Did you want to name your child a name that your partner said “no way.” Or visa versa? What was the name?
My Mom suggested we name our son after H. She loved his name, which is Wade. He said no.
When I was pregnant the second time and we knew from the amnio that the baby was a girl, my husband and I started to talk about names. Each of us suggested a few, and we each hated the other person’s choices. So we made written lists. There was only one name that appeared on both lists. That’s the name we gave her.
A friend of mine in college was called Karen. Apparently, her father wanted to name her Lesley. He proceeded to call her Lesley for her entire life to that point, despite the fact that her actual name was Karen.
That’s hard core. 
I didn’t take H’s last name so the agreement when we got married was they coukd have his name if I get complete control over the first name. He didn’t even want to know the name til they were born cuz he figured if that was the baby’s name he’d like it
Here’s my favorite baby naming story: One of my friends, I’ll call her Jane Smith, who is very touchy feely was determined to name her kid something that both she and hubby not just like but loved. EQUALLY. They spent literally hours and hours over months and months. Making up lists and rankings. On the first day they discussed it Number one on my friends list was “Emma”. Her hubby said " I like it, it’s not my absolute favorite but it’s fine lets go with it." But no, she wanted to reach some kind of platonic ideal for both of them.
So the baby is born and she tells me they have decided on Alicia. Ok.
Then the baby’s maybe 4 weeks old and gets an ear infection so they are at Walgreens waiting for the perscription pick up and overhead they hear “prescription ready for Alicia Smith.” And my friend Jane bursts into tears and sobs"I hate the name Alicia!’ And her husband was like "Do you want to change her name? "
Two weeks later I got a new(!) baby announcement in the form of an “Errata” ( she’s a copy editor).
Baby’s name now Emma!!
My ex and I argued for 9 months over names. With our first, we didn’t know the gender before the birth. We had picked out both a girl’s and boy’s name, and I don’t even remember what the boy’s choice was. (I wanted Matthew which he hated and he was insistent on Monty which I refused to consider, probably out of stubbornness). Luckily, we had chosen a girl’s first name (my grandmother’s name and also some relative on his side) but we went up to the last month trying to choose a girl’s middle name. Miraculously, we agreed on something at the last minute that we hadn’t even talked about before. We were planning to call D by her first name, but after her birth, we decided she looked more like her middle name. We ended up calling both our kids by their middle names.
Baby 2 was a little easier. We knew it was going to be a boy and didn’t have to fight over girls’ names.
From my professional experience, it is a major problem naming a boy Dad Name, Jr. Even if you call him something else, legally they will be confused forever.
Written lists and see if anything matches is a good idea.
We picked my MIL’s name as one of our kids’ middle names, and later we found out she really really hates her name…
Yes, Jr. and Sr. are confused forever. If you are bored one day, do a search on one of your friends who is a junior and has a senior father still kicking. And it’s not funny when they mess up the credit reports.
My culture frowns upon naming your child after you; you name your first son after your grandfather and your son’s job is to name his son after you.
When we were expecting our first baby…my MIL said “of course if you have a boy, you will name it Mr. Thumper’s first name.”
That got NO response because that name was NOT in contention as a first name at all. We used it as a middle name.
DH and I agreed on one boy name and one girl name. We had the boy first…and used that name. Three and a half years later, we had a girl and used that name.
H and I made lists. We were expecting twins and didn’t know the sexes. We didn’t want to pick a favorite boy or girl name and then potentially have to come up with a second favorite name. It seemed unfair. But after the babies were born, it seemed hard to name them and we lost one of our lists! It was a confusing and exhausting time but we locked all 4 of us in a small lounge in the hospital and didn’t come out until we had figured out all their names. Phew…
We spent the last three months before birth trying out names – talking about little so-and-so as Hannah or Emily or Emma or [forget what the other two on the short list were]. Emma was the one that finally felt just right [and it wasn’t even that popular 26 years ago].
