What Are Your Favorite Baby Names?

I loved the nane Zachary since i was a little girl and dreamed of having my own child some day… I was was blessed late in late in life, at 42 with my my little girl….Zachary Taylor Talley….a single mom, I gave her my mothers Family name and our fathers surname.

Found this thread late and love reading your stories.

Our daughters are Clara, 23 months, and Flora, 2 months. We live in Germany but we’re American, so this ruled out a lot of names: nothing with a J, nothing ending in E. Our two names ended up being really similar in some ways but different in others. They both peaked in the 1890s, have Latin roots, and they share 3 of the same letters. But Clara is miles more popular than Flora, which is quite unusual here. Clara also has a more Germanic/Scandinavian vibe, while Flora is either Scottish or Mediterranean. Sometimes I still worry their names are too close, but I guess we were just in the same headspace when we named them, since they’re so close in age.

Our last name is Italian. And it’s a huge mellifluous beast of a name,12 letters long with with 4 Ls in it. So short first names were a priority from the beginning. But I never felt drawn to modern names, or even modern updates. I liked storybook heroine names as long as I can remember.

Both girls were almost Rosa. But when they came out, neither one looked like a Rosa!

My daughters’ names are Esme Bright (Esme from the Salinger story, obviously, and Bright from Ann Patchett’s “The Dutch House”) and Reau Wallace (Reau from “Thoreau” and Wallace after an uncle). We call them Ezzie and RoRo. My favorite boy name is Arch, which I saw on that Disney Channel ballet documentary!

When we didn’t know our kid’s gender, and we needed a girl name that started with R to honor my great grandmother Rose, I was reminded of Ronia. Ronia! The eponymous hero of Ronia the Robber’s Daughter, a lovely book by Astrid Lindgren.
Our kid was a boy so he had a completely different name. I still adore Ronia as a name.

I would have named a boy Tobias or Hugh. I’d have named a girl Thea or Adele. Didn’t get the chance.

When my husband and I were dating, we would watch re-runs of Rawhide on Saturday mornings. Clint Eastwood was so cool! We joked that if we ever had a boy, we would name him Rowdy. A few years later, we had our Rowdy Blake.

My little boy is named Rune Kanyezi. Rune (roo-neh) For his Danish heritage. Kanyezi (meaning star) my, now late, father spoke fluent Zulu and so we honour him by teaching my son about his grandfather through this name that he gave him. Wherever Rune ends up in the world, he will know and remember his roots are South African and that he is tied to a loving grandfather.

My son’s name is Felix Dae. We fell in love with the name Felix- it was the only name my husband and I could agree on. Dae is a nickname I called my late brother, David. It felt like a sweet middle name for our son. Had he been a girl, I’m certain we would have named her Billie Dae or Birdie Dae.

We have a little Claire! We struggled with infertility for years, but this name was always on my mind. It was the only one on our list of names that work in both French and English (my husband is French, I’m American) that we could both agree on. We sat with it for a while, and my husband finally agreed to it a couple of months before she was born. It fits her perfectly, and it makes me think of the light at the end of a path on this long journey to parenthood.

I have an Ever Amryn Skye and an Ira August Raine. Their middle names are connected to family and nature themes. Ira is 100% inspired by Ira Glass! We found boy names incredibly tricky and the only other runner up was Julian (Jude.) For girls, I also have Ezra, Eden, Maeve and Scotia on the list.

Late to the game, but I am such a sucker for baby names and just found myself reading through these comments forever! Mine have always changed through the years, but we have two little kiddos; a son named Hollis James Lionel & a daughter named Enid Kathleen Bertie. Our kids double middle names are grandparents names we wanted to use, but our children’s first names were both from books my partner and I loved!

My husband and I wanted something that would work both in Danish and English, but could only agree on one name for a girl and one name for a boy, so we were lucky when we had one of each. My daughter is called Cora Wynn (after my husband’s grandmother, Winnifred) and my son is called Wyatt Nicolas (after my husbands father, Nicolas, who passed away much too young). We live in Denmark, so Cora and Wyatt are unusual names, but not difficult for Danes to pronounce, and we often get comments from people who love their names as much as we do :).

Both of my children were born in France and have french-pronounced full names. They each have two middle names, followed by a gorgeous french family name.
My daughter was called Mimi before she was born, but we wanted to give her a “mature” first name in case she didn’t want to use Mimi as she got older, so I searched for names that used Mimi as a nickname. She’s officially called, Naomi Kade Isabelle, but is nearly ten and still goes by Mimi.
My son is Joachim Kelly Kade (pronounced /zho-A-keem/). His two middle names are after two of his three grandfathers. Most people call him Jojo or Jo, as we love in the States now, but I call him Joachim and always will.
Cecilia, Roxanne, & Sarah are my other picks for girls. Bruno for a boy.

