I dreamed last night that I had a baby boy, and that I’d neglected to choose a name (or rather, we’d chosen the name “Orendo,” and after the baby was born I thought “???”). I thought of using Oliver, but he didn’t seem like an Oliver. Then I thought, “This is going to be SO FUN to post on the baby name blog!!” (And it WOULD have been, too!) The name I was considering when the dream ended was Benjamin—a name not on my list of favorites, but not on my list of “No,” either.

Awhile back I dreamed I had twin boys and named them Simon and Michael: Simon is definitely on my list, and Michael has been on my middle-name list.

Have you ever had a dream about naming a baby?

Helena writes:

I found your blog when I was looking for help to name my future son. My husband and I can’t seem to agree on anything. We’re losing our enthusiasm during the process because we can’t seem to agree.

The middle name will be Gordon after his grandfather. I’m not all that fond of it, but it does have sentimental value and he’s always said he would like to name his child after his grandfather.

Our last name is Broad….I have jokingly said I’d like to name him “Harry” after my favourite uncle. Quite honestly, I could never do that to my child. I’m a teacher and only too aware of how kids are made fun of.

Having said that, part of my problem is being a teacher and having a lot of negative affliations to many names of crazy kids I’ve taught or cracker jack people I’ve met along the way.

His favourite name is Findlay, which I hate. He want’s something that is two syllables, and is more of a uncommon, older name. He also liked Elliot, Doc, Duff, and his own name.

I like Caleb, Cole, Nate (I hate Nathaniel or Nathan) Owen, Liam, Xavier, Zane, Carson, and a few others. He likes none of these names.

We thought of Simon, but I’m not sold. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. We thought of Jensen because I have finish background, but not sold and starting to love it less.

I’m certain that this kid will just be “child”. I am due in October, so time is slowly ticking away. I don’t want to compromise on the first name if I’ve compromised on the second. When I told my husband this, he said he’d give up Gordon for Findlay. I just don’t want that name and I don’t want people thinking I named my kid off of Finn from Glee.

Ideas….

I’m seriously thinking about having a naming pool because we’re both just stuck…

I HAVE heard of Naming Parties, where the couple invites all their friends and relatives to come over and hash out the name for them. The idea appeals to me so much, I wish you WOULD do it and then report on how it went! It seems especially good for teachers, since then all names with poor associations can be struck immediately from the list.

Well, you do have us, and we are a party of sorts—though admittedly short on cookies and punch, and lacking you to tell us what names are tainted. We’ll see if we can hash something out anyway.

So, we have ______ Gordon Broad. And you hate all his names, and he hates all yours. Perhaps I will make myself a little batch of spiked punch before starting.

Do you like any of the names that sound like Findlay? Phinneas, Finnian, Griffin, Finlay, Finnegan? Well, and all of those still have the Finn problem, though Griffin less than the others.

Elliot always makes me think of Everett and Emmett—do you like either of those?

Doc and Duff are difficult to work with (I’d been thinking of the uncommon name Dutch, but “Dutch Broad”—HA HA HA no), but perhaps Duncan or Declan or Deacon? They’re not great with Gordon.

Davis would be nice: Davis Gordon Broad.

Oh, a name I heard recently on a little boy is Darian. In our area it’s highly unusual (I’d never heard it on a child), and I don’t know why: it’s the perfect combination of names like Darren and names like Aidan/Adrian. I thought of it because his parents had a very hard time agreeing until they found that name.

I wonder if you’d like Ezra? The sounds remind me of Xavier, but it has more of the older-name sound your husband likes. Ezra Gordon Broad.

I love the name Frederick: Frederick Gordon Broad.

Also Isaac (older, yet seems like it goes with Xavier, Caleb, Zane): Isaac Gordon Broad.

Help! This is a hard one!

Lisa writes:

We’re due with our first baby on Oct. 16, though he’s breech, so we have a c-section scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 7. I realize I’m reaching out to you at the last minute, but thought I’d give it a try anyway :)

Our last name is Rodriguez, which is fairly common, so I’m hoping for a more unique name, and of course my husband is more traditional with the options he’s sharing. I think we’ve settled on Jax Diego… Jax is my top choice, Diego is his. Although we wanted to give our son his own name (and not name him after a family member) we like how his name starts with a “J”, the same letter as both my father and my husband’s father, so it’s a bit of an indirect tribute to both of them. If our son doesn’t like his name at all, we feel the initials JD give him a more common option. I struggled with having Diego as a first name (and some of the other options my husband liked, like Marco and Mateo) because of the ethnic angle. neither of us look Hispanic. some of my other favorites were Colt, Cole, Grant.

