What’s in a name?

Our baby’s gender was a surprise the first time around. In the months leading up to the due date Mr. C and I were making lists of baby names that we liked. Settling on a name for a baby girl was easy. In fact, I had a name picked out for a baby girl from the time I had to take care of a flour bag baby in high school parenting class. Lucky for me, Mr. C. loved the name and it ended up on our list. When Ms. J was born we had multiple names on our yes list but as soon as we saw her face we knew she was our little Ms. J; no other name fit.

It was a baby boy name that we couldn’t agree on. For months before Mr. T was born we went back and forth.

“Omar,” he suggested. “Nope,” I replied.

“Caleb,” I replied and he shook his head before I even finished.

We just couldn’t agree. I laid in bed and made mental lists of all the boy names that I could think of, but every time something sounded right in my mind it didn’t sound right to Mr. C and vice versa.

We were stuck.

Settling on a name for your baby can often be one of the most difficult decisions you make in the months leading up to the big day.

At times you are taking family traditions into consideration, often the traditions of two families. In our case we played around with both our family baby naming traditions but decided they weren’t going to work for us.

Often language and culture come into play, especially in situations where each parent comes from a different cultural background, as was the case in our situation. Our baby name had to be easy to pronounce in both English and Spanish and we wanted to find a way to incorporate both our cultures somehow.

Do you want to pay tribute to someone special? That was the one thing we were sure of. We really wanted to pay tribute to Mr. C’s grandfather as well as my grandmother who passed away just a couple of years before Mr. T’s birth.

As the months wore on, the list of names that were a definite no grew longer and longer but we still hadn’t settled on any names for the yes or even the maybe list. I began to wonder if we would have to wait until he was born to settle on a name.

Then, just like that it happened. We sat one night watching a sporting event and the announcer introduced one of the athletes. As I heard the name being shouted in slow motion I felt it in my heart; this was the name. The name we had been searching for. I turned to Mr. C and said, “What about Mr. T?” He turned to me and the smile on his face showed that he agreed “I think we just found our boy name”.

We didn’t need a list with Mr. T, it may have taken months but once we had settled on a name it felt so unbelievably right that we didn’t need a back up.

Choosing a baby name can be stressful, this decision will be carried throughout your child’s life. Though there may be some struggling, disagreeing and uncertainty most of the time the perfect name appears at just the right moment and when it does, your heart will know.

How did you decide on your child’s name?