My daughter is Madeleine but I often think about our other top choices: Frances, Penelope, and Beatrice. It’s a strange concept to mourn a name that never was attached to a person but I do sometimes :)

My oldest is Keira Rose. We struggled to pick a name for our youngest, but our pandemic baby ended up being Saoirse Marie.

We loved everything about Saoirse- from the way it sounded to the fact that it paid respects to my Irish roots to its meaning: freedom.

What’s funny to me is that we went out of our way to choose names that didn’t lend themselves naturally to nicknames, yet both of our girls ended up with them. Keira quickly became “Keira Bear” and Saoirse is regularly “Saoirs” or “Saoirsy.” It just goes to show that the “best laid plans,” amiright?

Even though I am not going to have any more children I love thinking about baby names. My current favourites for boys are Wolf and Fos (derived from the Dutch Vos which means fox) for boys and Beer (bear) For girls I love Elodie and Harper. My daughter has a very common name here in The Netherlands: Eva, middle name Helena after my beloved grandmother who was still very much alive when she was born. I loved making her happy with that! Our son has a very unusual name for Dutch standards: Ran Peter Samuel. Ran is an Israeli name which means “to rejoice” Peter is after my husband’s twin brother and Samuel to use as a backup if he ever gets tired of spelling his name of correcting people calling him Bram ;-)

If I had a female dog, I wanted to call her Gladys Pearl…
I have a male dog named Noah…

I knew at 14 weeks gestation that our daughter would be Ella Clementine. (Didn’t find out the sex, but my intuition was strong.) Now, at three years old, she introduced herself to everyone she meets as “Rocket the Space Racer!” ?

Ooh, I love baby names! My husband and I both love classic names but didn’t want names that were too common. We chose Margot Iris (Iris after my late grandmother), Isla Jean (Isla pronounced – Aylah, Jean after my husband’s late mother), and Benjamin Elam (Benjamin is my husband’s middle name and the first name of a beloved uncle, Elam is my husband’s grandmother’s maiden name). We don’t have a lot of connection with my husband’s side of the family for various reasons and it’s especially sweet to help our children feel part of that family’s history even though distance and death have meant they don’t know some of the beloved family members.

I’m so sorry for your loss, Ellie.

I have an Emilien Loup.
When I was pregnant I had the longest list and so did my husband.
I was surprised that Loup made the his shortlist as it isn’t a common name with that particular spelling. I am an animal lover to the extreme and since Loup means wolf I was all for it but I didn’t think he was serious. One of my top names was Emile.
I gave birth on a Saturday afternoon and by Sunday noon we still hadn’t agreed on any names. The hospital was putting on all the pressure. They kept calling the room…
Then my husband left the room and came back a few minutes later with “Emilien Loup” on a piece of paper. I loved the two names together and Emilien was so close to Emile that I was thrilled.
He left to get a bite to eat and the records lady came into the room. She and I filled out the paperwork and she left.
A short while later my husband was back…regretting the name and ready to try to change my mind.
“Too late!” I happily exclaimed.
We call our son Emi.
Others call him “petit loup” or “Lobito”, as we have family in France and Mexico.
Had he been a girl he would’ve been Natalia Josephine.

Our treasured daughter is Maria Hypatia. We had been on our adoption journey for nine months without a match, and my husband and I were starting to struggle. We had ideas for names but nothing set in stone. It was hard to get attached to a name when we didn’t know whether we would have a baby. We got the call the day after she was born, and the voice on the other end of the line said “There is a baby girl who was born yesterday, her name is Maria, would you like to bring her home?” We were told her birthmother had chosen the name Maria for her, and we loved that name because Maria was a strong woman full of love and tremendous faith, and we wanted to honor her birthmother, so that was that. We chose Hypatia for her middle name, because Hypatia was a strong woman of honor and intellect, who sought truth above all else. We included this Anotine de St. Exupery quote in Maria’s birth announcement: “…a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming…”. That quote holds such meaning for us, still.

Our little one is Cruz David. Cruz was my paternal grandmother’s first name. My dad passed away when I was 19, so I wanted to honor him in some way. David is my husband’s middle name and my FIL’s first name. We affectionately call him “Cruzie” : )

Oh, I love the name Laura. If someday I have a baby girl, she’ll definitely be called Laura. For boys, I haven’t given too much thought about it, but I think Benício and André (I’m Brazilian, so these names don’t sound strange here) are very nice names.

My husband and I work for NASA and are space nerds, so we went with space themed names for our 2 children. My daughter is Andromeda after the galaxy and the constellation. We call her Andi for short. My son is Corbin, a name inspired by one of our favorite Sci Fi movies, the 5th Element, and it also a derivative of Corvus, which is the raven constellation.