It’s one of our longest-running forums, at 200+ pages and counting: Name a sibset you know.

On the forums it’s a game where one person names a sibset they know and the next person takes one of the names from that sibset and uses it in a different sibset they know.  Go ahead and play it, it’s fun.

So for this question of the week, we’re going to spin the challenge a bit differently and ask, What’s the best sibset — as in group of sibling names — you know?

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Ideally, choosing your baby’s name is a fun, inspired endeavor, but too often baby name problems get in the way.  Here are the problems we hear most often, and how to fix them:

Your family interferes with your name choice

Your mom wants you to name the baby after her.  His dad wants you to name the baby after his mom.  And everybody hates the name you’ve chosen….and isn’t shy about telling you so.  Name discussions with family can be an illuminating way to pass your pregnancy, but the minute family members start to act like they have equal voting rights, it’s time to cut off the talks.  Bowing to family name pressure is the Number 1 reason for name regret.

Your friend ruins the name you love

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Hyperlocal is a word you hear a lot today. There’s hyperlocal news and hyperlocal food, hyperlocal weather and hyperlocal — yeah, baby names.

What are the name trends where you live? Which popular names ring through every playground and crowd every class list? What kinds of names are considered cool, and what names do you NEVER hear?

In my diverse liberal suburb of New York City, for instance, names that are ethnically distinctive and unconventional when it comes to gender identity are definitely cool. Names you hear a lot include Henry (there are three on my short block), Zoe, Izzy, and my younger son’s name, Owen.

Please tell us where you live to help put your hyperlocal baby names report in context. If you’re not comfortable revealing your exact locale, you can say “a gentrifying neighborhood of London” or “a prosperous town in Silicon Valley.” But something vaguer like “a conservative small town in New England” works too.

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Today’s Question of the Week was inspired by a comment on our Facebook page, noting that names that end with the letter A were a “family tradition” for that berry.

How interesting!  While family name traditions are more conventionally thought of as calling all the oldest child Joseph or Elizabeth or giving children names that start with the same letter, there really is no strict definition to what might constitute a naming tradition.

So we put the question to you: What are the naming traditions in your own family?

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I’m always amused to see the different timetables that our forum visitors put on choosing baby names.

Help! Only four weeks to go and no name!!, one expectant parent will panic.

Others only feel urgency around baby names when the labor pains kick in, while some berries have their baby names complete with middles lined up years before they’re expecting, and still others are vacillating about the name months or years after their child’s birth.

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