Deciding the Name for Your Child

I've always heard that the name you pick for your child would determine if he or she would be successful in life; that's a lot of pressure for us parents to be under. Keeping that thought in the back of our minds, we decided that we didn't want a name that was too unusual and also didn't want to find a name that was on the top 10 of the top 100 baby names. We didn't want to run into the problem of a teacher saying a name and ten different kids raising their hands. We also didn't want a name that was too hard to pronounce or unisex. Growing up with my unusual name, it was a constant battle having to pronounce it for the teachers, and then people not knowing if I was a boy or a girl. (In fact, I still, to this day have solicitors calling my house asking to speak to Mr. Gillian Wilk!) We wanted a name that was instantly recognizable as a masculine or feminine name. Once we found out that we were having a boy, we tossed around a few names, but none of them sounded right. We finally decided that we would name our baby after my father, who passed away, and my father-in-law for the middle name. Luckily, both of those names weren't non-traditional, yet not in the top 10 of boy names. In the beginning, I'm sure it was difficult for my family to get used to my son's name, but now it's okay.

If naming our first child was difficult, naming our second child was impossible. All we had was a middle name. We wanted to follow the same rules as we had with our first child, so the names would sound good together. It was so tough to come up with a name that we almost left the hospital without a name, until they told us it was going to cost close to $300 to change the birth certificate from no name to a name. We immediately decided on a name, which was about ten minutes before I was released from the hospital. I'm so glad we're done with the naming game.