what's in a name?

Lately baby names have been on my mind a lot.

We had some ideas for girls names from last summer when we were naming our dog, actually...there were a couple names we saw that we thought "no, we'd use those for a child, not for a dog". So that was our starting point for girls' names.

Boys names were a bit harder to come by at first, Anthony came up with one that is still high on our list, i found a nice meaningful middle name to go with it, and we both like it. We've 'lived' with it for about 3 or 4 months now, and it has not changed, nor has our love of the name. We also have another boys' name, found through reading the baby name book together while travelling to Moosomin in February, and a good middle name to go with that name too.

However, since the beginning, our like of the original girls names has waxed and waned, we weren't completely sold on any of them. We had two first-middle name combos that worked, but i wasn't in love with either, so the hunt was not yet over. We also had another first name that we were toying with, but no middle name to go with it and no direction for that hunt. So we dug out the baby name book again, and started going through that, a couple ideas came to us but nothing that we loved...just "that could work" type girls' names.

Until today. A first name had been floating in my mind for a bit, i shared it with Anthony last week and he liked it, but again, we had no middle name for it. Until this morning, when a really nice middle name popped into my head, and it goes very nicely with the first name. This is the first time it’s felt like “aha, here’s a girl's name we could live with forever” – I even called tony and he likes it too. So we’ll sit on it a while and try it out in our minds and see how it ‘fits’…but at this point, I think we have both a boys' and girls' name "picked".

(it's been nice to have the boy's name to throw around our head for the past while to get used to and imagine yelling out the back door, etc., so now we'll do the same with this girl's name.)

Now given that we know so many people having babies in the next while, we are aware of the fact that others may choose the same or a similar name. This is why we have decided to not mention our name ideas to anyone, and also why we have other names on the back burner. Plus, I fully believe you have to meet the kid before fully settling on the name, it may or may not suit him/her when s/he arrives.

But here's a summary of my preferences in names...(anthony's pretty much the same).

I dislike common names. I dislike strange names. I DISLIKE trendy names.

I want something that you see and recognize as a name, but that the kid will perhaps not have others in his/her class with the same name.

I want names that you can see and know how to pronounce, that you can hear and pretty much know how to spell.

I like names with good meanings, I like when they have connections to our heritage (swedish/ukranian, german/russian/mennonite/english).

I am not opposed to choosing a name in honour of someone we know, if it's the right name and the right person (though none of our current picks do this...)

And of course, i spend time thinking about the 'flow' of the name, with and without the middle name thrown in there, the initials and what they may spell or suggest, possible nicknames and teasing names that could be derived from the name, etc.

(by the way, does anyone know the location of those websites where you type in a name and it spits out all the possible negative nicknames and derivations that kids may come up with from that name?)

Now we just have to settle on the spelling of the names, i am not a fan of changing spelling just to make it 'unique', but both the boy's and girl's names have a couple different ways they can be spelled in normal usage...