Discussion: Baby-Name-Choosing Strategies

Hi Swistle,

I have been reading your baby name (and regular!) blog for years and am currently expecting a little girl in March (yay!). But instead of asking for your specific advice, I was wondering if you’d be willing to tackle the more general topic of “name-choosing strategies.”

I’m dealing with a situation that a lot of my friends have reported, too — the mothers-to-be come up with tons of name ideas, while the fathers veto almost all of them and seem totally unwilling to offer more than one or two suggestions.

My husband is awesome and super-involved in every other way — he’s just completely unhelpful with the naming thing, and it’s stressing me out (and him, as I get increasingly frustrated).

In your (vast!) name-helping experience, you must have come across strategies for dealing with these or similar situations. An shared spreadsheet with a points system? A baby-name-generating drinking game? (ok, maybe not the best idea for pregnant women) I would love to hear your general advice and I think it would be helpful for a lot of people.

 

This is a question I thought would be a great one for general discussion: different things work well for different people, and making a reference section in the comments section appeals to me.

Paul and I had a few things that worked for us. Since I was very interested in names and liked making lists, and he wasn’t and didn’t, one exercise we’d do is I’d have him look at my list and put stars next to the ones he liked best. We chose our second son’s name that way, almost disappointingly quickly and easily, because his clear favorite was also my clear favorite (and one he’d VETOED for our first son! I didn’t point that out to him).

With our last son, we got down to seven names and had trouble narrowing it further—not because we were fighting, but because we both liked all seven names. The exercise we found most useful that time was to rank the names—not in 1-7 order, which was too hard, but in tiers. I had two that were my top choices, so I ranked those both 1; then I had several that were my next choices, so I ranked all of those 2; and then everything else was a 3. Paul did the same, and this let us quickly eliminate all the tier-3 names we had in common (because those were never going to get chosen over the other names), and notice which names were highest for both of us. We got down to two names this way.

I don’t know if this counts as a strategy, but I tried to get Paul into the right mindset. For example, I’d say, “Don’t say yes or no to this name right away: I just want you to think about it.” I’d do the exposure method: saying a name to him over and over again in different contexts (“Baby Milo! 3rd place in the spelling bee: Milo Thistle! Milo, come to dinner! Milo, did you do your homework? Can you pick up Milo after school?”) until he got used to it. And I did the spinning-it method, where if possible I’d think of people I knew he’d like (scientists, authors, book/show/movie characters) with the same name as the one I wanted him to consider seriously.

I had some luck too with setting up TIMES to discuss it. That is, instead of discussing it continually, as I’d have preferred, Paul seemed to do better if we’d arranged to sit down and talk about it over a dinner out, or during a particular evening. It also worked better to wait until later in the pregnancy: he had trouble even thinking about it until we were at least past the halfway point.

One thing I liked about The Baby Name Wizard book is that it let the less-interested-in-names parent work with smaller, more manageable lists. Paul didn’t want to look through an entire baby name book, but he found it much less painful to glance at a category and say yes to this type of name, no to this type. (Plus, it showed him that all the names on his list were 1970’s-80s names.)

 

 

 

Name update!

Thanks so much for posting my question awhile back — the comments were super helpful. My husband and I ended up using a two-step process, partly inspired by some of your advice.

First, we both downloaded a baby-name app onto our phones — a name pops up, and you swipe right if you like the name, left if you don’t like it. When you both swipe right, you get a match. You only see the names that you both match on. It worked well for us because (1) we could do it while watching TV and (2) it took a lot of the emotion out of the process (ie telling your partner a name you like, them hating it, and you feeling very “what?! how could you not like that name — it’s perfect!!”). Also, because you go through so many names, it reassured me that there wasn’t some Magic Name that we were missing.