It sounds like you’ve got your baby’s name! Good luck on Thursday!

Adrienne writes:

My best girlfriend told me about your site :) My husband and I are having a baby boy October 19th. We currently have a 2 year old daughter named Payton Elizabeth. Our last name Carnes sounds like Barns but with a C :)

My husbands name is James Clay Carnes but he goes by Clay
My name is Adrienne Elizabeth Holloway Carnes (Holloway is my maiden name that I kept in there)

We thought about putting Maxwell in his name… that was my grandfathers last name and everyone called him Maxwell. Clay and his father both are named James but it doesnt have to be our sons first name it could be a middle…..

We have thought about the names:
Corbin
Colton
Maxwell- grandfathers name
Cole
Preston
Easton
Wyatt- Grandmothers maiden name
….. I wouldnt mind having my maiden name in there “Holloway” either

Any suggestions you may have would be greatly appreciated

Haha we are kind of lost :)

Becky writes:

We are expecting baby number 3 in October. We have a 4 year old girl name Rishelle Nicole (mostly we call her Shell), and a 3 year boy old named Dylan James. We like that both of there names are not excessively common. We cannot agree on a name for our little boy. Our last name is Cress though Dylan’s last name is not.
My husband likes:
Maximus Areilius
Mac Austin (to be called Mac Mac)
I like:
Carson Ryan (my husband’s middle name is Ryan)
Ian – no middle name yet
Connor

We both really like names that aren’t too common, but I’m not huge on the seemigly “out there” names like Areilius. We both like Ian, but he thinks it is not strong enough.

Names we have absolute no’s on are:
Otto
Camden
Samuel (brother’s name)
Joshua (brother’s name)
Logan
Keegan
Clayton
Joseph
Zachary
I’m sure there are more of those, but am drawing a blank currently. He really wants the initials to be M.A.C but it is not an asolute nessecity.

I hope that you and your readers have some good ideas for me!

 
We recently did less-common boy names starting with M, so I was able to reuse some of that list. Names that give you the initials M.A.C.:

Maclane Austin Cress: I like the way this one gives you Mac as a nickname from the first name as well as from the initials.

Maguire Austin Cress: Maguire is unusual, and yet familiar because of being a surname. But I’m not sure the flow is right with the surname: Maguire Cress.

Malachi Austin Cress

Malcolm Austin Cress

Marius Austin Cress: Depends how you feel about having both first name and surname end in S—but it seems like a milder way to get the feel of a name like Maximus Areilius.

Marshall Austin Cress: Ending might be too similar to Rishelle.

Mason Austin Cress

Matthias Austin Cress: Again, both first name and surname end in S.

McAdam Austin Cress: Not sure flow is good, either with all three names or with first/last.

Macallister Austin Cress

Micah Austin Cress

Miles Austin Cress: First name and surname both end in S.

Milo Austin Cress

Mitchell Austin Cress

Morrison Austin Cress: A Dylan and a Morrison might be more musical namesakes than you’d want.

I think if your husband is very keen on Mac, my favorite for you is Maclane Austin Cress. My own favorites are Malcolm and Milo.

Tara writes:

We are looking to name child #2, sex unknown, due September 30th. We have one daughter named Madeline Claire. For girl names we tend to like more of the timeless/elegant/classic names. If it’s a girl I really want our first and second daughters names to go together. For boys we tend to go more for an all boy kind of name. I am not as concerned with the styles of boy and girl matching each other, but I do want the names to sound good together. As for popularity; I don’t really want a top 10 where the child will have 3 others having the same name in their classroom. We live in a smaller town where trends arrive later so a name that is projected to rise is not as big of a concern for me.
For girls:
–Kate: I love this name and wanted to use it for our first daughter. My husband thinks that it’s too bland to stand up next to Madeline
–Ella: My husband loves this name; it would be his first pick. I like the name, but I fear that it’s too popular.
–Gabby: We both like this name. We would probably name her a longer version and then call her the nickname. The concern: we don’t call Madeline “Maddy” as a nickname but I do hear it from some friends and family so I worry about having a Maddy and a Gabby.
–Lucy: We both like but also worry about it sounding good with Madeline and getting too popular.
–Grace: Same worries as with Lucy. (Have considered using as a middle name)
–Arden: I really like this name, but not sure if it really goes with the style of the other names on our list. I want the name to definitely be a girl name and think this may be one of the in between names that could be used for both sexes

For boys:
We don’t really have top names for a boy. If our first child had been a boy the top contenders where: Miles, Griffin, Cole, Heath, and Cooper. But none of those names would work now for various reasons. Other names on the list are:
Reid, Jack, Grant, Blake, Brent, Mack, Will
I also love the idea of using a surname but haven’t found one that is not being used by friends/family that I like.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

We are having a bit of a problem, and it is this: we can’t keep up with the number of naming questions we’re getting. It would be nice to be considering names two or three months before the due date, I think, or even earlier, but right now we’re considering names about two weeks before the due dates—and that’s with doing them at a rate of a question every two days on average.

