There are a couple of things that parents can expect when they are expecting a baby, whether it is their first or their fourth. Expectant parents can expect to be bombarded with inquiries about the baby’s gender until either an ultrasound provides the news and the parents share it or the parents inform the inquisitors that they do not want to find out until baby is born, so they will just have to wait right along with them. Once baby’s gender is known, the next round of questioning begins – have you chosen a name?
Anyone who has had or is expecting a baby knows that naming a little one is kind of a big deal. There are many factors that weigh on what name the parents will choose. Things like family names, ethnic origin, and name meanings are just the tip of the iceberg. Each set of parents has their own priorities. For example, one thing that is very important to my husband (and to a lesser degree myself) is that our children don’t get names that are easily made fun of. Before my son Dylan was born, I briefly entertained the idea of naming him Angus until both my husband and his brother nixed that idea by expressing their “concerns” that if he is stocky, people could poke fun at him by referring to him as “beefy” or that some people might begin calling him “steak boy”.
There are plenty of baby name books out there, but the internet is also a wonderful (and free) resource for finding baby name ideas and meanings. Here are a few sites that I think could be helpful (and fun) for those people like me who are currently playing the name game. If you are a genealogy buff, you may want to look to a familiar research resource for your name research – the Social Security Administration has information about names and name popularity through the years. Baby Name Wizard has a few fun ways to look at names, research meanings, and explore popularity trends. Nymbler.com is a fun web site that I found just today. When you visit the site, you can look at a screen full of names, choose six names that appeal to you, and then the site can generate a list of names that you might also like.
Photo by kahanaboy on morguefile.com.