How did the process differ, both practically and emotionally? We felt very blessed to have one amazing baby. Our second isn’t exactly a surprise, but we weren’t sure we’d have the chance to have another (and I really doubt we’ll have more). I’d spent years dreaming up names for our first so our list was ready and waiting when we found out we were having another daughter. It was pretty easy.
Did you stick with a pattern or theme, or did you break with family tradition? We’re breaking a pattern we never really intended to continue. My husband’s name starts with an M. His parents’ names start with Ms. His siblings’ names start with Ms. He married me, my name starts with M. And then we named our first daughter Marguerite. It’s a family name for me, we loved the nickname Margot, so it just kind of worked out. To break from this pattern, we’re using initials from my parents and brother, B and C. It worked out because I’ve always loved the name Beatrice.
Was meaning important to you? If so, what was the significance of the name you chose? Besides the initials, but not exactly a meaning, Beatrice is the best character in all of Shakespeare’s plays. She’s strong and witty. I’d love for my baby to have these qualities. We’re also using Lilac as a second middle, which is significant as we were married on Mackinac Island in June and return to celebrate our anniversary while lilacs are blooming.
Did big sibling(s) get a say in the naming process? How did that affect your choice? Ha. No. But to be fair, Margot just turned 1. She’s still ambivalent about names.
Would you have used a different name if it hadn’t been your final child? No.
While I can’t say for certain that this will be our last, I feel as though it will be. To put it another way, I’m not planning on a third.
With that in mind, one thing I have kept in consideration is honouring family members. We’ve talked about using our respective fathers’ names as middle names, but don’t want to use one and have the other feel left out (or for us to feel like we’re leaving him out). If we were planning on a 3rd, I would be more inclined to use FIL for this baby, and honour my side of the family next time.
This was a consideration when naming our 1st son. Rather than honour a specific family member, we chose a name combination that calls back to our respective heritages. The aim is to continue the trend with our 2nd son. In this respect, meaning/origin is definitely important to me.
I’m so in love with what our first son’s name stands for to us, that I do feel a little bit more pressure to find that perfect name this time around too. I’m much more open to continue looking and hearing more suggestions, to ensure that the name he ends up with is just as perfect as his brother’s.
And on the note of big brother, he’s only 2 and far more interested in naming dinosaurs than his future sibling :rolleyes:
We are planning on having one more baby and that will be our last. As we’re not trying yet, it’s not set in stone, but probably.
There has been a lot more pressure this time around to “use up” any favourite names for both of us and a lot of compromise. I’ve had to let go of so many names that I would have loved to use to balance the name with both of our loves.
Our existing children have short names and follow the (unintentional but welcome) pattern 4, 3, 4. So early on we tried REALLY hard to find a 3 letter name to continue the pattern. There was nothing that worked for us and I think he wanted more than me to compromise on that. But I always would revert back to: last baby, last chance to use a favourite name, and for me that was more important than sacrificing this to complete a pattern. So we decided to let it go (although he does teasingly bring it up still from time to time just to make me squirm).
The meaning of the name has never been important to us. Flow with existing children mattered to me. I used honour names in the middle for both boys but our girl didn’t receive an honour middle. We used [name_f]Juliet[/name_f] instead which is important to me as my longtime naming love was [name_u]Julie[/name_u]. So in a way that name was for me. With our final baby, there will be no honour name for a boy. For a girl, he loves [name_f]Elizaveta[/name_f], which also happens to be a family name of mine (as is [name_f]Mila[/name_f]) actually, and so is a nod to my heritage. [name_f]Elizaveta[/name_f] also would honour my grandmother [name_f]Elizabeth[/name_f], who has never been honoured despite having 7 great grandchildren. So it was a name that sort of pulled double duty for us.
We were originally considering other names for the baby and made the mistake of telling our oldest. He immediately latched onto them and then I felt as if I couldn’t change my mind. I tried SO hard to incorporate them into baby’s name, but I just couldn’t in a way I was happy with. I even asked Berries for help. In the end I had to make my peace that I couldn’t use ALL the names. Once I let go of that, things sort of fell into place. My son gave input between the two boy options and expressed a favourite that we all can agree on, so he was still included in that way. And he seems to have accepted the new girl baby name quite easily, so I’m glad I didn’t settle!
