Don’t Make This Mistake When You’re Choosing Baby Names

When you’re expecting and confronted with tens of thousands of baby names in hundreds of thousands of websites and books, it’s tempting to solicit opinions from the hive mind on social media, if only to start narrowing the field as you’re beginning the process of choosing baby names.

My advice? Don’t.

In my experience, all this does is let the most opinionated people you know with their worthless opinions take consequence-free swipes at your choices. The result will be the sullying of names you otherwise would have liked because it rubbed someone with no skin in the game the wrong way. All it takes is for one of your friends to have a sister who used to date someone who had a jackass roommate in 1998 to tarnish a name for you. If there’s someone whose blessing you’ve just got to have, go to them directly. Otherwise, I strongly recommend you skip the hive mind. Choosing baby names is a personal endeavor, and the more you keep it so, the better.

My advice here if you’re completely open to your options is for both you and your partner to separately print out the top 1,000 most popular names and do a quick scan with a highlighter in hand. Yes, there are Tinder style apps you can get where you sync with another user and swipe names left and right, but they’re usually awash in niche names and bizarre spelling variations of common names that just represent a time suck (unless that’s what you’re after for some reason). If a name so much as makes you pause for a moment in consideration, highlight it. Most names will be knee jerk rejections, but you’ll have a healthy list of names at the end.

Now, trade lists. Importantly, there should be no judgment here. Remember, this isn’t a My Favorite Names list at this point – they’re names you’d respectively maybe, possibly consider. Once you’ve got your partner’s list in hand, go through and veto any names that are absolute non-starters which you would not consider under any circumstances. Remember to be judicious here, because you’ll have to honor your partner’s rejections.

Once that’s done, condense the surviving names onto a new list. Any shared between you will become your shortlist. The rest can be divided into as many tiers and categories as you please depending on the number of names you’re dealing with. It might be you have something as simple as a shortlist, a second tier, and a list of dark horse possibilities; it might be you have a sprawling, alphabetized list. However long the list is, it isn’t in the thousands anymore, so you’re off to a good start.

As you’re mulling your list over time, try not to get too invested in a name. For instance, I would strongly advise against letting yourself start referring to your coming baby by a name you’re considering. To counter this, my wife and I gave our kids nicknames when they were in utero. These were silly names there was no chance in hell of our ever using for a given name (our daughter was Sprocket, our son was Tater).

At no point in the process of choosing baby names, though, should you tack your list up on a digital wall for peanut gallery comments. Again, if you’d be crushed at Grandma’s disapproval, take her out for coffee and slide the list across to get your verdicts. Otherwise, when people find the name out, there’s just as little for anybody to argue about as there is for your name. That’s just your baby’s name, like it or lump it.

And if you like it, that’s all that matters.

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