I wanted to name a boy Jett, but my H’s family had an old aunt named Jett that nobody liked, so that was vetoed right away. I recently told my son the story and he seemed disappointed that he wasn’t Jett.
I got the first name I liked for D by agreeing to give her H’s grandmother’s name as a middle name. I later admitted that I really liked that middle name ( I do).
We had a really hard time coming up with a boy’s name we liked. Then we spent a weekend with some of H’s college friends and we realized that we both really liked one of his friend’s first names. So that’s the name we chose for S.
We knew long before we ever tried getting pregnant that S1 would be named after DH’s grandfather. Was pretty much the only relative he liked. Middle name started with an “E,” which covered several relatives. S2 was going to have a “J” name in honor of various relatives, and we decided we liked one based on a TV character. S2’s middle name was named for a priest friend of mine who died right around the time I got pregnant with S2. S2 was born on what would have been my friend’s 31st birthday (no, not planned).
If we had a daughter, her name would have been Elisabeth. That’s how my maternal grandmother spelled it, and we both liked the various nicknames that were possible. He liked Lisa, I liked Beth. It’s a name that works well in a professional setting, too.
The only name DH vetoed was Shoshanna. We were pretty sympatico on the naming thing.
No naming the children, but the dogs names were an issue in our house. Every name we came of with for the last two dogs, my daughter would veto as she liked the name and might want to name a future child that name. This was when she was in middle school and high school; she is now 30! She is going to have to have at least 10 kids before she vetos the names I liked for the dogs :))
@Consolation my grandpa didn’t like my mom (their only daughter)'s name, so he called her by the name he wanted to. It became a nickname of sorts.
A name I’ve really liked from the time I was little was my great-grandma’s name: Amalia.
My mother had to go and ruin it for me in high school by telling me that we’re pretty sure Amalia killed my great-grandfather.
Baby is a year out for us and Mr R and I are already “fighting” over names 
“When we had D 18 months later, I wanted to name her Siobhan (sounds like Shevonne if you aren’t familiar with it”.
Familiar with it? Omg I was OBSESSED with Ryan’s Hope! Not though as much as my neighbor and friend who named her kids Ryan And Maeve!
“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.”
I can’t remember the boy’s name we had picked when my D was born, which I find totally weird also since it was so hard to come up with something we agreed on.
My H had a cousin named Kathy. She later had it legally changed to Kathryn because she thought it sounded more grown-up and professional.
I have a name that makes me sound like a 82 year old retiree. Always hated my name until recently, so we agreed on three things to make our kids lives easier:
Requirement 1: We have a very short last name, and we didn’t want our kids to end up with a name like: Bob Dan. So we tried to elongate all of the 3 kids first names.
Requirement 2: DH and I had met a bunch of my youngest sister’s friends: Precious, Music, and Princess. Yes, their actual names. So I told my husband I wanted to go with traditional and classic. Also, names that could be spelled and that family could actually pronounce.
Requirement 3: Something that wouldn’t embarrass our kids later when they put it on a name plate, degree or business office.
We made a list of ancestors’ names and European names.
We ended up picking old classic first and middle names for the girls of 3 syllables in length.
We named our son after our fabulous pediatrician, also 3 syllables.
I love the name Duncan. My husband laughed when I suggested it because he thought I was joking. No, I really love it. But our son is not Duncan. (Would have fit him though.)
We made lists and that worked fairly well.
But - I’ve been told I may need to get a dog and name him Joshua to finally get over my name obsession.
@Rhandco, in MIL’s direct line, one woman in almost every generation back 200 years has had the name xxx as either first or middle. MIL hated the nickname, so in hs insisted people use her middle name.
We did give D1 it, as a middle. She loves it. It’s rare. But the dog got the nickname. MIL thought that was fine.
DH was worried about boy names that would get teased. Years before kids, for some reason I forget, I liked the name Laird. He nixed that, thinking kids would call him Lard. Gee.
Our last name is long, so we stuck with short first name (and why I suspect the girl’s name would have had a nickname in pretty short order). DH felt Shoshanna 6-letter middle and 9-letter last name was too long and more ethnic than he liked. Both our sons have traditionally Jewish names, though.
Naming our dog was easy. Star Trek character. Four letters, two syllables, easy to call out in public without embarrassment. Also is a lovely name for a daughter.
H and I totally agreed on a girl name right off the bat. Both our grandmas had the same name and we loved the name. No girls for us however. Boys names were tough to agree upon…especially when you have to come up with 3! Lists worked for us and then deciding between the ones that were the same from our two lists. By the third one we resorted to making lists by each choosing from a baby names book.
My son is a IV. I was just the daughter in law. 
We very deliberately used family names. Each child has a first name from one side of family and middle name from other side. We mixed up which side of family was first name or middle for ultimate fairness. We made all the grandparents really happy. It was my idea but husband liked it. I still think it was genius.
Here were some naming tips I recently gave a friend:
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Don’t focus too much on giving your child a name that’s unusual. By this I mean: It’s absolutely fine to give your kid a name you love that’s an unusual name but there are two people I know who made it their main criteria. It was the MAIN thing they liked about the name. Who knew several years ago that suddenly there’d be Sophie’s and Ava’s everywhere.
