The name of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s new baby is not a remarkable name: it’s Faith. What makes it remarkable is the pairing of the new baby’s name with the name of her sister, which is Sunday.

Sunday and Faith. Granted, it would be VERY DIFFICULT to come up with a sibling name for a child named Sunday, and that’s one good reason not to USE a name such as Sunday. Sunday and Olivia? No. Sunday and Tuesday? No. Sunday and Genevieve? No. Sunday and June? No. Sunday and Kailey? No. Sunday and Sydney? No. Sunday and Heather? No. Sunday and Penelope? No. But I would also have said “Sunday and Faith? No.”

Sunday is a highly unusual word name, reportedly inspired by Australian Sunday Reed, in a category with names such as Pilot and Apple. Faith is also a word name, but well-known and Top 100 and traditional/Puritanical, in a category with names such as Hope and Rose. The difference in style is masked by the association of the word meanings; it’s easier to see with examples such as Tuesday and Faith, or Wednesday and Grace.

However, now what they have is not only a sibling set but a THEME, and so it would be EASY to come up with suggestions for the couple’s third child together. For a boy: Church, Bishop, Deacon, Christian, Temple, Benediction. For a girl: Trinity, Hosanna, Epiphany, Spirit, Angel, Miracle.

Cherie writes:

HELP!!!! I am scheduled for an induction on the 1/14/11 if I don’t go into labor before then and we don’t have a name. The truth is, he has had SEVERAL names and none have stuck. The worst part is…My husband got me to agree on something (in a moment of complete panic!) that I am SOOO not okay with, and now he won’t back off it! I can’t bring myself to concede and go with DH’s name, even with COMPLETE control of the middle name! Our last name is two syllables and starts with K.

A brief history…

We have an almost three year old named Evangeline and we call her Evie. We love how her name is not too common but not unfamiliar. It was hard agreeing on a name, but once we found Evangeline, we both “knew” that was it. Our taste in boy names it quit different though. Evangeline to us sounds ethereal, timeless, elegant, and has a kind of ambiguous European sound. It also is a variant of an important family name and that is very important to me. For boys, however, we generally like outdoorsy and masculine sounding names. Our biggest “name rule” WAS that it isn’t too popular (probably anything over 200). Also important is a good NN, but not a deal breaker. That leads us to Jack…

As I said, he has had several names. Months six through nine we had been pretty set on Ranger. We love the idea of this name. It is not common and VERY outdoorsy but still fits with a lot of the current name trends. We had so many bad reactions to it we started to second guess ourselves. So we decided to give him a “safe” first name and use Ranger as the middle but still call him Ranger. That way if he grows up and hates it, he can go by his first name. That is how we came to Jack. We had briefly discussed it early in the pregnancy but dismissed it due to it’s overwhelming popularity (esp. considering Jackson, Jax, and Jaxon). However, it is also a family name, and would work well for a “safe” name. DH liked it more than me and brought it up again. I agreed to it, on the pretense that we would be calling him Ranger and not Jack. HOWEVER… I started liking Ranger less, and he started liking Jack more. Now he is COMPLETELY STUCK ON JACK…and I can’t BARE the thought of naming my son that. It doesn’t feel right in any way. I also don’t like how it works with Evangeline.

Now I don’t know what to do. Do I settle for Jack because DH is suddenly so in love with it, or do I stick to my guns and fight for another name? There isn’t really anything else we agree on. The only other name he really likes now is Leif…and I HATE it. We both kind of like West but it doesn’t work well with our last name. I like Sawyer, Mason (popular I know but it doesn’t feel as trendy to me and I have ALWAYS loved it AND it was one of the names we agreed on early in the pregnancy), and Archer. All are borderline too popular/trendy but I would WAY rather use one of them than Jack. BUT if I had to pick a name on the spot it would either be Mason, with an important family middle name or…Xavier with the NN Zane. DH grew up in the South West and can’t get over the pronunciation of Javier rather than Xzavier. Xavier, to me, has all the same qualities as Evangeline. They sound SO nice together and they both come from Saint’s names! Evangeline and Xavier…And Zane and Evie both sound so fun, light hearted, and adventurous. To me they make the perfect sib set.

