I grew up with the initials CEO. I was kinda sorry to lose that when I married, but was glad to get rid of the Czechoslovakian last name for a simple four-letter replacement. We DID consider what our son’s initials would spell, however.
Friends of ours referred to their unborn child as “Spud” all through the pregnancy, and it stuck. 
Our extended family always has a pregnancy name for babies to be, usually some horrible family name.
I can’t imagine not agreeing on a name. DH has a very common last name and my MIL made the suggestion that a distinctive middle name would help clear up the inevitable confusions that come with it. So our kids have their “own” first names, and fairly unusual middle names from a family member we can tell them about. My FIL was apparently offended we didn’t use his, but my MIL told him he didn’t get a vote, and to hush.
Funny about the "Kathy’s " who legally changed to “Kathryn”. A member of my extended family who actually is a “Kathryn” was called “Kathy” growing up but now goes by “Kate”.
H and I went round about for months before we finally settled on one. And made the mistake of telling another couple we were close friends with the name we had chosen. That couple was also expecting but was not due until six weeks after we were. Well, I guess now you know the end of this story. Other couple’s son arrived the day before our son (I was almost two weeks late and other woman was several weeks early) and they “stole” our name. We were miffed for awhile, but now that we look at our son, the alternate name we gave him fits his personality so much better than the one we would have given him, had it not been for our friends.
Our Katherine has been Kate since birth. The family middle name (used for 5 generations) did not go well with “Kate”, so we used Katherine. She only uses it on legal documents, so avoids much of the confusion of people calling her Katherine.
Both H & I had names that were “popular” in the 50’s --think Debbie, Julie, Cindy, Tom, Mike, Jim, etc. I had 15 girls sharing my name in my class and just didn’t want to do that to our kids. So, we gave D a classic name (same as a movie star of early years)…to which my Mother said, …ummm, that’s ummm, interesting. Gave S a classic English name as well. We just didn’t want them to have same name as many others. Family thought we were weird. Growing up, kids never found their names on any personalized items. But love both their names and fit them so well…
Fast forward 25 years: both kids have names that have appeared on the top ten lists for the past few years…so there are a lot of little goskid D’s and goskid S’s running around now…
A married woman who takes her husband’s name has two middle initials to choose from – the one for her original middle name and the one for her maiden name. The only exceptions are women with double names like Mary Ellen, who pretty much have to choose the first alternative.
I would be more worried about giving a girl a name that can also be a surname. What if a girl with the first name Morgan falls in love with a guy whose last name is Morgan. She either has to become Morgan Morgan or keep her maiden name and listen to people say “Haha! I see why you didn’t take your husband’s name” constantly for the rest of her life.
^ It goes the other way, too. My name was # 1 in popularity the year I was born (and for several years before and after).
There were always so many of us at school. But now I am the only woman in my office with my first name and honestly don’t come across very many women who share my name.
Our oldest son’s in utero name was “LC,” which stood for something important to H and I. Apparently, people thought it was “Elsie,” because I was gifted with a ton of little cows for his birth! Our D was called “Gooch” and H still calls her that.
I’ve spent years apologizing to D3 for Disney releasing a movie with the title character sharing her first name about 18 months after her birth. Should have gone with the other choice!
Our criteria was “everyone has heard of it but no one they know is named it”. We did pretty well with #2 and #3, but #1s name became much more common a few years after she was born. None of them have top 10 type names–common means 200s in this context!
I also wanted the names to have a nickname–and none of my kids uses a nickname at all. Oh well.
I have a common name and I can’t stand it.
With the first, we waited for him to be born to choose one of the three names on the list as we wanted to see our baby first. We did not know the sex in advance Then we asked far too many people and got confused between the opinions. It felt hurtful, and I was sad for my sweet baby with no name. Any would have been fine, but I like the uniqueness of what we finally chose.
Second time around, I wanted to not think about names after the birth. Twins, with the sex unknown prior to birth, we had a lot of names to organize. One, to my delight, is the name I chose years ago for a daughter and the ex agreed The second was a compromise name between me and the ex. That name was rather ubiquitous the decade of her birth, and I sort of wish it was something that marks her age a bit less. We had a fantastic middle name, that my ex mother in law vetoed as it was her outrageous mother in law. I told D recently and she agreed with me rather than her rather ordinary middle name.
