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New Mummy Blog: Picking Out That All-Important Baby Name

Our mum blogger talks the baby name game.

I always thought choosing baby names would be so much fun.

Ever since I was young, I’ve been adding to a vague mental list of names that I’d like to call my future children. So it should be easy.

It turns out it’s not. In fact, not only is it not easy, it’s been one of the most difficult and stressful parts of expecting both babies.

Choosing a baby name isn't easy [Rex]
Choosing a baby name isn't easy [Rex]



As I settled down to the task at some point very early on in my first pregnancy, the enormity hit me: this was the name that our child would have to live with – forever.

They might hate it. It might even shape them in some way – would naming a child Walter predetermine his future as a chemistry teacher with a highly illegal sideline? Getting this right was a big responsibility.

But even beyond these bigger picture concerns, we had more complications to add to the process.

Choosing An Unusual, But Traditional, Baby Name
As a child of the 1980s, I was one of several Claires in my school year. I hated having to be identified with the add-on of my surname initial and being one of many. I longed for a more unusual name, and therefore wanted something a little different for my own children.

Different, yes, but whacky, pretentious or impossible to spell, no. I wanted to find names that were unusual but traditional – not made up or attached to a negative social stereotype; names you would have heard of but wouldn’t necessarily know anyone known by them.

Kim and Kanye gave their daughter a very unusual name - North West [Getty]
Kim and Kanye gave their daughter a very unusual name - North West [Getty]

Names that are cute for a kid, but impressive for the boardroom. Names that didn’t appear on the top 10, 20 or even 50 most popular names lists. Not too much to ask, right?

On my husband, Adam’s, part, he said “Why don’t we call them Adam?”, which is his suggestion to any expectant parents, regardless of the gender of their unborn child.

I scoured baby name books, forums, websites and clever apps that make suggestions of other names based on ones you quite like. It looked like we were never going to find our perfect name.

And then, out of the blue, it appeared. Adam and I can’t agree on who actually came up with it, but that doesn’t matter. We had, at long last, and not long before due date, settled on a name: Honor Wren.

Claire and Adam named their daughter Honor [Copyright: Yahoo]
Claire and Adam named their daughter Honor [Copyright: Yahoo]



We were just lucky that she turned out to be a girl, as we had got absolutely nowhere with boys names.
Of course not everyone will love it, or even like it. Names will always divide opinion.

My dad described it as “certainly interesting”, which isn’t exactly glowing, and then there was the comment on a previous blog post that with a name like Honor, I was clearly hoping my daughter would grow up to be a stripper.

Or there are the people who assume we’re huge Bond fans as Honor Blackman is the only Honor they’re heard of (I’ve yet to watch more than two Bond films all the way through, so we definitely don’t fit this criteria).

And lastly the people who don’t know if Honor is a girls’ name or a boys’. But we love it and think it suits her perfectly. We just hope she always will, too.


Baby Name Take Two
And now we find ourselves in the same predicament: due date rapidly approaching and no decision on names.

A worse predicament, in fact, because we’ve used the one girls’ name we loved and can’t come up with anything to match it. We wonder if we should have saved the middle name to use as another first name, if we have another girl.

But we might have a boy, and then would never have used it, and it’s not as if we had a long list of alternatives. Or even a short list.

Every now and then we think we’ve come across a great name, but after sleeping on it for a night we wake up wondering what on earth we were thinking.

Maybe we’ll ‘just know’ when the baby is born, but I doubt it – I’m too methodical for that. Maybe the poor baby will remain nameless for days or weeks while we flounder for a name. Or maybe we’ll have a flash of inspiration just in the nick of time again.

Here’s hoping for the third option. I’m not sure how many more baby name books or blogs I can read.

[The Highest-Climbing Baby Names Of 2014 Revealed]

[Celebrity Baby Names: The Most Unique Choices Of 2014]

How did you pick your baby's name? Let us know in the comments.