Long email I know. Do I push for Xavier or Mason? Do I try to find a name from scratch? Do I settle with Jack? HELP!!! I’m working on barrowed time!

Don’t panic. Don’t pick a name on the spot; don’t give in just because time is running out. (Perhaps read the post from earlier today.) As I understand it, you’ll be pressured to name the baby before leaving the hospital, but you DO have longer than that to register the baby’s name, it’s just a little more hassle. Does anyone know the legal details on this? “It took us four weeks to choose the right name for you!” makes a way better story than “We ran out of time so we panicked and chose something neither of us really like.”

In the meantime, tell your husband Jack is out (this is not the kind of situation where one spouse should hold the other to an agreement), and that another name needs to be decided on. Right now he is working in “MAKE HER CHANGE HER MIND!” mode, and he needs to be switched out of that before he can reasonably discuss or come up with other names.

Names to consider:

Ace
Arrow
Barnaby
Bosley
Calder
Callan
Canyon
Dover
Drake
Fisher
Forest
Forrester
Gideon
Grove
Houston
Jude
Lennox
Magnus
Merrick
Miller
Oakley
Orion
Raiden
Redford
Redmond
Rockford
Rowan
Sherwood
Slater
Thatcher
Tillman
Turner
Walker

I’ll keep working on this in “make list first, check to see if each name works later” mode and re-publishing as I go: it got caught in my spam filter and has been there since Tuesday and it seems best to publish as soon as possible so we can all work on it together.

Lucy writes:

I’m looking for some advice and hoping you can help me out.

I’m the mother of two beautiful girls. My eldest girl, Sofia, will be three in April and my youngest, Liliana, is 4 and a half months old. Within a few months of being pregnant with Sofia we chose her name and I have never regretted it despite the popularity of it.

It was an entirely different scenario with my youngest. Since my husband and I are both of Italian orgin, we wanted another Italian name, but this was not easy to find this time around. Alot of names were tossed due to negative associations or because they were already in the family. Fast forward to a few days before my due date and still no name. We decided on Giulietta.

However, right after I had the baby, I felt that the name was not right. My husband agreed to change it a month later. However, due to the pressure and not knowing what I really wanted, I chose another name I am not happy with. I was not happy with the name when we registered her but since my ocd was acting up my husband thought i would have doubts about any name.

Three and a half months later and I continue to have problems. I find it hard to say her name. In fact i try to avoid it if i can. I’m embarrassed to say her name when people ask me. I find that the name is too long and frilly for me as well as old fashioned. I don’t even like hearing it! I thought that i could use the nickname Lily but I’m embarrassed about that since its so popular right now. I’m also feeling that Sofia and Liliana/Lily don’t match that well but I don’t know if that’s just me.

My husband gave me the opportunity to change it a couple of months ago to anything i wanted but i still haven’t been able to do that. There are names that have grown on me such as Francesca and Elena but i know he’s not keen on those. I now realize that I like short classy timeless names. I also didn’t want any thing to popular. I recently realized how perfect Clara would have been but a friend just called her newborn Clara. I just don’t want a lifetime of not being happy with my daughter’s name and dreading saying it. I’m really having a tough time with this and I think about it almost all the time.

My questions too you and your readers are:

Is the name Lily too popular? Does name regret get better with time? Should I try to find a new name that I will enjoy saying? Does anyone have similar experiences they can share?

ANY help would be greatly appreciated at this point!

 
It’s okay to change a baby’s name, if after the baby is born you think of the name that you wish you’d chosen. Changing it to another name you’re not sure about is, as you’ve found, a bad idea—especially because in my opinion, changing a baby’s name one time is okay, but twice is…well, I won’t say “totally out of the question,” but that’s the basic line of my thoughts. The only thing I can think of that would seem okay would be changing back to the original name.