We set the app to give us both boys and girls names, which I think ended up being maybe a thousand? And we matched on just 24 (!). Some of the ones we matched on (including our final choice) were ones that we’d discussed before, while others were a complete surprise. From there, each of us individually ranked each on a five point-scale:

0 – prefer not to use this name
1 – could be okay with it
2 – like it
3 – like it a lot
4 – totally love

Then we added up the scores, and used the four highest-scoring names as the finalists. For the next few weeks we practiced referring to the baby as each of those four names.

Sabine was born on March 27. We finally decided on her name about 24 hours after she was born — it was the only one in our final four that had a family connection (I actually don’t think her specific name was in the app, but “Sabina” was and we matched on that). She is the absolute best (though at this point we mostly call her Beanie).

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31 thoughts on “Discussion: Baby-Name-Choosing Strategies

  1. Kerry

    I don’t know if this counts as a strategy, but with my husband it felt like I could get x minutes of talking about baby names, if I sensed an opening where he wasn’t stressed out about the whole thing. But then the conversation inevitably had to devolve into joke baby names. (Let’s name the baby after our friend Steve! And then look at him and say “I dunno, why do YOU think we named the baby after you?”). A really good joke name might reduce the stress enough to fit in one or two more for-real names, but mostly I had to learn to recognize when my x minutes were up and we were now talking about whether or not to name the baby Turtle. Based on the number of times I’ve had someone tell me that their dad wanted to name them some joke name or another, I suspect that this works with more than one husband. I’m also a fan of emailing lists, but can’t really say that my husband was a fan of me emailing lists. And it helps to know his family tree better than he knows it himself…if your favorite name happens to be his great-grandmother’s middle name, that can be kind of a trump card.

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  2. Natalie

    Very interesting discussion! I have learned so much from reading Swistle’s blog and the comments. One thing to decide is what’s VERY important – honor name, unique name, gender neutral or specific name, initials? What’s semi-important – middle name, style, spelling, meaning? I liked a lot of names and then found out they had either religious meanings (we’re not religious) or some unattractive meaning like fisherman’s daughter or something.
    I also think saying the name out loud, aka the Starbucks test, is critical. One letter writer I recall, her husband was dead set on one name but found he could never bring himself to give it as his own name in Starbucks. So, it was off the list, much to the relief of the letter writer.
    I always envision myself saying “these are my children, Joe and Stephanie” and see how it sounds together. A lot of names look good on paper but sound terrible when said all together.
    One other thing I considered, which may be neither here nor there, is for a girl, if she one day marries and changes her surname (hypothetical, I know) are there any letters she could marry into that would give her terrible initials? Like if Valerie Ann married a Griffin? That kind of thing. Maybe because my baby boomer father’s initials are JAP… I think about initials a lot.

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  3. Britni

    I feel like I don’t really have any different strategies than what swistle has already said.. but I’ll add on a bit:
    since I am a name nerd, I went through the entire baby name wizard website and wrote down a list of girl/guy names – I ended up with 52 girl & 42 boy. I then asked SO if he had anything to add.. and he mentioned a couple of names that he had heard on his own and liked, so I added them to the list if they weren’t already there.
    I had us rank them 1-10.. but then I added the total score. So if Sam was my 1 and his 3 and Josh was my 2 but his 5.. we ended u with Sam at 4 and Josh at 7.. making Sam the winner.
    The other thing I did is took one of his top names and one my top names and put it through nymbler to see if there would be any suggested names I overlooked when going through baby name wizard.

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  4. Courtney

    I used a spreadsheet and had a LOT of names on it. I’d have SO go through either the girls or the boys and highlight a name orange for no and red for heck no.

    Then I’d copy the spreadsheet, unhighlight everything and have him do it again a few weeks later. Just to see if some of the names he dismissed out of hand, he just really hadn’t thought about. This at least, go him thinking about why he didn’t like a name.

    Once the list was more narrowed down (from the both of us) I then would ask him what he liked or didn’t like about a name. What came to mind when he heard a certain name. Would also do the same for myself.

    We ended up selecting a final girl name that he originally said ‘heck no’ to (then had a boy).