For awhile what I’ve been doing is periodically posting one without an answer from me, and periodically skipping one entirely—but even that isn’t enough now. There is going to need to be either (1) more of the former, or (2) more of the latter, or (3) more of both.

Do you have an opinion? Would you like to see all the questions? Or will you wear out on name-helping if there’s a post every day or twice a day, and it would be better to do more skipping so we can spend more time/effort on the ones we do take?

One option is that we could start skipping the ones that don’t include a surname (or at least a surname stand-in), since it’s so hard anyway to make suggestions if we can’t sound them out with a surname. Another option is we could start helping with EITHER a boy name OR a girl name: it would be fine if the parents didn’t know the sex of the baby, but in that case they’d ask us for help only with the name category they were having more trouble with.

What do you think? What would be your favorite way to do things? And do you have any other suggestions for figuring out which ones to skip?

Amy writes:

I hope you can help us with all of this bizarre criteria. We’re expecting twin boys mid-October. Our last name is Hunt. We have a 3-year-old named Lillian (we call her Lilly).

My main objective is to find names that are uncommon but familiar. Nothing “made up” sounding. I also like names that are undeniably BOY. I don’t like matchy-matchy twin names but I want them to be similar styles. I’m running into trouble finding names that aren’t TOO out there, and I don’t know what’s best to do with twins: have one more mainstream name and one more unusual, or both unusual, or what? For example, we like Wyatt, and Arlo, and Marshall, but Wyatt and Marshall don’t really go together in my opinion (also, wasn’t Wyatt Earp a Marshall?) and neither do Wyatt and Arlo (using both makes it seem like we’re intentionally naming after famous people). I like Davis a lot but don’t know if Davis goes with the others (Davis and Wyatt are totally different styles). Anyway, here’s the current list of possibilities:

Wyatt (my husband loves it, I’m on the fence)
Marshall (I love it, my husband’s on the fence)
Arlo (so cute but is it too unusual?)
Carson (we’re both on the fence)
Wilson (mainly I just like the nickname Will)

Names that have been crossed off the list:
Griffin (I love it, husband doesn’t)
Bennett (I like Ben as a nickname, husband is iffy)

Please also remember that our last name precludes (in our opinion!) any names ending in a -ck sound (go ahead, say Mike Hunt out loud a few times!) and also any open vowel sounds (I love Luca and Noah, but not with Hunt).

We’re totally open to names not on the list, obviously.

Thank you so much!

I like the name Arlo a lot (Arlo’s Theme Song is what brought to my attention what a great name it is), and in fact it’s on my now-almost-certainly-unnecessary list of “if I have another baby boy,” along with Simon and Oliver and Frederick. I think Arlo is good with Marshall: both are gentle-ending names, and the shared “ar” sound ties them together without making them at all matchy.

I wouldn’t have thought of this name except I saw it in The Baby Name Wizard as a sibling name for Arlo: Haskell. It’s similar to Marshall, and maybe your husband will like it better.

Another name The Baby Name Wizard suggests with Arlo is Ezra. Both have gentle endings; both are old-timey in a currently-appealing way; and they both have four letters, which gives them just a TIDGE of the kind of twinniness I’m fond of.

A suggestion from me this time: Harvey. I came to really like that name after seeing it for the super-cute, super-nice boyfriend on Sabrina the Teenage Witch (YES, I watched it as an adult, BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME). Arlo and Harvey have gentle endings and the shared “ar” sound. I don’t know if you’ll like the alliteration of Harvey Hunt; I usually steer away from it, but in this case I kind of like it.

Another suggestion: Miller. That’s another highly-unusual name from my own list (I hadn’t noticed it until Stella McCartney used it for her son), and I think it goes well with the also-highly-unusual Arlo. Arlo and Miller.

Davis is more common than Arlo, but I think they go well together: Arlo and Davis.

If you instead go the Wyatt route, I like Wilson with it. On a recent post about twin names, several people expressed a dislike of matching initials for twins; I like it for fraternal twins, less for identical twins.

Or you could use one of Wyatt Earp’s actual brother names, except Virgil is probably unusable, and Morgan is used steadily more for girls and steadily less for boys, and Warren is perhaps too different in style (though Warren would be another good possibility with Arlo). James would be good, though. Wyatt also had a half-brother named Newton.