If it wasn’t our last baby, I wouldn’t have used another name, however I wonder if it might have been easier. Maybe there would have been less pressure to use all of the favourites. I don’t know, it’s hard to say.
Thanks @lilimorgana, and I must say that I love the girls’ name you’ve chosen for next time around. [name_f]Elizaveta[/name_f] is glorious, and how great that it’s an important name for both of you. Good luck!
Speaking of meaning, though unrelated to your current questions… did I tell you that I thought it was hilarious to name [name_f]Marguerite[/name_f] for margaritas since my egg retrieval was on cinco de mayo? It’s certainly not the reason for her name, but it didn’t hurt. [name_u]Baby[/name_u] [name_f]Bea[/name_f] is from the same round… she could still be [name_f]Beatrice[/name_f] [name_f]Cecily[/name_f] Agave?
[name_m]How[/name_m] did the process differ, both practically and emotionally?
I’m pregnant with triplets so we get 3 last chances to name a baby. We still haven’t decided yet but we are making sure that they all have family names as middle names. I thought we would stop at three kids (we already have two so I thought that I’d have only one other baby) so I was getting prepared to choose the perfect family name to honor a family member which was hard to do since we wanted to honor so many people. Now that we can name 3 babies, it has been less pressure for us but definitely harder to find ideas.
Did you stick with a pattern or theme, or did you break with family tradition?
We want a soft and earthy kind of name just like our two other kids and keep the tradition of a family middle name.
Was meaning important to you? If so, what was the significance of the name you chose?
Meaning was important in a way that we didn’t want them to have a name that has a negative meaning but other than that we aren’t focusing on that.
Did big sibling(s) get a say in the naming process? [name_m]How[/name_m] did that affect your choice?
The name ideas of a 3 and a 2 year old are definitely not an option haha. ‘’[name_f]Strawberry[/name_f]’’, ‘‘Dragon’’ and ‘’[name_f]Flower[/name_f]’’ was what they suggested
Would you have used a different name if it hadn’t been your final child?
Having three final kids is helping us have moe options so no we can still ‘‘have fun’’ (as if it wasn’t already fun haha) naming them!
I think this probably applies to any child after the first, but we found it difficult to fall in love with a name as much as we loved our first child’s. So lots of comparing to our first’s name and trying to find something that sounded nice with it. For us, I don’t think emotions came into it much because we still had #3 in the back of our heads while I was pregnant – but decided after he was born that we were 100% done.
We didn’t really have a theme or pattern; we broke tradition with my daughter’s middle name. I do think [name_f]Rosalie[/name_f] and [name_m]Atticus[/name_m] go well together, and it was important to me that they sounded good together, but it’s not like we stuck to “flower/nature” names or anything.
No, meaning wasn’t that important to us. We wanted it to sound nice over have a nice meaning, but if we had picked a name with not a great meaning we may have taken that into account.
Yes, she basically made the decision for us! We were debating between [name_u]Sullivan[/name_u] (early on), [name_m]Theodore[/name_m], and [name_m]Atticus[/name_m]. [name_m]Atticus[/name_m] only came about because my husband was joking about “[name_m]Septimus[/name_m]” because we couldn’t decide on anything, and I said the only “us” name I would consider using was [name_m]Atticus[/name_m], and [name_f]Rosie[/name_f] latched on. She had previously been following the name discussions and vetoing every single name we came up with. After she heard [name_m]Atticus[/name_m] she began telling everyone that was her baby’s name, even though we didn’t decide on a name until very late in the game – and then it was [name_m]Theodore[/name_m]. But when he was born he was definitely [name_m]Atticus[/name_m], and I think it was definitely my 3yo’s persistence that made it so appealing.
No, it was basically the only name we could really agree on. And like I said, we weren’t certain he was our last until we had him. So this didn’t really play into it.
We’re most likely having a third and it is 99% certain that it will be our last baby. I’m feeling really sad that I have so many favorites I won’t be able to use and wishing I could start the name conversation now and drag it out as long as possible since I love the naming process so much. However, my husband Is best when there is an actual baby on the way.
Middle name will be an honor name again and we have the family member picked out and we will honor that family member whether we have another girl or a boy.