After years of name obsessing, I will know tomorrow if we are having a boy or a girl so I will be able to focus on one gender in my search for the perfect name.
Here is my question:
I have collected so many name books over the years. I see websites. I see message boards.
What resources (books, sites) do you use to get all the best options? I don’t really want to read 10 books if they are all old books and are outdated. I have [name_m]Llewellyn[/name_m]'s Complete of Names among many, many others.
Please let me know how to go about this?
Thanks!
I feel like books these days are hard, but probably more complete than the internet lists. If you are deciding with a partner, that may limit some of your options automatically. If not, or they’re giving you essential freedom, start by trying to identify your style. Is it classic, international, exotic, modern? If you’re not even sure about that, pick the most comprehensive, or most recent, book from your collection and just go through and write down every name you like. If your partner is involved have them do the same or go through your list and veto. [name_m]Even[/name_m] if you’re left with hundreds of names, that’s still less than all the names out there. If you know your style, start with the “list” tab on this site, they have some pretty good lists, though I wouldn’t call them complete necessarily.
Then go through and imagine actually naming a human this, some of your names will be guilty pleasure names, or ones you can’t use because of relatives, pets, friends etc. Think about calling the name out loud on the playground, if there are any obvious ways to tease, what your initials would be with your last name, and what nicknames you might use, or not like, that could easily come from the name. If you find a few you love equally, or some that are ok but not quite right, you can turn to the forums here for more suggestions. I also find writing them out by hand can be helpful. You will be writing it alot after all, you might find you don’t like the way it looks in your handwriting, or it’s hard to read, or you may like a name even more. I do middle names last because I have a bank of family names to chose from, and I chose whichever sounds best with the first name I like. I hope that helps!
I had an excel spreadsheet of names for the last 10 or so years, but once we found out we were pregnant my husband veto’ed about 98% of them, and now we’re looking for new options so, it was fun but, preparing ahead of time didn’t really put us ahead in the end. Good luck!