I think my two favorite combinations are Arlo & Miller and Arlo & Ezra, but I also like Wyatt & Wilson and Wyatt & James.

Diana writes:

My husband and I are due with our first baby October 15. We are not finding out the sex and have been having a lot of fun with picking out both boy and girl names. We are pretty much decided on the girl name, Jubilee Lynn Skinner. However, the boy name have proven to be quite difficult. Here are some contenders:

Orrin
North
Radnor
Goodwin
Tennessee

As you can see we really like different names. We do not want a first name that is in the top 100, or even top 1000 really. The above list are names that my husband I mostly agree on, however prior to this list I was leaning more towards cowboy/Americana names such as Waylon, Boone, Stetson, etc. I love the idea of a little boy with a rugged name that he will grow into as a man. But my hubby thinks going in this direction is too limiting, which I can kind of agree.

So I am happy with our current compilation, but none really grab me over the others. Except for maybe Tennessee. I really like Tennessee, but I don’t like the idea of having a Tennessee and a Jubilee. I know this may or may not ever come up, but we are planning on having more children. I think the names rhyme too much, but my husband thinks I’m crazy. He has no problem with naming a brother and sister Tennessee and Jubilee. Your thoughts?

Another concern is that we do not want a first name that ends in “er” considering our last name is Skinner. Is Radnor pushing that with a similar sounding ending to “er”?

As for the middle, we would like to use my father’s name, Thomas. An exception to this middle name is Tennessee, I’m not keen on Tennessee Thomas so we would probably go with another middle name if that we our first name choice. But generally, we are thinking ________ Thomas Skinner.

We would love your thoughts and are open to hearing new name suggestions. Please help!

Thank you!

I’m on your side and would say that Jubilee and Tennessee were too rhymey. I think it’s not even the SOUND so much as the way they both end with double-E. Since you’re planning on more children, and since Jubilee is your #1 girl name, let’s take Tennessee off the list for now. If you were to have several boys, and then got to your last child and had another boy, perhaps it will be the perfect name for him.

I suggest the name Washington. It’s a state name like Tennessee; it’s not in the Top 1000; and it’s good with your middle name choice and surname: Washington Thomas Skinner. I think it also has a rugged sound, without being too specific as to the type of ruggedness. It has excellent namesakes (George Washington and George Washington Carver), obvious country-related tie-ins (the capitol and a state and the first president), and is all all-around good name. (Those of us who liked Firefly have the additional positive association with the character Wash, though his name wasn’t Washington.)

Another unusual, not-in-the-Top-1000 possibility is Everest. Everest Thomas Skinner.

To me, Radnor’s ending does sound like the -er you’re trying to avoid with Skinner. Would you like Ransom instead? Ransom Thomas Skinner. Dr. Ransom is the good guy in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.

Another surname possibility is Redford: Redford Thomas Skinner.

More unusual possibilities for the Skinners?

Julie writes:

My friend turned me on to your website and I am happy to see I can get an educated, thorough, outside opinion on our third child’s name. My husband and I are having a tough time and Baby Boy Number Two is due October 6th.

Our last name is pronounced “Yank-An-Itch” believe it our not. Our children’s names are Erin and Steven Jr. Our third is a boy and while we both agree we would like a name ending in N, we can’t agree on the exact name. I like names like Justin (my number one), Kevin, Mark, and Thomas. My husband has suggested Declan, Kevin (with hesitance), Sullivan, and a million other unusual names.

Can you help? We are open to anything…even names not ending in N or names that are not “Gaelic” like our other two.
Thank you!

I like Brendan: Erin, Steven, and Brendan. They’re all different enough to be distinctive and all of the kids get their own initial, but they go together and have the matching N-endings.

I also like Alan/Allen: it was one of seven finalists for my youngest (it grew on me because on the TV show Arthur, “The Brain”‘s real name is Alan). But I think two brothers named Steven and Allen might bring Steve Allen too readily to mind.

It’s too bad both Aaron and Darren are out: in style, they’d go very well. Eric, too, if it weren’t also almost the same as Erin. And Gavin may sound too much like Steven because of the matching endings, and Evan is way too close to both names. And names like Corbin and Keegan and Lawson and Ruben, while some of my favorite N-ending boy names, don’t seem close enough in style to Erin and Steven.

Owen, maybe? It’s a little wordlike with your surname (oh and yank an itch) but I may be overthinking it.

Nathan! Erin, Steven, and Nathan!

Or Benjamin: Erin, Steven, and Benjamin.

For non-N possibilities, maybe Joshua? Erin, Steven, and Joshua. Or Matthew: Erin, Steven, and Matthew. Or David: Erin, Steven, and David. Are there any good family names, so that each boy is a namesake?