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  5. Heidi J

    Our strategy for names was for me to make lists of names and then I’d read them to my husband I asked him to rank them 1 (worst) – 10 (best) and let me know which ones he really didn’t like at all. He never ranked a name higher than a 4, but I just pretended it was a 5 point scale then and considered those with 3s and 4s the front runners. I’d bring the names up through the months and we’d gradually narrow them down until we had name we’d both agree on.

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  6. Lilly

    My husband is also of this variety so we did a playoff-style bracket system with my top 16 names. For each pairing he didn’t have to pick *the* baby name, just whichever name he hated the least. We played through a couple rounds to get the final list to a more manageable size and then waited until baby was born to hash out which one would win!

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  7. estella

    My husband really liked the Baby Name Wizard book. It’s set up in a way that appealed to his analytical mind. We also waited to really talk about it once we knew if we were having a boy or a girl, so we didn’t needlessly argue over names for the other gender.

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  8. Stephanie

    My husband cares about the name, but also vetoes a lot and doesn’t come up with many suggestions. He also tends to be a one-name-at-a-time kind of guy. That is, once he has a name he likes, he wants to stick with it unless/until something he likes better is found.

    The good news is that we have overlapping naming style. So my strategy is simply to only bring up names that I like enough to use and I think he’ll like too. Then he never gets ‘stuck’ on a name I don’t like!

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  9. Meg

    Another Baby Wizard couple here! I found whereas I would want to talk about potential baby names for years, I got one good afternoon out of my husband. He really liked the system at the beginning of baby name wizard where we each chose a list of names, vetoed, assigned points, ranked and narrowed down to 3-4 names. We then called my belly each name and one naturally stood out. We are considering baby 2 and whenever I broach the name topic he rolls his eyes and says, can’t we do that list thing again?

    I love the drinking game idea (for him.)..maybe I’d get more than one afternoon! I’m thinking 1 drink for every inappropriate playground rhyme he comes up with, another drink for every one of his names on the 1983 top 10 list….

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  10. Brooke

    A possible idea for vetoers is to come up with a list of names you love (probably 6-12 names) and tell him all about why you love each name. Then, before letting him veto names, say that he has to provide a name he likes better if he wants to veto any names, and explain to you why he likes it better. This might not get you to a final list, but it should open up the discussion more than: you saying “I like Liam” to which he replies “That’s weird, no.”

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  11. Ashley in MD

    I don’t know that I have much new to add, other than to say that if you really love a name that the father-to-be has vetoed, it can’t hurt to keep suggesting it occasionally, either for this baby or for a future baby (unless he has vetoed it for a very specific and good reason, like it’s the name of an ex-girlfriend or something). My second baby has a name that my husband rejected outright for Baby #1 when we thought #1 might be a girl. By the time I actually was pregnant with a girl almost 3 years later, he’d somehow completely forgotten that he rejected it, and his tastes had changed enough in that time that he agreed to it easily.

    My husband was also much more willing to discuss names as I got further along in the pregnancy. Early on he just wasn’t interested (unlike me…I’m not even pregnant yet and am already thinking about what I would potentially name a third baby).

    Also, I’ve found that my husband just can’t creatively think of names. His brain doesn’t work that way. Every time I ask him for names he likes he just rattles off a list of names of his friends or family members, even though we decided that we don’t want to use names of friends or living relatives. It’s like he literally can’t think of other names beyond those of people he knows. So he does way better if I give him lists to work from. We generally start with social security name lists and go from there. The bonus is that looking at recent lists proved to him that he was mostly suggesting “mom/dad names” and that the great-grandparent names I loved were in fact stylish.

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  12. Phancymama

    Swistle, I remember reading a post of your where the dad kept simply vetoing names without ever coming up with any and I remember loving your advice on how to stop that pattern.