We ended up with conflicting cultural traditions as well. Jews don’t name after anyone living. Scottish folks name the first son after the paternal grandfather. Fortunately we were ignoring tradition on both sides.
Katrina is a lovely name, and am sad it has been ruined. Same for yours, Stradmom!
Our only kid was 7 weeks premature and there were 4 weeks before that we weren’t sure about so had to start thinking sooner than expected to. Had not received lists of Indian first names requested in time for me to consider (do not really like those of family members).
H is Indian and I would have been fine with the tradition of father’s first name as the middle name (I did not change my middle name to his as is that custom, I didn’t even change my last name). We knew he would have H’s last name- hyphenated names become cumbersome, especially when there are 20 letters plus the hyphen. I insisted on an American first name as he would have the foreign sounding last one, and besides, he was born here and I’m from here. We considered initials but decided he could live with the ones he ended up with (never was an issue). Avoided religious connotations as well.
I vetoed some of H’s choices. He is an Anglophile and came up with Nigel. No way. He came up with son’s name within days of son’s birth, and I liked it- plus son was in the hospital nearly two weeks so he came home with a name. A classic first name that happened to be one of my grandfather’s coincidentally, and that of one of my brother’s son’s- different last names. The middle name reflected his Indian heritage but not H’s name and when combined with son’s diminutive form of his first name became Indian- worked well for H’s parents.
Boy, it takes a long time to explain things when avoiding identifying info. Fun can be had with names but, privacy rules here.
The end result was a name we could use small child diminutives with, a solid adult name and one with a nickname. I have asked son if he prefers the formal or nickname some use- I think our using the formal name works and he doesn’t mind the nickname others automatically use. The name suits him. Who cares if it appears in Judeo Christian works- it also has Indian ties.
I like my first name but unfortunately while it was very popular in my generation it is rare today. So many with it on my college dorm floor freshman year. I dislike the names that one needs to know a different language to have a hope of pronouncing them correctly- Siobhan is one. So is Sean. Having difficult to pronounce last names may be one reason, although H’s is phonetic if people don’t panic at the length (shorter than mine which has ethnic letter combinations in it). Also off my radar are unisex names- the poor wimpy male Lesley in HS. A friend is the third, first son the fourth and they are not at all aristocratic! Plus the name is often a nickname for a formal version.
My D had a friend named Arielle who has bright red hair. She was born before the movie came out.
My best friends brother is Gay and his husbands last name l( I’ll call it “David”) was the same as brothers first name. When he told his parents he was getting married and they were thinking of using the same last name they were like we totally support you but don’t become David David. They now use a hyphenated name along the lines of Smith-David. He thinks David Smith-David is cool and His sister and I agree. His parents do not.
I wonder about changing my first name. I like Ann, or more specifically, Annie. Sounds friendly, no?
Nicknames: When our youngest was only 3 or 4, and my Nana was wellll into her 90’s, he gave her a nickname and I immediately apologized (she was quite Grand and Formal). Turns out she had always wanted a nickname for her extremely common name, and it stuck.
When she passed away at 100, she had asked for flowers with her nickname on the ribbon , which was given to my son. Not a dry eye around, but a good, good, memory.
My best friend has a 1 year old grandson named Harvey after his grandfather. Well before the storm! So you never know.
Speaking of initials, without using middle initials, I went from BM as a child, to BS when married. I have a hard time deciding which is worst 
If anyone remembers the eraser game in grade school, I was always selected at kids could write my initials on the blackboard and not get into trouble for “saying a bad word!” There was another girl in the class with the same BM initials, so at least I wasn’t alone.
We had some things we had no trouble agreeing on from the beginning - no juniors, no hyphenated last name (I did not change my name), no first name that could be either male or female, nothing too unusual or trendy. Then we made some lists from a baby name book and went from there, eliminating any that either didn’t like. My oldest has my last name as his middle name. My youngest has another family name as his middle name. These are both names that some use as a first name but we preferred them as their middle names.