It's Hard to Name Babies

One of the hardest jobs about being Pregnant is trying to plan ahead, which usually includes picking a name for your child. As a Surrogate, this is one stressor you won't have to deal with . . . or even really think about. Although, I did get asked one time by a stranger what I would name my surro girlies. I thought this was really funny . . . why would I think of names for them when they weren't mine? Weird. Hello! I passed the Psych Exam, thank you very much! :)

It seemed as if George and Sanj knew immediately what the girls' names would be. I thought Natasha and Anjali were great name choices and loved hearing stories about the history of the names. Heck, they could've told me they were going to name them Gertrude and Birtha and I would've smiled and said, "Great Choices." See, that's the problem with telling people your name before the ink on the Birth Certificates is dry. . . unsolicited advice . . . and it's rarely nice.

When we were pregnant with Ruby, we had several name choices including Mallory and Kinsey. We were told by tons of people why our choices sucked. We ended up picking Annika until the last month when Ruby Rummelhart had a ring to it . . . dancer, author, actress, whatever, it sounded great! We had several people hate (yes, they used that word) the name Ruby . . . but now she's such a "Ruby", and we all couldn't imagine her named anything else.

Boys are harder to name, if you ask me. What makes a great name at 4, may seem ridiculous when he's 50. We had several names we liked for Preston and even re-evaluated them again when it was time to name Sawyer.

Oh and if you're really looking to hear how all your selections are the worst ever, sign up for a Baby Name Poll on Babycenter.com We did this with all of our kids, but with Sawyer, the people at Baby Center contacted us asking if his could be the Spotlight Baby Name Poll. This meant that it would be on their main page for a few days and anyone could vote. Sure I said, I love feedback. Well, if you thought a hundred friends and family posting negatives about your names were fun, you should try this. How about thousands of people who don't know you telling you how your choices are, "snobby" or asking if "you were drunk when you came up with these names?" Yes, very fun. Years later, the comments are gone but the voting %'s are still up- look here!

I guess my biggest thing was that as a Kelly born in the early 70's, the last thing I wanted for my kids was to have a name that a lot of kids already had. Some name choices were immediately off the list because they were in the TOP 100 Names the Social Security Reports . . . the Top 10 names removed themselves! LOL

Speaking of which, there have been several articles about how Isabella/Bella and Jacob are at the top for 2009 and that may be partly because of the Twilight Series of Books and Movies. I think books, movies, television do sway us in baby name choices at times. Heck, when I was pregnant with Ruby I loved Moulin Rouge. As we left the theatre I remember telling Rick, "Satine, that's an interesting name." He quickly told me that we weren't going to name our daughter after a whore, no matter how talented she was. Point Taken.
Later, when I was Pregnant with Preston, before we knew it was a boy, Ruby would dance for hours to Chicago. I was sold, if Ruby had a sister, Roxy Rummelhart, would be her name. It was a boy, so it became a mute point. Instead, Preston was a name I heard on the movie Can't Hardly Wait. I loved the character and the name was much cuter than Lloyd, another male character I thought was sweet. Sawyer was from Tom Sawyer, of course, but hearing it on LOST over and over helped me see it could be a first name. Even if we ended up having a girl, Sawyer would've still be on the girls list too.


So for those of you (including my new IPs) that are in the process of picking names, feel free to use any of my unused names.

My Favorite Girl Names I didn't get a chance to use:

Piper
Tatum
Kinsey
Harper (my IPs did use this one!)
Ren

My Favorite Boy Names I didn't get a chance to use:

Holden
Vaughn
Gavin

**Again, feel free to use my unused names for your own kids or pets . . . if I were 25 and hadn't had my kids yet, I would harm you, but since I'm done having my own kids, feel free to steal my unused names. Again, unused. . . not Preston, Ruby or Sawyer, I don't want their names breaking into the top 100 . . . they are getting awfully close!

Oh- and feel free to leave your unused names in the Comments!