You know, naming children has always been a conundrum to me.  I've never been certain of exactly how people do it.  Seems many name people names they like, others based off family members or important people in their life.

My wife and I were thumbing around different ideas and chose one that we don't know of anyone else that has used.  The idea is this:

Each of us chose an attribute about a person we find particularly valuable.  We looked for two names that we liked that "meant" those attributes.  We then combined those names for a first and middle.  Seems like it might work okay.

Our first two attributes are "intelligence or wisdom" (from my wife) and "charity of generocity" from me.  Seems there are a few names that work so far.

I didn't expect this to be this hard.  Kinda fun though.  Anyone else have experience naming their children they'd like to share?  Might be cool to get some more ideas.

Hi Interalia, first of all CONGRATULATIONS!!!! That's a big deal and I read your other post about being a stay-at-home parent and I think that's great that you are with child

Ok, so I don't have any experience naming kids at all but I know that social security has a website where you can look up names and see the most popular names by year for both m and f, like top 100 I think. I know, not too original, but it's kind of neat to see them. They also have the breakdowns by state.

I like your idea much better but give the child a name they won't have to be embarrassed about in grade school, you know, lol? Don't go for Chocolattemocalatta or anything Meghan

My wife and I had a lot of fun picking names for our baby.  We wanted names we were comfortable with and didn't remind of us of someone we didn't like.  We wanted names that sounded good all put together.  (My wife had an alliterative first name that rhymed with her family name.  What were her parents thinking? )  We wanted something that would work regardless of the career path the child took.  (For instance, we couldn't imagine a Supreme Court justice named Candy.)  We wanted something that wouldn't appear to lock the child into one segment of society, so that it would have as many choices as possible in life. And we wanted something that, between the first and middle name, would offer the child a variety of nicknames in case he/she didn't like the given name.

It's a fun process.  Congratulations on your impending parenthood.

(Incidentally, we discovered our list of potential names when our daughter was two.  Her name wasn't on the list, but it really seems to fit her. )

- Kate

My SO and I adopted our kids, so they were already named. First we wanted to name them, as most kids names are changed if they are from other counties. We argued or disagreed in this for the whole 6 months we spent in the adoption process. Then when we received a photo of our son and saw his name on it we both decided it was a really cool name and so we ended up keeping it. Second time around we did the same thing. Both our kids had non traditional Cambodian names, one was completely made up.
Myles