Why You Might Need a Baby Name Backup Plan (or Four)
If you're overthinking baby names, obsessing over popularity, changing plans at the last minute... be reassured that some things haven't changed in 40 years! Guest author Mary McKay recalls the challenges and surprises of naming her children in the 1980s.
Choosing a name for your coming child is exciting and fun, right? Not always! There can be more challenges to naming your baby than you can possibly anticipate. You can obsess and overthink it and still end up with something you didn’t plan for. We did that. Four times.
Baby Number One: Neighborly Name Theft
In 1981, with our first baby on the way, we settled on the name Caroline for a girl. If it was a boy, we thought of Duncan or Andrew. Duncan was a strong name that would go well with our mostly Scottish last name, but we worried the kid might get teased. “Dunkin' Donuts!” So we settled on Andrew.
Three weeks before our son was born, a close friend and neighbor had a boy and named him guess what? Andrew.
These two babies would be playmates so we felt we had to choose another. We went with Plan B, Patrick, and to make family members happy we gave him two middle names to honor both his grandfathers. (The royals always had multiple names, why couldn’t we?) He was over ten pounds at birth, so we figured such a big name fit. Curiously, he tells us that all his life he has often been mistakenly called Andrew!
Baby Number Two: a Big Name for a Big Boy
Three years later, with another baby on the way, we still had Caroline in mind for a girl, and this time we settled on Justin for a boy. Did we get a Caroline or Justin? Nope.
When our second boy arrived – over eleven pounds and almost born in the car – we took one look at this big guy and Justin didn’t fit. Again we settled on Plan B. In addition, my husband felt strongly that this boy should never feel slighted; he had to get two middle names like his big brother. That is how Brendan, a huge baby, was tagged with a huge name as well.
Baby Number Three: to Conor or not to Conor?
When we were expecting our third baby, a sonogram told us that it was a boy. We bought baby name books, including several with Irish names that were so Gaelic as to be unpronounceable and certainly unspellable!
We spent hours trying to come up with a name to match the great names of his brothers, with two middle names. Recently, I found a note on which we wrote at least ten possible combinations of names.
We liked Conor, like the hero of Trinity, Leon Uris’ bestselling book set in Ireland. Such a famous book, yet surprisingly, the name hadn’t become a trend. Was it too weird, too odd, too much connected to a popular story character, like Rhett or Atticus?
We chose a Plan B: Kyle. But then when this baby decided to arrive on Saint Patrick’s Day we fully committed to our Scottish-Irish heritage, took the risk, and went with Plan A: Conor (plus two middle names of his parents’ grandfathers).
In subsequent decades we were surprised that this rare name finally exploded in popularity. It seemed to be everywhere!
Baby Number 4: Flipping a Coin
When we were expecting our fourth baby, we decided not to learn the sex of the baby ahead of time. By now you’d think naming would be easy for us, but no.
For a boy, we considered Duncan again, but we could no longer use Caroline for a girl because my brother’s family had let us know if they ever had a girl she would be Caroline; and it had already become too popular for us anyway.
Other names we had liked – Megan and Caitlyn – were no longer rare either, so we dropped them from our list. We thought about the name Fiona Rose, but when two close friends expressed their strong dislike – “Ew! That’s awful!” – that was the end of that one. (A few years later, to our chagrin, a cousin gave that exact name to her daughter.)
When I went into labor we had still not settled on any names. I asked the nurses what names were they hearing these days. We learned the name Andrew was no longer popping up every day. So between contractions, we settled on Andrew, nine years after we had first jettisoned it. If it was a girl? No decision.
Hours later, we were shocked and delighted by the birth of a baby girl, and the perfect name seemed an impossibility. She was a day old when we flipped a coin between Mary Rose and Rosemary, and settled on Rosemary plus two middle names of her two grandmothers.
She has never liked her “old lady” name, but she appreciates that there are no others among her peers. And it’s nice to keep a version of “Mary” in the family, since between my husband’s family and mine there have been at least seven or eight of us! She often mentions her luck that we passed on Fiona because when the movie Shrek came out she was ten years old. “Think of what kids would have done with that!!”
A Fun Challenge
Looking back, we obsessed over names too much. In the end, our four kids ended up with great names that weren’t Andrew-Justin-Duncan-Caroline. But I do have to confess that the two middle names policy has never been popular with them. Think of how hard it is to fill out forms!
Naming your baby is a challenge, but should be a fun one. My advice: go ahead and obsess and overthink it, and when you find a name you like, focus on how it will be for your child to wear it. Is it easy to pronounce and spell correctly? What nicknames will it invite? Will it be easy for other kids to mock? Is it so popular that the kid’s classroom will have two or three of them? If so, do you care?
Here’s my most important advice. Keep it secret. If you tell people your name choice before the baby is born be prepared for unsolicited commentary that may make your decision harder. Well-meaning friends and relatives are far less likely to offer comments if you tell them, “She’s here! And her name is …..!”
Oh, and always have a Plan B.