    I found it helpful to start with basic criteria: honor/family names yes or no and how many to each “side”. Then we discussed any letters that were out because of initials. Then name styles (Baby Name Wizard)

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  13. Reagan

    It is helpful if you do first agree to some principles. See what needs to avoided first. My Dad hated the whole concept of two people with the same living in the same so ruled out the possibility of a junior from the start. One of my brother in laws hated his nickname as a kid (even though it was a common and natural nickname) so he ruled out names with obvious nicknames. It helped my sister before even starting that this was a non-negotiable for him. Another brother-in-law endured has a name that rhymes with an obvious playground slur so always used “avoiding those kind of names” as a criteria. My husband has a unisex leaning towards girl name so wanted to a avoid unisex names at all costs. It gave me whole groups of names I didn’t even consider.

    Then work together on what you are seeking. In my case, we wanted to honor family. For my parents, it seems to have been top ten first names and family middle names. For one of my sisters and her husband, it was using longer first names to balance a short last name. For us, it was honor names and shorter first names to balance a long last name. To my brother, it was important to select names that would work equally well on the sports field and in the boardroom.

    Education is the next thing in order when dealing with a non-name nerd. As Swistle mentioned, I find a lot of men gravitate toward the names of peers they heard frequently growing up – Mom and Dad names. Showing your husband recent social lists or class lists from a friends daycare can be a real eye opener for many men.

    After that, I think it is time to start with the lists. Be clever and use the approach that would work best with your husband. If he hates taking about and is analytical, try the spreadsheet approach. If he is problem solver, set aside an afternoon to resolve the issue.

    With my husband, based on our established goals and the fact that the names was considered a “problem to be solved”, I picked my favorite name that I knew he would say yes to because it honored someone who mattered to him. Since that name honored his family, I provided two options of names that I loved that would honor mine side of the family and he picked his favorite. For a girl, I loved his mother’s name for a middle name so pretty much got to choose the first name I wanted that worked with our criteria.

    If you are working with a non-nerd, education is the first order of business.

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  14. Colleen

    Like Swistle, I love names and lists. Hubby not at all. My preference would be to discuss names constantly through the first two trimesters before deciding. He wanted to just pick a name and be done. Instead, we picked one day when we had a long car ride to settle on the name. I came with a list. He had a few names to add which I realized later were the line up to his favorite baseball team and the names of other cars on the road with us. We then went tournament style to narrow them down until we had the final two. We thought about them for the next few days and then just decided to say our favorite of the final two at the same time. Turned out it was the same one. Phhhewww. The funny note is that my son’s middle name is Ford which ended up on the list because my husband was naming cars on the road.

    Also, I’ve found it ideal to have poor short term memory when naming. Names that were vetoed with my first son were back on the list with my second. Now my husband saw a race car driver with a name that he vetoed for both sons that he wants to consider if we have a third boy. I don’t bring up the past vetoes. He thinks he came up with it.

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  15. TheFirstA

    With baby number one I’d suggest names, he’d veto or (less often) say he liked a name & it’d go on the list. His suggestions for girls were especially awful, they were all the names of cheerleaders we’d gone to high school with, plus the name of his college girlfriend. Eventually, I left the Baby Name Wizard book in the bathroom. Suddenly I found he started to suggest a few names. If I didn’t like a name he suggested, I would try to come up with similar sounding names that I liked better.

    With baby number two he refused to discuss names at all until after the baby was born, so I simply made my lists and had them ready for the hospital. Ended up with a top tier name from my list that I had not taken to the hospital with me because I thought he wouldn’t like it. Turns out, it was the name of a historical figure husband admires and he’s the one who suggested it!

