Today’s guest blogger, Ilya Welfeld, describes her journey towards the perfect–and inevitable –name for her daughter.

Is it wrong to admit that I sometimes want another child just to name it?  That at times, that desire is so powerful as to supersede memories of chafed breasts, sleepless nausea and the exhausting reality of carefully raising a precious child?

The awe-inspiring and all creative opportunity to put a name to a life has seduced me like a secret lover – a passion you cannot acknowledge despite the obsessive hold it has upon your every thought.   After each child, I have wondered… will I ever name again?

When pregnant, I pour over books, bookmark websites, read messages boards, post and poll as I consider what to call each child.  I can’t resist the urge to utter new names, explore meanings and sounds from languages and family lore. The names of our children have all been inspired by a relative who has passed away. This, a Jewish tradition, not only adds beautiful meaning to the act of naming, but honestly helps narrow the focus. I can’t imagine having A-Z available to me.

When I became pregnant with our daughter, our third child, my naming obsession went into over-drive. My husband begrudgingly played a game night after night just before we closed our eyes. I would ask – “If you had to pick a name right now- what would it be?” Sometimes he managed a measure of enthusiasm – and names like “Jana” or “Samara” emerged. Other times, befuddled by my obsession, he would grunt “Brunhilda” and flip his head around to face the other wall while I lay frustrated that he didn’t share my passion for finding the perfect name.

But all the while, we knew there was one name to reckon with, a name that might make moot all ten thousand entries in baby name books.

My grandmother was a magical person, a warm, loving beacon to those around her.  We called her “Grandma” – a word that meant love and comfort, chicken soup, chocolate ice cream, ivory soap and freshly swept carpets.   But of course, we were not going to name a little girl “Grandma.”  My grandmother had a given name.  As a matter of fact, it was one of the most popular names of the century.  The previous century, that is…. Her name was Dorothy. (more…)

Guest blogger Dionne Ford swore she’d never do what her parents did: give all her kids names starting with the same letter.  And then she discovered the up side of coming from a family with a unified name theme.

When I was a kid, I hated my name, not just because it rhymed with peon and my teachers couldn’t pronounce it, but because it made me an amorphous indistinguishable entity from my siblings. We are all Ds; Debra, Diana, Derick, Daniel and Dionne. And if that wasn’t enough, we have matching middle initials – Js for the oldest boy and girl, Ls for the rest of us.

Tongue-tied at almost every meal just asking one of us to pass the salt, my parents often resorted to addressing each of us by D. I grew up thinking my parents couldn’t remember my name.

I swore I’d never play such a cruel joke on my own kids.

(more…)

Guest blogger Elizabeth Lindsay, aka nameberry’s very own Olivekit, was wracked with indecision over what to name her third baby girl — a dilemma followed closely by all her friends on nameberry’s message boards.  The final name choice surprised everyone, even Olivekit herself.

Baby Ooh La La (what my two-and-a-half-year-old calls her little sister), entered the world on July 23^rd, after a quick and almost painless delivery (love the epidural).  My beautiful baby girl debuted with an ear piercing scream that made the doctor laugh and say that Baby Ooh La La was the loudest baby that she had ever delivered.  She gets that from my husband.

After cleaning her up and weighing her, they handed her back to me.  We looked her over and studied her features, she looked a lot like her big sisters Olive and Kit, but with more hair.  She was perfect.

We oohed and awed over her, took a lot of pictures, and then one of the delivery nurses asked, “What’s her name?”

Crap. What followed were endless conversations about what she would not be named.

Me:  How about Phoebe, nickname Bea?

Hubby: Don’t like Phoebe.

Me:  Why not?

Hubby:  It sounds like a mean girl’s name.

Me:  What?!

(After pushing, I found out that he asked out a Phoebe once on a date in Junior High and she said no. Emphatically. Phoebe was out.)

We tried (trust me) to come up with a name. I read every book, made lists, got opinions from the wonderful ladies of Nameberry, and my loving but opinionated husband found fault with every name I came up with.  Plus, having two daughters named Olive and Kit, the pressure was on to find a name that went perfectly with theirs. Not an easy task.

I envy people who can just pick a name for their baby and that’s that.  When I was pregnant with Olive, we had a couple over for dinner and the topic of baby names came up.  Even though they weren’t expecting yet, after ruling out a couple of names, they agreed on William for a boy.    A five minute conversation and sure enough, years later, they welcomed baby William Archer.  It was never that easy for us.

Olive was going to be Courtney or Kendall until I had a dream that I was calling her by a different name and she looked at me and said, “My name is Olive, Mommy.”  I woke up and told my husband, who loved the name.  I didn’t.  I wasn’t going to name my daughter Olive.  The only Olive I had ever heard of was Olive Oyl and I don’t even like olives.   But my husband started calling her Olive toward the end of my pregnancy and when she born, Courtney Olive she became.

