Popular Names

Did you hear that the Social Security website finally put out their list of most popular names for 2011?  I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for this list to be published ever since New Year came and went.  I figured they needed some time to get the stats right, but still, halfway through the list and it’s finally here?  Anyway, here’s the link to the site.

Despite the wait, it made me very happy to know that Baby C’s chosen name is even less popular than it was in 2010.  I joked with Hubby at first and said it was in the top 10 for 2011 but he didn’t really believe me.  And he said if it was in the top 10 this year, that we’re not going through the process of picking a new name and I’d have to deal.  But lucky for me, it’s not even in the top 200.  The name still fits within all of my criteria  – not in the top 100 most popular, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, something that doesn’t come with silly nicknames, and also not too gender neutral.

I’m at the point where I’m okay sharing some of our other contenders before we made the final decision.  Who knows if we’ll still like these names in the future and there’s no guarantee we’ll have another boy.  Before we found out the gender, I started making lists of my favorite boy and girl names.  I would bring a few up every so often to Hubby but he usually would end up shooting them down.  We then decided to wait until after the 20 week ultrasound so we could work on just one list, as we were both sick of having discussions that ended up in disagreements…

Once we found out Baby C was a boy, we had two lists of boys’ names to start with – my list and Hubby’s list.  My list included names like “Nolan”, “Donovan”, “Brendan” and “Ryder”, but there were a few others I liked, as well.  Hubby’s list was much shorter with only “Noah” and “Landon”.  We then came up with a new list we both liked together because we didn’t agree on anything on our own lists.  We miraculously came up with 4 names we both really liked.  I mentioned before when I was doing my San Diego recaps that one day we heard a name we really liked after a dad was calling his son it.  That did end up being one of the 4 names on our list together – it was “Cooper”.  We ultimately decided it was a little too popular – I think it’s in the top 80.   The other two I won’t share just in case the chosen name doesn’t fit when Baby C actually arrives :)

Let’s just say boys’ names were HARD to agree on.  Some boy names sound too much like dog names…and then some sound very little boy-ish, so they won’t fit well for an adult male in the future.  We would always do the “resume test” – I would ask Hubby what he would think if he was interviewing someone that came in with that name.  That’s how we narrowed down a few names haha.  I think if Baby C was a girl, we would have spent only a couple weeks discussing names.  But I’m really happy with what we’ve come up with, which is all that matters.