    I’m not sure if these are really useful strategies for other people, but they worked for us. Based on my experience, I agree that the Baby Name Wizard book is amazing for reluctant namers. All you have to do is get one suggestion from them and then follow the sibling names or read the shorter lists of names for that particular style category. I would also say try not to pressure too much. Too much pressure to make a decision can cause some people to just shut down, which is why I think it worked to just leave the book out where I knew he’d see it, but not actually ask him to read it. Don’t be afraid to suggest names you think he won’t like, and scour whatever interests he has for names you like that might have a positive connection for him. Think outside the box. If dad is stuck on something you can’t stand, like 80’s cheerleader names, try to find sound alike names with a more current spin, or try a name you like better than offers the same or similar nickname. Finally, try not to worry about it too much. There is no rule that says a baby has to be named before it is born. There is nothing wrong with picking a name after the baby gets here. For some people, like my husband, I think it is easier to name a real baby than it is to name a hypothetical one.

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  16. LK

    What works for me and my husband:
    1) I have to accept that my husband is not ready to discuss names until well into the 2nd trimester. In the meantime, I make lists for myself and occasionally throw out names for fun and to get his thoughts. I also use this time to plant seeds and educate. (That name you described as “old man” has been top 20 name for X years now)
    2) Choose times to discuss when we’re both relaxed and not stressed out.
    3) Discuss parameters early on such as honor names, naming after, etc.
    4) I accept that I can’t unilaterally choose the name.
    5) I throw out lots of names, including ones I don’t love. When husband vetoes names, I try to figure out what they have in common. (For a girl, he didn’t like long names, but we found common ground in 2 syllable names) I also looked at the names he liked and I didn’t like. We both acknowledged that we can like a name but it’s not right for our kid.
    6) Compromise. And throw out more names.

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  17. Emily

    I’m the person who wrote the original email — THANK YOU to everyone for their thoughts; this is really helpful. Especially the advice about patience — both in terms of waiting until later in the pregnancy to talk about it, and in terms of giving names a chance to percolate.

    But why is it that men (in general! #notallmen and all that) seem so much less…capable? creative? interested? Not sure how to encapsulate the gendered tendencies that people (including myself) are describing, but it certainly seems like women tend to have a very different idea of how to go about this naming process than men do. Is it because we’re socialized to be thinking about this question from a young age?

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    1. Natalie

      I think somewhat yes, but also because the gestating fetus is making us nuts. Nesting, and whatnot. I think also often men have a hard time envisioning the actual baby after the pregnancy, especially early on, and so naming it seems like a faraway thing. I know for me/us, it took foreeeevvvveerrr to get to 20 weeks and then suddenly it was like OH WAIT THIS IS HAPPENING.

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    2. Vanessa

      I think that it is difficult for men to name their unborn children because unless and until they develop a relationship with their baby in utero (feeling kicks, talking to the belly, seeing ultrasounds) the whole thing is too abstract. Even reluctant baby namers are pretty gung ho once they are holding their beautiful newborn!

      Reply
  18. Ashley

    I am very passionate about names, and my husband really hadn’t ever given them any thought. We “named” our someday-daughter when we were still dating because I had one favorite name, and he decided he loved it. Case closed. Boy names were a different story.

    I learned a lot about my husband during name discussions. One, he didn’t really know what kind of names he liked–we had to discover that together. Two, name meanings were not consequential to him. He thought they were dumb, and I give them a lot of credence. Three, name connections were VERY big to him; i.e., he’d throw out names we deduced later he didn’t really like, just because they were “hero” names. If I threw out a name, he’d immediately connect it to an athlete or a figure in history. I tried, then, to use that crutch to my advantage. Four, we learned that family middle names were just as important to him as they were to me–he just hadn’t considered it before. Once we discussed giving our first son his dad’s name as a middle, he was completely adamant that he “needed” that.

    Ultimately, we decided to make a bracket (which was discussed by another person here, and was suggested in the Baby Name Wizard). It helped make the discussion lighter, like a game, and my husband thought our son would love the story. In order to make a list of 16 names, I casually threw out every name I would even remotely consider (which weren’t really too many), and he vetoed a lot. We ended up throwing out a few when we talked about potential problems (nicknames we just couldn’t stand, or people we worked with, etc.). Came up with a tidy “sweet 16”, and it ended up being pretty swift from there. We argued about a couple, but usually we both agreed one needed to go. We realized our sweet spot as a couple was Celtic names with a bit of a cowboy edge… and thus our final two were Rory and Nolan. Ultimately, he loved both equally and I loved Rory a tad more, so this one (due in January) is Rory and if he ever has a brother–Nolan! Ta-da! :-) It was a long process, but pretty fun.

