A child’s name is essential to their identity. It is the very beginning of their story.
I should know. I hear the story behind my name constantly. The great name debacle of ’86. Just kidding! It’s nothing quite that serious. But it is one of those stories that continues to be retold every year with the same amount of disagreement between my parents.
So, when it came time for my husband and I to name our own little bundles of joy, I was adamant we choose together.
And we did.
When I was pregnant with our first daughter, we selected two beautiful names. We even knew which one we planned to use first. All the while, keeping the second name in our back pocket, should we ever get the opportunity to use it. And much to my surprise, we did.
Naming our first two daughters was a breeze. OK, maybe it wasn’t a breeze. But, it pales in comparison to the difficulty we faced when choosing a name for our third daughter.
I never imagined choosing the perfect name would be so hard.
There are quite literally thousands upon thousands of options. So many beautiful names. But no matter how many there were, my husband and I just could not agree.
It was unbelievable.
There I was pouring over books, blog posts, and asking friends for suggestions. I was determined to leave no stone unturned on our quest for the perfect name. At one point, we even had a solid list. My husband was partial to Primrose. It was beautiful, but I wasn’t sold. I didn’t feel it paired well with any family middle names. Thus, leaving us to deviate from her big sisters and I didn’t want her to feel left out.
Then, one afternoon, I felt as though Primrose was the one. Unfortunately by this point, he had changed his mind and felt like my previous suggestion of Alice was the one. But I no longer cared for it.
And there we were, back to square one.
I felt as though we were spending all of our time just vetoing names. It was getting ridiculous. I wanted to pull my hair out! Why was it so difficult to agree on a name? I was baffled.
When you are struggling to find the perfect name, the last thing you need is more opinions. Or at least in my case. But that’s exactly what I got. Choosing the perfect name felt even more paramount when it was suggested that it begin with the same letter as my first two daughters, or she may indeed feel left out. Ugh!
So we continued to spend the next few months (that went by far too quickly) going over baby names. In the end, we went into the hospital without a written list, hoping that once we saw her, we would just know.
And we did. We really did.
All those months of building anxiety were washed away in just a few moments. We had the perfect name for our precious new bundle of joy.
We even have a name picked out for a hypothetical fourth girl and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about that!
Was choosing a baby name difficult for you? I would love to hear your story!
