I have had a lot of fun poked at me over my crazy criteria for choosing baby names. Yes, I know it may be a bit extreme, but I only have to pick 2-4 names in my life, so why not be picky? We and this baby will be dealing with this name for the rest of our lives; it is IMPORTANT. I also want to say that I love some of these things in names others pick, just not for my kid;o)
So, I thought I would share our process and my crazy criteria;o)
First, the criteria:
1) Has to be relatively gender specific.
I know that there is probably no name that is 100% gender specific, but I want a name where someone will look at it on a resume or roll list and not have a question.
2) I prefer girl names that end in vowel sounds and boy names that end in consonant sounds. I think there is just something about the way they sound to me.
3) I don't want anything too popular, but not uber unique. Think, somewhere between 20-1000;o) Having to pick a nickname or go by a last initial is really annoying and gets confusing.
4) Only one pronunciation. I want people to look at the name and know how to say it. This comes from personal experience and is a major annoyance of mine. I would say that my name (which is not that unusual) is correctly pronounced by a stranger about 25% of the time. And I have had several teachers throughout my school career not be able to keep it straight. I don't want my kid to have to deal with this frustration.
5) No automatic nicknames. I plan to name my kids what I am going to call them. This also comes from personal experiences. From not knowing what to call someone to being asked if I go by Anne, Andi, etc. My most specific annoyance is with my poor husband's experience. I cannot tell you how many times my husband has introduced himself to someone new and the conversation goes something like this:
"Hi, my name is David." . . .
"So, Dave, what do you do for a living?"
I want to yell, "Did he tell you his name was Dave!?!?!?!?!?!"
Grrrrrrrrrr. I know it doesn't bug him as much as me, but no, no, no!
6) No biblical names. The bible is just not a part of our lives.
7) I prefer 2 syllable names. They just roll off the tongue right. Not too short, not too long.
8) Personal Associations. I think these always play a roll and are very personal depending on the name.
After a couple of months of casually talking about names, poor David was getting pretty annoyed with all of my criteria, so, in true David style, he enlisted the help of Excel and macros. He narrowed the top 1000 boy names down to about 500+ and the top 1000 girl names down to 300+. We both got a copy of the lists and went through and crossed out names we didn't like or had slipped passed the computer, circled names we loved and left a few others. We then compared/combined our lists and were left with a handful of boy names and a handful of girl names. We then narrowed to 2 girl names and 1 boy name- Kylee, Chelsea and Travis.
The middle names were actually a little easier. We tried to pick something that had sentimental value in both families- sounds harder than the criteria above, but it has been fairly simple. We chose Robert and Marie.
Combining all of that info, we have a name for our little girl:
Chelsea Marie
