Monday, April 13, 2009

Monday Moments: The Name Game

Picking a name for your child is one of the hardest things to do out there. You have to consider all the possible nicknames, good and bad. You have to look at the initials. And if you're a member of my household, you have to battle between classic names and more unique names.

Now, with all those celeb baby names out there like Honor, Apple, and Shilo, I use "unique" in the loosest sense of the word. No, I will not be naming my child after a piece of fruit.

However, my DH prefers classic names. I guess this goes with the fact there isn't one name in his entire family that I didn't have three of in my third grade class. I refuse to have my child be Jennifer {Last Initial}. I just won't let it happen.

And thus our battle began...

After only a few minor squabbles and my favorite name of all getting the boot, we finally settled on two names:
if it's a GIRL Aniston Brie {Last Name}

or

if it's a BOY Colton Emmett {Last Name}

I think we compromised fairly well. How do you pick names in your house? Did you let your kids have a say? How do you feel about the modern versus classic debate? Weigh in and let me know!

6 comments:

Jen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jen said...

With my name being Jennifer, I say go with unique. There were 6 Jennifer's in my highschool English class. We all sat on different rows and my teacher referred to us as "Jen row 1" or "Jen, row 6" lol! THEN i married a Johnson... talk about BORING! Jen Johnson (sigh). I bet we all know at least one Jen Johnson :) There are a lot of us out there... We named our kids unique, but not crazy unique names so they would not have the problem I did :) I love the names you decided on for a boy or girl! CUTE!

Anonymous said...

I'm Sarah, so I TOTALLY understand! But I can't bring myself to use the more 'unique' names...some of them are just weird! :) But I like your choices, especially the boy name! We had finally settled on one of each name that we loved and then found out we're having two girls...back to the drawing board!!

Jen said...

We like family names...even if they are "old fashioned". I am anti-unique spelling--I guess because I am a teacher and there are some pretty crazy names out there or worse--it is a normal name with a crazy spelling, so OF COURSE it gets spelled wrong every time and then the parents freak out! Hey, if you spell your kids name weird it's always going to be spelled wrong, get used to it!

Simply Lulu Boutique said...

Well, as someone who constantly has to spell out her name, and correct/clarify it AT LEAST once when I meet someone new, I say TRADITIONAL IS BEST!!! I hated the first day of school when the teacher would read the roll and say "KYLE Stewart? Is HE here?" and I would have to raise my hand and say, "Its KYLIE, and I am a GIRL." Or when introduced, someone would say "What's your name? Tylee? Heidi? Kalli? Kayley?"

I'm not advocating over-used names, but I personally refuse to name my child something that is made-up (Kryshelle, Lamonica, Brynlessa and all those other crazy Utah/Idaho names) unpronouncable, unspellable, or gender-neutral. I'm not going to put my kids through the torture.

That being said, I think you guys compromised well on the names you choose. I like the idea of Aniston, you could call her Annie for short, which I love.

ErinMartinez said...

I like your names! They are nice but not overused. I like traditional biblical names. I am a teacher, too, and can't stand these made up, impossible to pronounce names!

With my second baby I just trained my son to call her Baby Gabi while in utero, so that pretty much became her name...lol. Sneaky, I know, but it worked! I just knew she was Gabriella from the beginning so I had to get it somehow! :)