Baby Naming Tips
Give Your Kid a Kickass Name That's Unique to Them
Names are powerful. They have history, they have meaning, they have ancestry & they will be repeated countless times over the course of your child’s life. Make it good.
As parents, we tend to spend endless hours scouring baby name lists, taking recommendations from family members, arguing with partners & making lists of the names that make the final cut.
After years of choosing names and then dealing with the aftermath, I have a few tips to consider when choosing your child’s title that will stick with them for the rest of their life. No pressure!
Tip #1: Easy to Spell
Creativity is awesome. Thank goodness we have expanded beyond Henry & Mary, even though they are nice solid names. No offense if that is your moniker!
Many people like to put a twist on an old classic with interesting spellings, so the name is essentially the same & different simultaneously. This is always your choice, but I wanted to make life a bit easier on my own children.
One of my naming criteria was spelling. It should be easy to spell. I didn’t want my kids to constantly spell out their unique spelling of their name. I assume that after 100x, it gets old.
My middle child is a Ruby instead of a Scarlet/Scarlett because I didn’t want to clarify the # of “T’s”. No shaming you Scarlet(t)s out there – it’s an awesome name!
If this is your first baby, you might be completely underprepared for the amount of paperwork and appointments involved in raising humans. If you think this is a silly tip, I get it. After 22 years of parenting, the sheer amount of times I have written or verbalized their names is endless – birth announcements, doctor’s appointments, school paperwork, camp sign ups, new classroom teachers, sports leagues, dance classes, parkour classes, therapy, play groups, meeting new friends, hospital admissions, bowling, birthday banners, art class, grief group…get my point?
Tip #2: Pass the Nickname Test
Your veto list is probably growing daily. We tend to avoid names that we have personal negative experiences with. Judy bullied you in school every day in 5th grade – veto. Bob pulled your pants down in front of the whole school – veto. Your ex husband’s name is Phoenix- veto. That list gets long.
Another criteria I kept in mind was the countless ways that people can use our names against us. Silly, I know. I just wanted to make life as easy on my kids as possible since other people aren’t as concerned.
And yes, kids can come up with shitty nicknames no matter what the actual name is, but why make it easier on them?
Tip #3: Avoid the Top 10 List
I was born in the late 70’s hence my very dated name – Amanda. Each era has names that were more popular and less popular. Every year, you can literally find a Top 100 list for girls & boys. My name was #9 for my year. Needless to say, my mom and I have different naming criteria.
My goal: avoid the Top 10. I wasn’t reaching for the most obscure names on the planet. I also wasn’t intending to make them use their last initial in every classroom of their school career. Those popular names are well, popular. They are used a lot so your child will meet lots of other kiddos with the same name. That can be cool but also annoying when they have to identify as Amanda S. because there are just too many to keep them straight.
Who doesn’t love the name Josh? It held a top spot for many decades running, and because of it’s prolonged popularity, my life was a bit confusing. My husband is a Josh, my brother, who lived with us, a Josh, and my teenager was dating, you guessed it, a Josh. You could also surmise that when my son was born and my husband wanted a Josh Jr…yeah, that didn’t happen.
It ended up that 2/3 of my children were named in the Top 100 for their year but way down the list. See, not too crazy, not too common – nice balance.
Funny sidebar: We were Americans, birthing in England – there was a whole military situation. I moved in the middle of my pregnancy, baby name firmly chosen, theme song and all. My name fit all of the criteria, for the U.S. I quickly realized that my attempt to avoid the Top 10 list was smashed when her name was on that list in another country.
Tip #4: Meaningful
I love the beauty of names, but I love the meaning even more. Sometimes, we pass down family names because that is meaningful and powerful to our lineage. You could choose a trait or attribute to imbue into your child. You might just find personal meaning in it.
When you are generating a list of baby names, you can find the actual meaning of every single one. Many have roots in languages or cultures that influence their meaning.
Some are simply practical – Mason: a builder and worker in stone
Some are ethereal – Luna: Roman goddess of the moon
Some are classic – Emma: universe
Some are modern inventions- Anakin: yep, Anakin Skywalker
You are choosing a name that vibes with your family on a personal level, and words are meaningful, including our names. We carry them with us forever.
Parent Tip #1: Love Saying It Yourself
You will say your child’s name frequently. Every single day, multiple times a day. You will use it in so many ways with different intonations, meanings, melodies and volumes. Make it a name that you love too. You should enjoy saying it because it is repetitive, just like every other part of parenting.
Make life easier on yourself. There are so many letters in the alphabet. Choose a different letter for each kid. I grew up with 3 brothers, all 3 with “J” names. Want to know what I was frequently called? J-Mandy. No joke! It was accidental, but that “J” sound was used so much it was reflexive.
Sidebar: It’s ok if you mix up your kid’s names. It happens all the time. Have pets? They all get mixed up. No judgement.
Parent Tip #2: Gender Neutral Considerations
This is an interesting situation that I am navigating at the moment. One of my kids is exploring their gender identity. This isn’t a post to promote or discount anyone’s path to finding themselves. I am just realizing that gender neutral names are empowering because it erases the binary. People are people, names are names.
How cool is it that we can reinvent ourselves by choosing a name that feels right for us? Many people don’t grow into their name, they grow out of it. That’s ok too. – See Parent Tip #3
Parent Tip #3: Your Kids Will Hate it Anyway
How many times have you wished you had a different name? Maybe you have actually legally changed your birth name or you use a different name in daily life. Your parents weren’t trying to punish you when they named you, but maybe it just doesn’t resonate with who you’ve become. Parents just do the best they can, and I’m sure you will too.
I am taking a moment to point out that no matter how painstakingly you choose the perfect name for your baby, they will probably grow up to dislike it regardless. (At least through the teen years.) These kids! I have 3 living, breathing examples of this.
#1: Faith: chosen because I was a devout Christian at the time but then….yeah. So she was only raised in the church for a portion of her life and now vehemently renounces all organized religion. Needless to say, doesn’t love the name. Oops! She was asking to change her name to Roxy by age 10.
#2 Ruby: loved the name; retro vibe was cool, met all the criteria, went into puberty and doesn’t identify with such a feminine gem of a name. I possibly should have gone more gender fluid, but there was no way for me to know who this little soul was yet. They are actively renaming themselves daily, and those non-gendered names are proving helpful.
#3 Jericho: maybe we went a bit off the rails here with such a unique name but he was the 3rd kid and sometimes we get wild after so many years of parenting; my husband did -huge fan of Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash – I will let you use your imagination as to his full name, complete with 2 middle names like we were actually British. He is almost 11, and wants to rename himself Philip. Just Philip. Nice & simple.
Naming is sticky business. We spend hours choosing names, saying names, lamenting names, loving names, regretting names & even renaming ourselves and in the end; it’s just part of life, part of finding ourselves.