Friday, May 7, 2010

Show Us Your Life: Baby Names

I love Kelly's Korner Show Us Your Life posts, and I really love baby names. Today, they collide in one awesome Show Us Your Life post . I haven't been able to participate in her last few, since they have to do with actually being a mom, or about personal missionaries (Kelly's a devout Christian, I - if you haven't figured it out - am pretty much not. A topic for another day). But I do love me some baby names. Actually, I don't completely love referring to them as baby names. Though you name a baby, they have to live with it for the rest of their lives. You really name an adult - a future teacher, doctor, lawyer, plumber, tax analyst, bus driver, or President of the United States.

I'm pretty lucky - Dan and I have pretty similar tastes in names for our future kids. For the most part - he has vetoed a few of my favorites, but there are still plenty we agree on. Some we love but wouldn't ever actually use (for a first name). Like Calvin. Dan loves Calvin and I like it well enough, but it reminds me of the stinky kid in class from high school. Not sure I could get over that and not sure I like it enough to have to say it 3,487,943,875 times a day. It also turns out that a lot of our name picks have become very popular, like Aiden, Mason, and Owen. Since Dan is a Daniel who's been one of many all his life, we want names that are more like Brooke - uncommon but not so weird that people say "what?!" So Aiden, Mason, Owen, and a whole host of others are out.

So what names do we like? For girls, I've loved the name Ainsley for a long time. It's Irish and means meadow or field. Since my name is a "nature name" I like the coordination with Ainsley. We also like Allison. Unfortunately, I dislike the nickname Allie, so that may pose a problem. Other possibilities for first or middle names are Morgan, Meredith, and Anna. Dan is pretty much okay with all these choices, even though they're my picks. He likes Hilary. Meh.

Boys are a little harder. I like names like Ian, Jonah, Jacob, Noah, Liam, Nathan, Joel, Ethan, and Seth (oddly, a bunch of Biblical names). These have all been shot down with a glare. Dan's top faves are Calvin and Doctor. Yes, he thinks Doctor is a great name for a kid. I agreed to compromise with giving a kid the initials M.D., but Mason was the only name we liked for the M, and that's out. Names we do agree on are Jamison, Gavin, Simon and Graham.

If we had to pick tomorrow, I have no idea which direction we'd go. Thankfully, we have a lot of time, and are nowhere near having to choose a name. But they are fun to think about, and we've had fun debating names for future children. We've talked about them since before we were married. That might be weird, but hey, whatever.

What names do you like for your future children?

3 comments:

Meghan said...

I have this conversation all of the time! For boys, I love Nolan, Liam and Graham. For girls, I love Harper, Maeve and Sophie.

donatelli98 said...

My good friends have an Ainsley - great name! Jameson lives across the street from us - another cool name. I love Graham .. actually I like most of your choices. Calvin reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes.

Anonymous said...

When we got Sadie we called her puppy for two weeks before we could agree on a name. I was fearful of having to name children. Luckily, on kids names, we sort of agree. We like Katie and Hunter for a girl and we both agree on Jack for a boy. The problem is that J also likes John for a boy and I tried to explain that Jack is a nickname for John and so it's essentially the same and he disagrees. I wouldn't put it past him to want to name our son Jack John or some such assiness as that.

I love your boys names...especially Simon.