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  19. Emily

    I like the comment/question about women being namers and I do think it goes back to gender roles as children. Most little girls will name their dollies, but what do boys have to name? Many of their toys most likely come with names of the character, so outside of a pet I’d say they aren’t taught/never learn the creativity of naming.

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  20. Kate

    Fun discussion! I downloaded a list of the top 1000 names for the previous year and my husband and I went through it separately, each marking names that we would consider (we didn’t have to LOVE them – just be open to them). Then we compared our lists, and there were only about 20 names we had both selected. So those formed our longlist. From there we went out to dinner one night, with the list printed out and everything, and eliminated any that either one of us had reservations about. That got us down to 3 or so options. We spent some time researching each of those in terms of meaning, popularity, etc., but didn’t make our final sections until I was in labor.

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  21. Kim

    I would never have been able to get my husband to go through a spreadsheet. He might have thumbed through a name book or two, but marking them? No go. We started out with some guidelines – I wanted a “g” name to honor my late stepfather, he hates “occupation ” names like Cooper, we both wanted a Celtic flavor to honor our shared ethnicities. So the first was Gwendolyn or Gregory, and the one time I suggested changing Gwen to Wendy, he calmly but firmly said “I like Gwen.” So Gwen it is.
    My second’s name came to me in a flash, and I presented it as a done deal – this baby is blank blank, unless you can talk me into a better one. But he loved it and didn’t even try.

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  22. Elizabeth

    My husband would nod his head to everything. And only when I pestered him would he give his real opinion. With our last baby, we were stuck on a boy name. And with two boys already, nothing was quite adding up to their names. Plus my husband wouldn’t really help…so about a month before our baby was born, I came up with a game of sorts. I listed all of our boys names. Then, I created various things to rank. Our middle name was set so I had my husband rank how the different names sounded with the middl, with our last name, the meaning of the name, the ranking (social security) of the name, how well our 2.5 year old could say the name, etc, etc…my husband was required to rank it on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being awesome and 1 being eh. We did this with all ten or so names we liked and I ranked them afterwards by highest score to lowest. In the end, one of our bottom names won out, but it was still fun to get my husband involved this way.

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  23. Mo

    Love to know the name of the app you used!? Did you have to track the scoring or the matches or did the app do it for you? Wow, that is like Tinder for baby naming – I love this idea of “gamifying” the name process, feels like something a lot of guys could get behind – maybe there needs to be fantasy football for naming your kid?? =) (I too have had SUCH a hard time in engaging my partner in the naming process – countless fights, tears, etc.) I’ve tried so many of the strategies in the book but it all goes back to me throwing out 1000s of names that get vetoed 1:1 – which gets mega painful to me in I spend an incessant amount of time and energy thinking about names/becoming attached to names that he cuts down in one second nor does he contribute. II actually wrote Swistle yesterday and am hoping she can give us some fresh options! =) Thanks for sharing your experience – I want to try it!

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  24. Emily

    Hi Mo & Katie — the app is called Baby Name App (babyname-app.com). It was a little glitchy when we used it but still lots of fun. Good luck!

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  25. Erin

    For a baby name lover, that app sounds like tons of fun! I wonder if I could get my husband to play this with me even though we aren’t currently expecting. Ha!

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  26. Marilyn

    Hahaha, glad others already asked for the name of the app!

    Also ADORE the name Sabine. When she’s older, she might like the (a little bit dark and creepy, but also beautiful and so clever) Griffin and Sabine series!

    Congrats on your beautiful Beanie!

    Reply

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