Use the nickname Lily to help you with the feelings that Liliana is too long. Lily is short/classic/timeless, it’s great with Sofia, and there is no reason to be embarrassed about its popularity any more than about the more-common Sofia’s popularity: short/classic/timeless names tend to be common, but that is because they are excellent and well-liked names. And regardless of ANY of these issues, you don’t have a name you like better ANYWAY, even after hunting carefully for a long, long time.

So this is the time, I’d say, to stop with all this: stop looking for names, stop trying to find names you like better, stop agitating about the name you chose, stop wondering if a different name would be better. Those are all activities for before the baby is born, and now she is 4.5 months old and has already been named twice, so I decree it is time to stop. When you feel your mind turning toward the name search, say to yourself, “No, Lily has already been named.”

Baby Naming Issue: Baby Name Regret and Baby Naming Issue: Baby Name Regret 2 might also be of use.

A representative of a syndicated column (details kept undercover until column runs) writes:

I’m just wondering if you might have a minute (or about 10) to chat with me about baby naming in the 21st century (the “baby background check”)

Specifically:

1. How much online research do you think parents do about baby names nowadays?

2. Do you advise expectant parents to google the names they’re considering before they actually decide?

3. In the pre-internet days, it was hard to tell if someone had the same name (especially someone of ill repute) but it seems that can be accomplished fairly easily, with a few google searches. Do parents think about this when they are considering possible names? Have you heard of any parents who changed their minds about a name after googling it? (maybe they found out that their baby name was a porn star or a reality star or just someone with a ton of google results?)

4. Do you advise parents (or hear about parents) reserving their future baby names URLs, signing them up for a Facebook account, getting them a Twitter handle or a blog?

5. Have you ever heard of parents ditching a name because the URL was taken already? (“Oh, I can’t get JohnDoe.com – we’ll have to name the baby James!”)

6. Any other thoughts on the subject of babies and social media?

Thank you so much!

1. The huge number of online baby-naming resources/forums makes me think parents must be doing a lot of research online. I used baby name books to make lists, and then looked up the finalists online to check for “name interactions” (i.e., characters from TV shows). I also looked up names on the Social Security Administration website to check popularity of names.

2. I do think it’s a good idea to search online. It saves a lot of “Oh, like from _____?” surprises. A friend of mine named her son Sawyer after finding it in the surnames section of a baby name book, and was displeased afterward at how many people thought she’d gotten it from the show Lost—which she’d never seen. I think it’s also a good idea for people with a child or children already to search for combinations of sibling names: sometimes two names sound so good together, and you realize only later that there was a reason for it (such as a celebrity couple or two characters in a popular book). These things might not be dealbreakers, but it’s nice to know beforehand rather than to get it as an unpleasant surprise after the baby is born.

3. Sure, we’ve had some baby-name questions where the parents say they were going to use a certain name and then discovered someone famous (or a famous character) had that name, or even the same first/last-name combination. We’ve also had questions where the parent was planning on a name (Kate, for example), and then the sudden publicity of someone else with that name (Kate Middleton, for example) causes them to rethink it.

4. I don’t see any reason for parents to rush to sign their infant’s name up for Facebook and Twitter and blog URLs. I wonder if this happened more in the earlier days of the internet, when it seemed like such a thing would be more important? I remember various lawsuits over people trying to get money out of celebrities and business by buying up those URLs, but that seems to have died down. Also, I think the focus is turning away from “grabbing dibs” and toward protecting our children online and keeping their actual identities separate and safe from their online identities.

5. Ha ha! No, I’ve never heard of parents choosing a different name because that name’s URL was already taken.

********

If you have time, perhaps you could give the columnist more answers to work with. If you can, include the number of each question you want to work on, to help her organize the information.

Brittany writes:

I have been reading your blog for a while now and I am hoping you can help us out! I am due January 19th with a baby girl (will be induced on the 12th if I haven’t had her though) and we are still trying to decide on a name. I think the closer it gets, the more unsure we become. We have a two year old son named Beckham. His name was one we just really liked, although it took us two days after he was born to finally decide on it, we were going back and forth between two names. His middle name is my husband’s name. With how long it took us to decide on his name I should have realized this would happen this time around too, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it. We are just so indecisive! Our last name is Garner, and her middle name will most likely be my middle name which is Kylyn. If it doesn’t flow with the name we pick we will find another family name to use, but I find it fits with most.