I didn’t know my child’s gender till she was born. She was born in April as we transition into spring. When I was admitted to the hospital that day was cool and rainy. The day I was discharged it was a sunny spring day and the tulips were blooming. I chose a name which means rain with the thought in mind that April showers bring May flowers. I hadn’t really thought much about names beforehand.
When I was pregnant with the first, DH and I found a book in the library with odd, funny names – like, Ima Hogg.
One of the names in the book was Philly B. DeBoo. There was just something about the rhythm of the name that had us laughing so hard we were falling off furniture. Say it a few times outloud. It’s wonderful!
I was named after my paternal grandmother. All I will say is that I’m glad she had changed her name from Gertrude a few decades before I was born.
My husband was extremely picky and I tried for months trying to find names that he would agree with. He didn’t help much as he didn’t know what he liked - he just knew what he didn’t like, so I had to keep coming up with lists where he would reject every name. Once he said yes to a name, that was it!
I think lots of girls start thinking about baby names when they are fairly young. I think I started thinking of names when I was 13 or 14. I tried hard to come up with some original names: There was an actress named Morgan Brittany and I thought “a-hah! Brittany would be a really pretty girl’s name!”. Well of course, I guess the whole country came to that same conclusion, so by the time I had a kid, there were three Brittany’s in every class. I also read some book that talked about Scottish parties called “Ceilidhs” pronounced Kay-lee. I LOVED the thought of naming a girl that name (the spelling would have been disastrous, but I still loved it). Same thing. 15 years later there were Kaileigh’s, Caylee’s, Kayley’s, and every other spelling variation you could think of (except for Ceilidh), so the market was saturated again. We ended up choosing two names that were uncommon, but not unheard of. My girls like them.
When my mom was pregnant with me, she was going to named me Cassandra during a time when Linda, Diane, Lisa, and Susan were common. I would have been thrilled with that name, but she forgot it at the last minute and ended up letting my Dad choose my name - I’ve read that people envision a middle aged plump woman when they hear it. I happen to fit that description now, but I didn’t appreciate having an old fashioned frumpy name when I was younger. I still would like to change my named to something prettier.
We approached naming our kids with an agreement that we both had to like the name and that each of us could veto any name we didn’t like for any reason. We both wanted to use some family names so we kept coming up with different variations until we were both happy.
oops
I wanted to name a daughter Margaret after an aunt, but my dh could not get past Dennis the Menace’s Margaret. I’d say, she can have a nickname! But he was having none of it. Luckily it was a boy. For the second kid we didn’t really have strong feelings and ask our then 3 year old what he thought we should name the baby, we knew at that point it would be another boy. He suggested a name of a character from a children’s book and we looked at each other and said, you know, that’s a great name. So it was easy.
One of my grandmothers was named Jewel. She hated her name and told everyone not to name their kid Jewel. Instead a nephew got her maiden name as a first name and I got it as a middle name.
My mom doesn’t like her name (she says it is more appropriate for a cow), so no one is named after her.
Elsa?
It’s totally weird to me that I cannot for the life of me remember what girl’s name we picked when S was born. We had been calling the baby “Pat” (courtesy of the guys at my office) and Patrick was one of our boy names (ended up as the middle name) but we had ruled out Patricia.
When we had D 18 months later, I wanted to name her Siobhan (sounds like Shevonne if you aren’t familiar with it) or Bridget, but I was overruled and it took us 3 days to agree on a name. Basically, H named both kids. I figured since I gestated them, it made him feel more a part of the whole thing. He has also named the dogs.
I wanted my kiddo’s middle name to be a little unusual. I picked Oksana. My husband refused. We finally agreed on Savannah for a middle name. Her first name is pretty generic, but had some fun meanings behind it. We picked a first name that could be dressed up or down…super formal, or super casual, lots of variants to choose from. It’s hard to pick a kid’s name when you don’t know what kind of person they are yet. Gotta leave room for modification.