to just use the other name we had picked out. [name_f]Glad[/name_f] I’m not the only one who wants a fresh set of names
The sex of our first baby was a surprise (but so was his entire existence and the fact that we got to name him at all since we adopted him on very short notice.) I am now due with another in [name_u]November[/name_u]. We do plan to find out the sex if we can, but since talking about names is the fun part for me, I have been forcing my husband to since we found out.
We are not considering the name (it was [name_f]Saskia[/name_f] [name_f]Estelle[/name_f]) that we picked out for our son had he been a girl. But I am not sure that I feel like it belongs to him, it’s more like it’s been three and a half years since he was born and our naming ideas have changed in that time. I mean, we still love our son’s name ([name_m]Levin[/name_m] [name_m]Silas[/name_m]) and can’t imagine naming him anything else if he was just being born today. But the names we didn’t use don’t have the same hold on us. If this is another boy, we don’t plan on using any of the runner up boy’s names that we didn’t use for our son. I want this kid to have the number one name on the list, too, if that makes sense.
We picked out our boy and girl names before we were even TTC. I always wanted to name a daughter after my mother and my husband agreed if we would name a boy [name_m]Patrick[/name_m] and I immediately fell in love with the name. So even though we did end up finding out while I was pregnant we already had names for our first either way. We did have a second set of names (one boy and one girl) picked out that we had planned on using many years ago. However my best friend used a very similar name for her daughter and I fell out of love with the boy’s name ([name_m]Stephen[/name_m]). We have talked about boys names with my second and third pregnancies and never been able to agree on one. We picked out our second daughter’s name ([name_f]Margaret[/name_f] [name_f]Rose[/name_f]) while I was in the first trimester with her and we still didn’t know the sex. I didn’t feel like any child owned a name for the other sex. However we also found out while I was pregnant so there wasn’t a lot of referring to them as both names, which I’ve seen people do sometimes. I also think names that you love at one point can loose their luster when you either think of all the practicalities of the name (I like [name_m]Stephen[/name_m] but I really hate the nickname [name_u]Stevie[/name_u]) or start really thinking about using that name on a real child. It’s a lot easier to name theoretical children in my opinion.
My [name_f]MIL[/name_f] and FIL didn’t find out the sex of any of their 4 kids, and they never repeated names. She says even though they had an unused name for the opposite sex it still felt like it ‘belonged’ to that baby somehow so each pregnancy, they came up with new names.
I think for me it would depend on whether it was a girl’s name I didn’t get to use or a boy’s name. I’m VERY attached to our girl’s name choice and don’t see myself relinquishing it if this babe is a boy. I would probably save it. On the other hand if this baby is a girl, I’m not really attached to any boy’s names so I wouldn’t necessarily hold on to one. Coming up with all new names seems like a lot of work, lol. Especially because I struggle with boy’s names.
I understand the idea of feeling like a name “belonged” to a child, even if it is the opposite gender. For instance, I feel like, in a weird way, part of me is a [name_m]Zachary[/name_m] because that’s what my name would have been had I been a boy. But I also don’t think I would have had a problem if my mother had a boy after me and named him [name_m]Zachary[/name_m]. Likewise, I wouldn’t judge or think it’s weird for a couple to “re-use” a name that they loved during a previous pregnancy if they still loved that name.
We are having a boy now, but my husband has been in love with the name [name_f]Elena[/name_f] since he heard it two years ago. I don’t foresee him settling for anything else if our next one is a girl. Now, if we happen to get bored of [name_f]Elena[/name_f] in the next few years before we start on baby #2, and we decide that we want something else, that’s fine too. I think all that matters it that parents choose a name they absolutely love, whether it’s been considered before or not.
I understand what you mean. As far as I know many people use a new name unless they had always had something chosen for a boy or whatever, and hadn’t got to use it. If I was a boy, my name would have been [name_u]Rhys[/name_u], but my brother was called Lewys.
However I know that for instance, I would love a baby girl named [name_f]Sienna[/name_f]…so if I had two boys, then a girl, I would still use that name for her.
We had a boy name picked out for both a girl and a boy going into our anatomy scan with our first daughter, and we ended up with a girl and named her [name_f]Maeby[/name_f]. Our boy choice was [name_m]Luke[/name_m], and it always felt like it was somehow already used even though we didn’t really use it. Also, if we had a boy the second time, [name_m]Luke[/name_m] didn’t fit with [name_f]Maeby[/name_f]'s name anyway, so I think the sibset would have been off balance. We ended up with another girl anyway, but took the same approach. Chose 2 names, one boy and one girl, and would not have used the boys name even if we were going to have a third.