Here are the names we like-

Landry- This is one of our top two. I know it’s traditionally a male name/surname but it sounds feminine to me. We both like it a lot and I love that it’s different. The spelling is what’s giving us a hard time. My husband doesn’t like the traditional spelling, it reminds him of all the male sports players with the name. I don’t mind the normal spelling, but I do think it looks like laundry. The two ways we are thinking of spelling it are Landree or Landrey. Neither is sticking out to me though, which spelling is best? Also, any nickname options you can see?

Elle- The other part of the top two. We are normally drawn to surnames/unique names but we both really like this one. I love that its cute, simple and girly. Plus it’s easy to spell! The thing I think is missing is the Wow factor. I just feel it doesn’t have that fun, unique quality about it. Is it boring? Plus it’s short, is it too short for a name? My husband jokes we should just spell it L.

Others we like that are still on the list-

Savvy- I really like this one, hubby is luke warm about it. Is it too crazy?
Ruby- Hubby really likes this, I don’t love it. I don’t like how popular it is or will become.
Arden- I really like this one, Hubby is unsure about it.
Aven, Olive, Isla, Saylor, Charlie- We like them all but not sure if they are the one.

Names we have decided against for one reason or another-
Sloan, Story, Arabelle, Harper, Hartley, Briar, London, Bentley, Penelope

Names my Hubby vetoed-
Campbell, Harlow, Coco, Monroe, Lux, Luca, Sawyer, Piper, Hadley, Lola, Stella

Names I vetoed-
Journey. (even though I first suggested it)

I feel like we are just going around in circles and need to pick one! Other suggestions you think would fit are welcome too though! I just really wish someone would tell us what to name her. I would like to have something picked out instead of going to the hospital with a list. Please help us out!

Also our next boy’s name is already picked out. It starts will an ‘L’ and is another surname that is similar in style to Beckham, in case that helps.

SIL writes:

I’m emailing you for my sister in law, they’re last name sounds like Geez-brekt. She’s due January 26, gender unknown. This is the fifth baby, they have 3 girls and boy- Caitlin Naomi, Olivia Lynn, Emily Megan and Curtis Evan. Here are they’re top contenders at the moment:

Boy

Adam
Liam

They loved Evan (other son’s middle name), and didn’t use b/c friends already did. They also like Ivan, but it’s taken as well. I suggested Everett or Gavin, both of which weren’t liked.

Girl

Amanda- dad likes, mom- meh
Hannah- mom likes, dad dislikes
Lauren- not sold on it

Looking forward to seeing what your commenters have to say!

If they can’t use Evan or Ivan, I wonder if they might like Ian, Owen, Eamon, or Ethan? Or Aidan or Avery or Kyle?

For a girl, would the dad like Anna better than Hannah? Would the mom like Miranda better than Amanda? And if Lauren is “sort of but not quite,” they might prefer Laurel. More possibilities:

Abigail
Annabel
Bethany
Brenna
Kiersten
Liana
Lindsay
Madeleine
Marissa
Molly
Natalie
Samantha
Sophia
Violet
Vivienne

Meghan writes:

My husband and I are expecting baby number one on 1/23/2011. We have a name that we love for a boy, Noah Daniel. We can’t seem to settle on a girl name. There are three that we really love, so possibly some combination of the following would be good, but we just can’t decide. Here are the names we do like: Skylar, Annaleigh, and Emilia. Your thoughts?

 
The first baby’s name sets the tone for future baby names. It also eliminates certain names from future consideration (e.g., if you name a baby Anna, you’re ruling out Hannah, Annabel, Liana, etc.). This makes the decision more difficult, but can also help you narrow your choices: imagine all your potential future children as a group, and think about what sorts of names you’d like them to have. If you use the name Noah, and then later on you have a daughter, will you want to use the name Skylar, or does that not seem quite right with Noah? Do “Annaleigh and Noah” sound like Your Children? “Emilia and Noah”? “Annaleigh and Skylar”? If not, which of the two names is the one that you’d eliminate? That sort of game can help you figure out which of your name candidates is most Your Style.