At my ultrasound for my second pregnancy, the baby had her back turned to us so the gender was going to be a delivery surprise.  Since I didn’t want to call him or her “it” for the next five months, we nicknamed the baby Kit because that worked for a girl or a boy. I was positive that I was having a boy.  The pregnancy was so much different than with Ollie’s and sadly, I didn’t dream up for a name for this baby, but we had a few names picked out for him.

“It’s a girl!”, the doctor proudly announced. My husband looked at me confused for a second, before we laughed and welcomed our second baby girl into our lives.  But what on Earth were we going to name her? (more…)

It takes at least four generations for names to sound appealing again for babies. The names of today’s moms and dads – names popular from the late sixties through the eighties – are for the most part too familiar to foist upon an innocent newborn.  You’ll find a lot of young parents but not many stylish babies with the following 1970s-style names:

girls

AMY
DANIELLE
ERICA
ERIN
HEATHER
JENNIFER
JESSICA
JULIE
KAREN
KATIE
KELLY
KIM
KRISTIN
LAUREN
LINDSAY
LORI
MEGAN
MELISSA
MICHELLE
STEPHANIE
TRACY

Boys are a little more complicated, as styles don’t change as fast and more boys are named after their dads.  Still, these are found far less frequently now than in the 1970s.

BRADLEY
BRIAN
CRAIG
DARREN
DENNIS
DEREK
DOUGLAS
ERIC
GLENN
JEFFREY
KEITH
KEN
KEVIN
SCOTT
STEVEN
TODD

Even less attractive are the Baby Boomer Names, dowdy and old-fashioned.  Out out out are:

girls

BARBARA
BEVERLY
BRENDA
CAROL
CONNIE
DEBRA
DENISE
DIANE
DONNA
GAIL
JOYCE
JUDY
LYNN
MARILYN
PATRICIA
SANDRA
SHARON
SHEILA
SHERRY

boys

ALAN
BRUCE
DONALD
GARY
GERALD
JERRY
LAWRENCE or LARRY
LEONARD
RICHARD
ROGER
RONALD
WAYNE

It’s not until you go back four generations, to names popular around the 1920s, that you start to find some appeal.  Names from that decade that are beginning to find a new audience among modern baby namers, for stylish newborns, are:

girls

ALICE
ANNA
CLARA
EDITH
ELEANOR
ELLA
EVA
EVELYN
FLORENCE
FRANCES
GRACE
HAZEL
IDA
JOSEPHINE
JUNE
LILLIAN
LOUISE
LUCY
MARGARET
PEARL
ROSE
RUBY
VERA
VIOLET

boys

EDWARD
RAYMOND
WALTER
JACK
HENRY
ARTHUR
LOUIS
FRED
JOE
SAMUEL
LEO
RAY
THEODORE
CHESTER

A return engagement by one of our all-time favorite bloggers, Abby Sandel of appellationmountain.net.

Call it the Great Naming Compromise of 2001.

Other couples sign pre-nups. My husband and I negotiated our children’s names before we cut our wedding cake. The agreement was simple. Our firstborn son would receive his father’s name; our firstborn daughter would be named after my mother. Given that he likes Emily while I prefer Calixto, this was no small compromise.

Our son Alexander arrived in 2004. Alexander’s grandfather was over the moon to have a namesake. And while our son wears at least four nicknames, sometimes in the same sentence, we’ve been happy with our choice.

Four years later, the ultrasound tech announced that baby #2 was a girl. We had a name, right?

Not exactly.

My mother’s name is Clarina. She’s named after her grandmother. Trouble is, Mom heartily dislikes her flowing, feminine name–and forbid me to pass it down. Back in 2001, we’d settled on Claire Caroline as a wearable, grandmother-approved interpretation.

As my due date approached, I worried that we’d inevitably need a way to distinguish the two Claires. My husband agreed that pre-emptive nicknaming is not a bad thing in a family with members known as Bird, Boat, Ritz, Ketch, Rohn, Stir and the Vees.

Only how do you wrest a nickname from Claire?

Our first thought was Callie. But would Callie be confused with Kaylie, Hallie and Kelly? Plus, our son often answers to Aly. Rhyming sib names? Not for us, thanks.

I pushed hard for Coco, but my husband got more of a “gorilla” than “high fashion” vibe.

After hours staring at Claire Caroline, the nickname emerged–Clio. My husband immediately agreed. Best of all, it matches with yet another family memory. My (late) father used to call me Cleopatra.

With just weeks to go, I decided that Clio needed one more syllable to make her name complete. A friend had mentioned avian names months earlier. As I looked over her list, I noticed Wren–the perfect way to honor my sister, known in the family as Bird.

Claire Caroline Wren arrived on October 2, and Clio suits her quite well. While I’m sometimes regretful that we limited our list, we learned that it is possible to marry creativity and tradition.