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If your last name starts with an O be mindful of short names that end in n or s. The " no" or “so” that’s formed tend to make the first and last blend together and be hard to hear the name well when it’s said aloud.
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if its hard to pronounce the name as spelled, plan on having patience when people can’t pronounce your kids name and plan to teach your kid patience with this as well.
4)Think twice before giving your child a name with a common nick name that you absolutely hate or want used. Your kid may feel different ( I know some one who was very upset when her her Elizabeth insisted on Lizzie). And one survey of employers that our headhunter client did found employers thought negatively of the “Bob’s” who insisted on " Robert" and similar name adherence.
We had to pick both English and Hebrew names and since I am the Jewish parent, it fell to me to select and present appropriate Hebrew names.
I didn’t know what we were having for the first 4. With S17, I found out but didn’t share it and only because D, who was then 7, kept asking me to bring her a sister as she already had one older and two younger brothers. Obviously, S17 was another boy. His name was the easiest as my favorite uncle sadly died a year before I got pregnant. His name is Biblical but not odd. His middle name is after H’s dad. H has the same first name as his dad but a different middle name.
With oldest boy, H and I picked a name that MIL hated so I told her that I would call him “Tyrone Rasheed” and she freaked out and decided that the name we picked was just fine. His Hebrew name is after both of my grandfathers and so is his English name, but it’s not Jacob Samuel (which is his Hebrew name), which were their actual names because I think of those names as “old man” names.
When I got pregnant with D, we decided to name her after one of H’s and one of my grandmas. H isn’t Jewish so his family names after the living. When I was about 6 months along, one of H’s cousins, who is named after their mutual grandma, called and said she just found out she was pregnant, already had 2 sons and wanted to name her next child after the same grandma. I didn’t want two little girls with the same name just 3 months apart and it was her name first, so I decided to change the name. We had such a hard time picking a replacement. At one point, H went to the library and came home with every baby name book. “Wabanooshka,” which is a Native American name meaning something like, “she who was eaten by eagles” was our prenatal nickname for the baby. We finally selected the Gaelic version of his grandma’s name and an alternate same letter name for the middle name after my grandma. P.S. - H’s cousin had twin sons!
Middle son’s name was selected while I was in labor. It’s a name that could be used for either a boy or a girl. When I told MIL his middle name was after H’s other grandma (her mIL), she cried and said she hated her MIL. So we changed who he was named after to one of my other uncles, who had the same first initial! My son hates his middle name so when he turned 18, he went to SS and got a new card with his first name and middle initial. When I was pregnant, we asked the two oldest (2 and 3 at the time) for name suggestions. After we had to veto “Dumbo Pinocchio” and ‘Ursula the Sea Hag Penny," we decided not to solicit any more advice from people less than 4’ tall!
With son #3, we had run out of dead people so it was tough. We had no names when he was born. I can’t remember the female names we had chosen, but H wanted Noah for a boy and I wanted Bailey (I was a big “Party of 5” fan). We took him home from the hospital with no name. We made lists and lists and had no names in common. H went back to the library and got the baby name books again. It was awful. Finally, when he was 5 days old, we found a match on one of our lists! YAY! The name sounded familiar and had a comforting ring to it, but was not so common that there would be 10 of him in his grade. That became his first name and when I told my aunt, she reminded me that I had a great uncle who died in Russia during WWII that had that initial, so his name became son’s Hebrew name. Dead WWII uncle had a brother so we used his initial to pick a middle name. A week later, the older kids were watching their current favorite DIsney video and we heard our son’s first name… We realized that the name sounded so familiar because the kids had probably watched that video 150 times during my pregnancy! A little TMI, but the middle name we picked for him is Luke, so for years he was called “Cartoon name Luke Skywalker Lastname…” Unlike son 3, he loves his name.
Selecting names for children is one of the hardest tasks I have ever engaged in.
For Chinese, it is disrespectful to name your kids after someone who is older than them. It was strange when we first moved to US to see Jrs, III, etc.
H is a Jr., and our 1st son is a 3rd. S goes by his middle name/nickname. Confusing and not recommended. The name was unusual in past generations, but became trendy around and after S was born and I dislike trendy names. (We are Catholic and use saunts’ names/Biblical names–most don’t realize H’s name is a saint’s name). Also, it can be a surname, and H is often called “Mr. Firstname.” And when people meet him after seeing his name, they are surprised how old he is–some say "I’ve never met an OLD Firstname before. " Since I have an old lady name, some might think I robbed the cradle. Still, I chose to use H’s name with no pressure from him. (The 2nd choice/ unused name was Kevin.) I had it in the pre-nup that whoever gave birth named the kids. I named all the rest (7 more) with no disagreement from H.
@mathmom --I actually named one of my Ds Margaret after H’s aunt, and my mom told me the same thing --that she couldn’t stop thinking about Margaret in Dennis the Menace! D goes by a gender neutral nickname not derived from Margaret, which is confusing in multiple ways. We also liked the name Dennis and would have used it had one of our younger daughters been a boy.
One son was set to be named Patrick, but several people we knew had Patricks within weeks of our son’s due date. I was so annoyed- -I didn’t want people to think we were copying and was desperate to find a new name quickly. Our neighbor loaned us a video of The Santa Clause–I named my son after the cute little boy in that movie. (It was quite a few years before I admitted this to anyone. )