We’ve talked before about how names like Annaleigh make me nervous. (Your spelling is fine, but I’ve now considered the issue afresh for so many submitted questions, I don’t think I’ll ever see the name without thinking of it!) I’ll suggest to you the same name I’ve suggested before to avoid the situation entirely: Avaleigh.

Bethany writes:

Is there an updated Baby Name Wizard book, or one that is so much like it but made more currently? I bought my copy (well loved, well used, excellent hemming and hawing resource!) four years ago before Ava was popular in that book’s opinion, and that is what we named our first child/pregnancy experience. I love that the name is short and sweet and its perfect to describe our little girl who died prematurely. BUT… to me it is evidence that the book is a little dated in opinion and cultural stuff.

I looked online and kind of like Nymbler and What a Lovely Name!, but they aren’t as good as Baby Name Wizard. The SSA site is not too helpful either, because I am looking more for inspiration and for the styles/families of names like the book has.

Thanks in advance for your help finding a resource. I hope I have the opportunity to select a few naming options and have your readers give feedback or suggestions!

Oh, I KNOW people are going to want to chime in on this one!

My 2005 edition of The Baby Name Wizard says the name Ava is “suddenly soaring”—and that’s the first edition of the book. There’s a second edition that came out in 2009; I had to buy mine from an actual physical book store because Amazon.com STILL claims to have the first edition and not the second. The covers look the same except that the 2009 version has a hot-pink circle that says “Fully revised and updated with new names.” That’s definitely what I’d recommend, above all other baby name books: it’s even better than the 2005 and continues to be my favorite baby-name resource of all. I think of her as the absolute expert on style families and sibling names.

This won’t help with your question, but since we’re on the topic of favorite baby name resources, I also enjoy having a few name dictionaries on hand: I find them useful when I’m looking for a name starting with a certain letter, or names that begin with certain sound, or when I want to find the meaning of a name. The two I use most are The Baby Name Bible (I see it’s on Amazon’s bargain table for $4.78), even though I get very sick of the snarky tone and the many, many entries that are clearly there only to allow them to put “50,000+ Baby Names!” on the cover; and 100,000+ Baby Names (goodness, that one also is on the bargain table; perhaps this is an indication that it is time for me to update my reference section). For origins and to resolve disputes about meanings, I use The Oxford Dictionary of First Names.

I also buy a lot of other baby name books, just because they’re fun and I’m interested. I recently added Baby Names Made Easy, which sorts name into lists by meaning; and The Complete Book of Baby Names, which is basically a name dictionary but with a small section in the front where names are grouped into lists such as “Most Popular in New York” and “Surfers.”

I occasionally look up a name online, but it’s rare. I find most online baby name sources to be cluttered with ads and misinformation (incorrect origins, incorrect meanings), and if I get a list of search results I have to click to a new ad-filled page every 10 names. However, I know many readers of this blog find information online, so I know they’ll have found the good ones and can tell you more about them.

Oh, wait, I have told a lie, because there IS one online baby name source I use, probably more even than I use The Baby Name Wizard: The Social Security Administration baby name site. I know you said you don’t find it helpful because you’re looking more for style families, but one of the huge advantages of the SSA is that it’s where, for example, you can go before you’ve ever met a single baby named Ava and see information like this (which is how The Baby Name Wizard knew as she was writing her 2005-publication book that the name Ava was soaring, even though she only had access to 2003-and-earlier data):

(screenshot from SSA.gov)

The SSA site doesn’t give style information, but if you have name candidates in mind you can find out if the name is rapidly increasing in popularity or not. You can also look in the same popularity range as a sibling name, or look for inspiration in a certain popularity level (for example, names that aren’t in the Top 100 but aren’t too far away from it either).

Now I hope others will be able to answer the specific question about resources for name styles and inspiration—but also comment on the broader topic of favorite baby name resources.

