Choosing a baby name is possibly one of the most difficult decisions you’ll have to make. I always like to hear stories about how people chose their baby’s name so I thought I’d share with you how we found Toby’s name.
Before we had the 20 week scan and found out we were having a boy I had already thought of lots of names I liked but most of them were girls’ names. After the scan I still kept coming up with girl’s names but couldn’t really find any inspiration for boys’ names. There are so many things to think of when choosing a name for your baby and we knew there were a few things that were important to us…
- the name had to fit with our surname without sounding silly.
- we wanted a name that wasn’t too common but wasn’t outlandishly weird either!
- as a teacher there were loads of names I ruled out immediately as I associated them with particular kids (and usually not in a good way!)
- I wanted something quite short and easy to spell – I don’t see the point of making life difficult for your kids if you can help it!
Initially I would think of a name and then either forget it ten minutes later (blame baby brain!) or else remember it long enough to tell my husband…and then forget whether I had told him when I remembered it again two weeks later. So, at some point I decided to make a spreadsheet! Whenever I thought of a name I quite liked, or if Barry thought of one, then I would add it to the list with the intention that nearer the time we would go through it and see what we liked the sound of. Initially I seemed to come up with a lot of old Bible names; things like Issac, Caleb, Noah, Abe and Jacob. At some point I decided it would be nice to use my mum’s maiden name as a middle name (although I’m not going to tell you what it is – who knows who might want to hack my bank account!) so we needed to find a name that went with that as well as our surname. A bit later on in the pregnancy we decided we liked Rowan (although I wasn’t sure as one of my brother’s godsons has that name) and Robin and they were front runners for a while.
And then, one day when I was driving home from work I was listening to the Juno soundtrack in the car. There is a song on the soundtrack called Tire Swing by Kimya Dawson. There is a line in the song that says
I’ve never met a Toby that I didn’t like
And that was it. Toby it was. We already had a kind of connection to the Juno soundtrack as we walked back down the aisle after getting married to All I Want Is You. We actually kind of kept Robin as a back up until Toby was born but when the midwife asked my what the little boy in my arms was called I looked at Barry and just said Toby, and our boy had a name.
How did you choose your baby’s name? Does it have some family connection? Did it come out of a baby name book or come from somewhere else entirely? I’d love to hear your stories and I’ll be back soon with the story of Gabe’s name too.
I chose a few names for my eldest….Olivia was on of my faves but when the midwife asked me her name I came out with Rebecca….lol That name wasn’t even discussed or thought of….I don’t know where it came from but we like it even though it never gets used now….She gets called Becky.
We chose a name that is very popular in Orkney, where I was born. It’s because it is the patron saint’s name, although we are not at all religious and my family aren’t from Orkney, we wanted to keep a connection. It was always the front runner boy’s name, although we had some back-ups. We did have some girl’s names before the 20 week scan but none of them were as strong as the name we did choose. It also goes well with our unusual surname, my husband also came up with a name test, when you say it out loud does it sound like serial killer or a professor? The joke will be on us if he heads for a life of serious crime though! We always get really strong positive reactions when we tell people what his name is.
This is a lovely post. We choose a name that just came to me one day and I just loved it ever since. Osian (pronounced Osh-ann), which is a Welsh name and has the sweet meaning of little dear 🙂
Is middle name is Wyn, which is a name many members of my OHs family has. So it just felt natural to give him Wyn as a middle name. It also flows quite nicely. Xx
We have Amelia-Rose. I love French names (Amelia is not French it’s German, I’m an idiot!!!), but when I heard it I thought it was so pretty.Amelie (French) and Eliza were our other names. We picked Rose as she was born in London (English Rose)…..we are Irish!
What a lovely post, and way you chose his name. I just really liked the name Amelia and it was the only name we could agree on haha! xx
I have quite an unusual name for an English person (although fairly common in Wales) so I very rarely meet anyone with my name and when I do I hate it!! So, I knew I didn’t want a name we would hear a lot but, like you, didn’t want to go crazy. We had a boy and girl name we had decided on as we didn’t know the sex of baby but had no back ups as we had found it really hard to agree on anything!
It was Andrew who came up with our first name and I suggested the middle name as it was my grandma’s and I thought it would mean a lot to my mum. I felt like the two names complimented each other too.
So, we now have a Gwenn Elsie! Elsie is pretty popular at the moment which kind of annoys me 🙂 but I don’t think I’ve met another Gwenn yet. But, as with my name, that’s because we haven’t been to Wales recently!!!
x
Beautiful story! Thanks for sharing. I am going through the name selection at the moment. Baby boy is due in September. I have got a name that feels right for many reasons but I too want to wait until he is born to share it 🙂 x
i haven’t had kids yet but i’m really liking the name Jackson for a boy and for a girl Maxwell. Maxwell is originally a boys name but i love it for a girl. i’ve always liked the name Jackson for a boy since i was about 9. The nickname Jax melts my heart. And the nickname Max for a lil girl is gorgeous.