Everyone has a story as to how they came to their child’s name. We asked our community how they chose the name for their baby and what we got back was far more than just advice for how to pick a baby name, we heard detailed origin stories that captured our imagination. Here’s some of our favorite baby name tales as told by the moms and dad of our Facebook community.
Amanda Harmon: Don’t settle for a name you don’t absolutely love, even if the baby is born and you still don’t have one picked. I did and had severe ‘name regret’. I couldn’t even call my daughter by her first name for the first 6 months and when I finally did it just didn’t fit her.
Ashes Kelly: I chose my daughters name just by what felt right. Her first name randomly came to me, and it just felt like it was perfect. Then I had a dream where I called her “Lylah Serenity”. I woke up and told her father, “I know our daughters name.”
Melba Simmons Grayson: My first was Charlie from the time we found I was pregnant. It’s a family name as is Wesley so he is Charles Wesley. My second son wasn’t named until I was ready to leave the hospital because I had expected a girl, and I know some mothers will understand, he just didn’t look like the name I had previously picked out. So I named him Bradley after a character in a book I was reading and gave him my daddy’s middle name, Maurice (pronouned Morris). Everyone calls him Brad, never Bradley, but I thought he might want a “real” name when he grew up. He didn’t need it, still Brad.
Angelo Benito: My girlfriend’s name is Chessa. When she got pregnant I called our unborn child CJ which stands for Chessa junior. It was a joke but kind of stuck among friends and family so we went with it. Ended up calling him Cael James for no reason 3 days after he was born.
Mary Cordry: My only comment is to think long and hard about the name, it’s spelling, and a person’s lifespan…. My daughter’s birth parents named her a very common name, spelled uncommonly, which made people either always spell it wrong, or pronounce it wrong since it didn’t look like how it was said…. And while you may hate nicknames, you may want to give your child a “full” name–it turned out my child hated having a nickname as a given name, and asked/introduced herself as the expected full name long before it was her legal name.
Matthew Spears: My wife and I agreed that if we had a boy I’d get to pick his name and if we had a girl she got to pick her name but we had to approve of each other’s choice. We had a boy and I’ve always loved the name Lucas so that’s that. And then he has my dad’s name for his middle name.
Teresa Councell: I heard the name “Jaden” in my freshman year of college and fell in love with the name. I am very fond of my grandparents and have been really family oriented my whole life, so I based my baby names on Jaden and names in the family; I believe that the name influences not only the personality of the person but, also, the people who come in contact with the name; therefore I looked up the meanings of each name I was considering.
Chelsea Woodbury: It took me a long time to finally decide on a name. After lots of deliberation we had finally settled on Bailey. Bailey comes from my grandma Betty as it was her maiden name. Her middle name is Elizabeth and that was my great grandmothers middle name who I had been very very close to when she passed away. When choosing I looked a lot at heritage their names should be important and reflect where they come from.
Bella Fenton: I think every child’s name should have a story. When they ask, and they will, you shouldn’t say, “Oh, we were flipping through a baby names book and this one sounded okay.”
Do you have a story behind your baby’s name? Share it with us on our Facebook page!
*Flickr photo by Karen Sheets de Gracia, used under Creative Commons license.