D. writes:

My husband and I are expecting our first baby, a girl, in mid-January (EDA 13th). With just one gender to focus on, and so much else in common, I really thought picking a name would be easy. However, I was completely wrong and we cannot agree.

Since our last name is a tricky one (Greek origin, starts with P), we should be considerate to give her a strong first name. My husband loves the name Sofia (with an ‘f’), and wants nothing but his name. He’s been calling and referring to her as this from the moment we found out we were having a girl. Although I adore the name for its strong, feminine character, I do not like the popularity of it at this time – top 10 for the past few years. My husband and I were both blessed with unpopular names and never had to go by our last initial in school like many others. I want this same thing for my child.

I love different, yet still not off-the-wall names like Portia, Matea, or even something Greek to honor her heritage. Every name I come up with, my husband declines. At one point, it was okay with Alia, Riely or Emma (again, quite common), but ended up back at Sofia and that one and only name.

Please help! Even a Top 5 list would be more desireable going into the delivery room with.

My secondborn, whose blog pseudonym is William, has most years been in class with two other boys who have his same name. In fact, the year he was the only “William” in his class, kids who’d been in class with him before still called him “William T.”—and soon everyone was doing it. And as a mid-seventies Kristen, I went by a surname initial or nickname a couple of times myself. I talked it over with William to make sure we agreed, and we do: it is no big deal. I know a lot of people disliked it in their own situations, but neither of us cared at all, or wished we had a different name. (In fact, he says it’s fun: he says “Hi, William!” and the other boy says “Hi, William!” and the third boy says “Hi, William!,” and so on.) And as I feel like I keep repeating, the common names of this generation aren’t the same commonness as the common names of our generation: the spellings Sophia and Sofia combined beat Isabella for the highest-ranking girl name in the U.S., but at 1.12% of baby girls born in 2009, that’s still only about 1/4th the percentage of baby girls given the name Jennifer in 1974 (4.03%). (Source: Social Security Administration.) That’s just over one Sophia/Sofia per 100 girls, or about one per six classrooms (assuming 15 girls per classroom).

In short, if your husband loves the name and thinks of that as his daughter’s name already, and you adore the name for all the reasons you mention, it would be foolish to abandon it merely because other little girls are also being given the name, or because she might have to endure the common experience of occasionally using her surname initial or middle name along with her first name. I think it’s helpful, too, to remember that you can reduce the odds of your daughter having the same name as another child, but you can’t prevent it: even if you give her a much less common name, sheer chance can make her Portia P. anyway (and I’d avoid the initials P.P.), as in my other son’s class where there’s not a single Michael or Joshua but are two boys who share a name that wasn’t even in the top 100 when they were born.

Name her Sofia. It sounds like you won’t be able to get your husband to agree to anything else anyway, no matter what you or we say. Give her an uncommon name as a middle name, and then if she DOES find it unendurable to sometimes need to use a surname initial, she can instead use her middle name, or have a fun first-and-middle combination instead of using the first-and-initial. (This could be a bargaining chip with your husband: he gets the final say on the name Sofia and you get the final decision on the middle name.)

Sarah writes:

My name is Sarah and my husband’s name is John. We are expecting our second child, a daughter, on January 8. We have an almost 2 year-old son named Judah and our last name is Ramsey. We are struggling to name our daughter, and I would really appreciate your help. Her middle name will be a family name, and I’m not too concerned about how it works with her first name.

Our first choice is Luella, nickname Lulu, but I am concerned because it hasn’t been in the Top 1000 names since 1955. We prefer names that aren’t too popular, but I’m worried that there’s something about this name that makes it unpopular that I’m not seeing. Other names we like:

Talia
Elise / Elisa
Ruth – my least favorite, but we’ve been using this as her “interim” name and it has grown on me.

I’d really appreciate any feedback you have on the names I’ve listed, plus any other ideas you have.

Thank you!

I think you should use Luella! If other people haven’t noticed it, it’s because they’re being dim: the combination of Lucy and Ella SHOULD be irresistible! I like it with Ruth as a middle name.