Wading through Baby Names

Picking baby names is hard! I had looked at names for both sexes before I found out we were having a girl, but now we're really trying to narrow it down to a list of favorites. We've already decided not to tell anyone our choice until we've decided 100%, so don't expect any surprise revelations here. I will tell you that we currently have 2 front runners for first names, but it's a free for all with middle names. I wish we could just cram together our two favorite first names, but they have a certain similarity that keeps them from sounding good together, so we're having to look deeper down the list of possibilities.

The thing about picking a first and middle name is that you can't just pick whatever name sounds good on it's own. You have to take all these things into consideration:

• Cadence - You've got to make sure the first name sounds good with your last name and that all three names sound good together. For instance, there will be no names that start with P because my last name starts with a P and that would just make the poor child sound like a radio host of tv weather person (...and now for our weekend outlook...here's Penny Parker). A lot of issues with cadence can be ironed out by limiting your choices to a certain number of syllables and letter sequences. I'm just trying to avoid name combinations that end up sounding like German nannies or Dickens characters.
• Nicknames - I don't want to open up the door to any nicknames that I abhor. If my child comes to me at the age of 13, having decided that they want to be called by a nickname, I would like to be able to call them that (assuming it's not "T-Bone") without cringing every time I do.
• Initials - You don't want a little girl who's initials are "HOE" or "DUM". Even things that might seem cute ("ZIP" or "TAP") are just fodder for jokes. Pick names with the wrong initials, and not only are you setting your child up to be the butt of school yard teasing, they'll never know the luxury of monogrammed towels.

Thankfully, I've been using a couple of great baby naming resources to help me out. The absolute best baby naming site I've every used is BabyNameWizard.com, followed by Nymbler.com. Thanks to these sources, I've been able to find names that I like by themselves, and I've been able to find names that sound good with the first names we've got, I just haven't been able to find one that's both. That's what I'm really waiting for...that moment of inspiration when the right name falls into the middle and strikes me as a perfect fit. Then maybe I'll have some real news to deliver.