Allyson writes:<\/p>\n
How do you know if you LOVE a name versus thinking you love a name? Sort of like when you’re 13 you LOVE your boyfriend but your parents know it’s puppy love and in another couple of years you won’t even remember his name? My husband and I are trying for #2 soon. We thought we had a boy name picked out – Colton – but I’m over it. It’s just very blah to me now. We have another boy name picked out (Tucker), but I don’t know if I love it….or if I love it right now and in 10 years will wish I had chosen something else. Or first son is Barrett, a name I stumbled on before I was even pregnant. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.<\/p>\n
Oh, and if you have any names in the Barrett – Colton – Tucker genre I’d love to hear those as well. Or last name is Clark so it wipes out some of my favorites (like Blake and Cole).<\/p>\n
Thanks!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
“How do you know if you love a name?” is a question I’d answer in this case with another question: How did you know with your first son’s name? For some people, they know they love a name when they feel like they can’t let it go; for other people, the name feels like it clicks into place; for still others, they know when no other name seems better. And some people never DO know: they run out of time and have to choose one of several good options.<\/p>\n
It’s true that some parents later regret a choice—but in most cases, putting the name on the birth certificate seems to freeze it into place. We’d chosen a girl name for our first two pregnancies (both boys), and when we actually had a girl we no longer wanted to use the name—but if we’d had a girl earlier and HAD used the name, I don’t think we would have become similarly bored with it. Once you use the name, it gets linked firmly to the child: the name is no longer “a name,” it’s “this beloved person.” If there are any regrets about the name, they tend to be minor and have more to do with things other than the name itself: for example, a family may regret that a name got so popular or wish they’d loved something less popular, but that doesn’t mean they would actually like to choose a different name for the child.<\/p>\n
It’s nice that there’s typically a period of time (during pregnancy, or while waiting for a child to be adoptable) for trying out names before the final decision needs to be made. I found I had several names that rose to the top during the choosing process and then fell right back down—puppy-love names. Or I had names that I would have thought pre-pregnancy would be contenders, but as soon as an actual baby was on the way, the names didn’t feel right anymore. Other names endured—which is not to say I never had doubts (in the hospital I was still fretting about my daughter’s name, and I wish we’d known a name we used for one of our sons was Top 10 in our state even though it was in the 30s nationally), but rather that the name lasted long enough for me to be fairly sure it was at least on the list of names that would be good choices for the baby.<\/p>\n
Two of my favorite surname names are Wilson and Miller. Similar to Tucker (but with fewer potential word-confusion issues) is Turner. Similar to Colton are Colter and Coleman and Colby and Lincoln and Nicholson and Keegan and Collins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Allyson writes: How do you know if you LOVE a name versus thinking you love a name? Sort of like when you’re 13 you LOVE your boyfriend but your parents know it’s puppy love and in another couple of years you won’t even remember his name? My husband and I are trying for #2 soon. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3iyiG-23V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7934,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7931\/revisions\/7934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swistle.com\/babynames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}