Daydreaming About Baby Names...

Do you ever get on Nameberry.com? I do, a lot. Even when I'm not pregnant, I like to get on and read their blog. I think baby naming philosophies and trends are really interesting, whether I agree with them or not. And I feel like it is good to be informed about what baby-names are doing these days, so that you can make an educated decision about whether to be "trendy" or not.

For example, when we were pregnant with Lincoln, we were going to name him Boston. Then he was born and didn't look at all like a Boston to us, and we couldn't bring ourselves to call him that. So, we sat down to think of names, neither of us having any idea what was going on in the baby-naming world at the time. We picked Lincoln, which is a name we love. Named after President Lincoln, who we felt was an excellent role model. Lincoln also means, "the gatherer" which we thought has some cool missionary possibilities. And lastly, neither of us had ever met, or heard of, anyone else named Lincoln.

A few weeks later we moved from Phoenix to Utah, and discovered that there were THREE other Lincoln's in the ward we moved into, and one Link. Wow! We had no idea we'd picked such a popular name. We still love the name Lincoln, and I'm still glad we chose it, as it fits our son VERY well. But I am glad that there are no other Lincolns in our current neighborhood, although we do hear the name a lot when we're out and about, like on the soccer field or at the playground.

A few months ago, I was reading on Nameberry, and found an interesting statistic. The post I was reading was all about how even though a name is ranked at a certain number on the US list, it could be more, or less, popular in some regions of the country. And the example the gave was Lincoln! In 2013 Lincoln was ranked at #95 on the US list, but #9 in the state of UT. Well that explains it! Haha!

I've always tried to pick names for our kids that are not in the top US 100. The name Ivan was ranked #137 in 2013. Adelia is not even ranked in the top US 1000, which gives me great pleasure. :) Oliver was a little different, we knew it was popular, both Aaron and I each have a friend with sons named Oliver, but we loved it because it means peaceful, and the nickname Ollie is adorable, and it fit so well with the names of our other kids. So, this time we made the educated choice to go with a popular name anyway. Oliver was ranked #52 in the US in 2013. But it's the #2 baby boy's name in England and Wales right now, so I'm betting that the popularity goes up even more. But I'm ok with it because we love it.

We love all of our kids' names. We put a lot of time and thought into every name. Each name means something to us, or is a name (or variation of a name) of a family member who did. We put a lot of consideration into how the first and middle name will flow with our last name. And we also consider if the names sounds good with the other siblings the baby already has in the family, without being to matchy-matchy or tacky sounding. (For example when we were thinking of names for Oliver, we didn't want another two-syllable boys name ending in N, because we thought that would be too much.)


So what to name Baby #5, Girl #2? We have a few ideas, but have not settled on anything official yet. But I'll go through the list...

Ruby: If Oliver would have been a girl, he would have been named Ruby Charlotte. I like the name Ruby because it is a gem name, like Krystal, but with more spunk, sass, and fire. So it would be like naming her after me, sort of. I also am REALLY partial to the nickname Rue. I love it. Love, love, love, LOVE it. Cons of Ruby: #1 We know two people who have named their baby Ruby in the last year, and one of them lives in our neighborhood. So I'm afraid it's getting to be popular. In 2013 Ruby was ranked #93 in the US, and #7 in England and Wales. #2 Aaron doesn't like Ruby as much as I do, but if I pushed it, he could probably be persuaded.

Mavis: I like Mavis because it is different and old. It was in it's popularity in the US about the same time as Adelia was. So both their names would have that in common. It means "songbird", and I could easily see it on a happy little girl with bouncing pig-tails, as well as an adult woman. The nickname Mav is appealing. And Mavis is not ranked in the US top 1000. Cons of Mavis: It ends in S, which, heretofore, has been a big no-no for us, since our last name starts with S. But Swan may not be her last name for the rest of her life, so I might be persuaded to overlook the S ending, just this once.

Sadie: Originally, way back when, Sadie was a nickname for Sarah. My favorite literary character of all time is Sarah Elliot from These is My Words. I have always wanted to name a child after a favorite literary character because reading is so much a part of me. And Sarah Elliot is the perfect female character in my opinion, because she's honest and good, but has a backbone and a sense of humor. But the actual name Sarah just doesn't quite do it for me. It's not a bad name, but it's a little on the boring/Biblical side. Sadie, on the other hand is full of spirit, and spunk. When I was telling my mom that Sadie was one of our name options, she told me that when they were trying to come up with names for me, their top three picks were Katherine, Krystal, and Sadie. So that would be kind of a cool connection. Cons of Sadie: #1 It's getting popular fast. In 2013 it jumped up the list from #124 all the way to #50, so it worries me that if we name her that, all the sudden she'll be one of a million other Sadies running around. #2 There really aren't any nickname options, which isn't really a big deal, but if we end up using Sadie and it ends up being popular, we might want a nickname to call her. #3 Sadie means princess (as does Sarah), and I don't know if I can stomach that.

Rosalie: This is not a name I would have looked twice at on my own, but it caught Aaron's eye, slowly wormed it's way into my affections, and now I love it. It's pretty. It looks pretty on paper, and sounds pretty when you say it. It's three syllables without being pretentious. We would use the nickname Ross, which is my dad's middle name, so that would give the name a family connection. A three syllable feminine name with a boyish nickname is exactly what Adelia has, so there would be that sisterly connection, without their names being matchy-matchy. It's not popular, but not unfamiliar. It's ranked #348 in the US. Cons of Rosalie: #1 People might try to call her Rose or Rosie for short, yuck! #2 We can't decide which way we like to pronounce the 'O', sometimes we say long o, 'rose-uh-lee' and sometimes we say short o, 'raw-zuh-lee'. Both Aaron and I are back and forth on which pronunciation we like better.

Eleanor: Ah, Eleanor. I have loved this name for a very, very long time. When I was a kid, my Dad read us Lord of the Rings; in that book there is a small, yellow, star-shaped flower that grows in the elvish woodlands that is called Elanor, and Samwise Gamgee ends up naming his daughter after it. After we read that, whenever I would play house with my friends my pretend name was always Eleanor (I like the 'ea' spelling better). And it's been a favorite name of mine ever since. It reminds me of my childhood, and has a small connection to my dad, which makes it a family name... in a round about way. In LOTR Elanor means 'sun-star', in real life Eleanor is a form of Helen and means 'bright, shining one'. Which are both name meanings I could totally go in for. It comes with the nickname options of Ella/Ellie/Nellie/Nora, all of which I like, but we probably wouldn't use. We have several Ella's in our ward, and a Nora across the street. Nellie I love too, but it's a little bit too close to Adelia's nickname Del, and that might get confusing.  Cons of Eleanor: Although Eleanor is only ranked #106 in the US, I think it might be a UT popular name. Last year in Lincoln's first grade class at the charter school there were 10 kids, and three of them were named Eleanor.

There are more names on our list, but I would say at the moment these are the top 5. The others are mostly just names that I like, but probably wouldn't use for one reason or another. Or they are names I like, but not as much as these five here, so we'd probably pick from these five first. But who knows! Maybe some time between now and Thanksgiving we'll come up with something new and wonderful we hadn't thought of before. It's definitely possible. :)