DIY DAVIS STYLE: What's yo name gurrllll

Friday, October 26, 2012

What's yo name gurrllll

There are so many names out there, how do you chose which one is right for your child? I mean...it will only be his or her name....for the rest.of.his.life.

No pressure....

Our baby's name? Saw it on Pintrest!

But it feels like a lot of pressure. I probably took it even a little more personally than was normal....I'm sure. I say this because I have a strange name...I mean, not like awkwardly strange that is a completely different language. But I remember in elementary school misspelling my name on purpose just so it was more normal. You see, I'm named after my Aunt Leigh-Anne, in the Haley Mills generation. My mom loved the name and wanted to include my aunt, thus my name...Haleigh.

Growing up with a "strangely" spelled name was frustrating. On field trips all the other kids were able to get the key chains with their names on them...and back in the 80's and early 90s...key chains were a big deal people! If you didn't have 50 on your backpack, you simply weren't cool. Not only could I never find things with my name on them, but people always and still to this day, mispronounce my name. If I got even a penny for the number of times I get called Holly or Huh-lee like I am some foreigner...I would be a...somewhat rich woman!

So when ~~I knew I was going to marry J~~ J and I started talking kids, I made a spreadsheet. {Yes I know I'm a little AR but who actually enjoys being disorganized??}One page for boy names, and one for girl's names. On each page I did separate columns for first names and middle names.....I had to see what they would look like side by side! I put on names that I saw on baby sites, names I heard in passing, names I saw in baby name books or novels, and names I had loved since I was a child.

I had already narrowed down the names that I loved more than all the others, but when J and I found out we were expecting it was so amazing sitting down to that spreadsheet I had spent too much time on...and saying these are the two winners-one boy name, one girl name. It wasn't stressful like a lot of my friends have said it was, it was good knowing that J trusted me and knew I had done my research. {We tried to stay away from names that were on the top 100 lists or that we thought were over used}But at the end of the day, any time I heard a name or saw a name that I absolutely loved I would ask him what he thought about it...and it was either vetoed for being too weird or placed on the spreadsheet so we would never forget it!

When working on the spreadsheet I really got to say, "what will his initials be" "what will his potential nicknames be" "will he sound like a cute little baby boy when he is an adult trying to get a real job?" {I had a guy friend growing up whose initials were A.S.S.....needless to say, he was teased}. So we considered spelling, initials, nicknames, the whole nine.

Why talk about this topic, you ask? Well because I get email updates from a few different baby type websites. The email that sparked this post? "What Baby Name Suites You". That seemed a little ironic to me because the name shouldn't fit me...it should fit our son...but I couldn't resist.

Here's what my "test results" said...

You seem to be a pretty active person and an independent thinker who likes doing instead of just talking. If you want your child to be strong-minded and leave his or her mark on the world, you should consider baby names that people associate with being creative, smart, active, and strong.T

How do you or did you pick your baby's name?