Choosing your little munchkin’s name that has to be one of the best parts of having a baby… or so we thought once upon a time.
Sure, you always thought it would be a way of putting your unique stamp on something you created, like a stamp of approval that reflects your taste, your vision, your hopes for your little mini-me. But when every moniker becomes a contender, you start to reel from the heavy responsibility of it all.
You’ve got to love it, it has to go with your surname, it must sound professional, be unique enough that there won’t be ten others in the class with the same name… so that sounds easy.
Here are seven things you’ll probably go through…
1) You become obsessed with baby name decisions
From the minute you know you’re expecting, your mind goes into crazy overdrive. And it doesn’t stop there. In reality, you spend ten months agonising over names, ogling credits at the end of movies and TV programmes to see if there’s something that catches your eye. Every word you encounter gets reimagined into a potential name.
2) Your partner will argue with you over every single name
So-and-so got slagged off for having that name, according to your other half. And don’t even get them started on the nicknames… every name you suggest gets turned into some kind of tragic nickname or school yard slag until no name is sacred. You can’t win.
3) You will spend ten months in anguish and indecision
Sorry, but it’s true. It’s got to be on account of the raging hormones, but indecision slowly creeps into every decision you need to make over the 40 weeks of gestation, possibly until you have even given birth. We’ve heard of mamas spending the first two days in hospital requesting that husbands write out potential baby names on cards “to see what they looked like”.
4) Never share your name choices before the baby comes along
People will recoil in horror at your lovingly and painstakingly chosen names. Keep all of your cards close to your chest.
5) Some people will always hate your choice, no matter what
Here’s looking at you, mum! Mothers and mothers-in-law LOVE to question name choices. They’re brutally honest too – not necessarily a good thing. They get offended too. But mothers aside, you’ll always meet people who don’t like your name-of-choice. But you know what, who cares! If you love it, that’s all that matters, right? It’s you that has to say it upwards of 100 times every day for the rest of your life, not them.
6) Every name you love has been taken
Just when you think you have a name that you can instantly fall in love with, your bubble gets burst – your colleague at work has already chosen that name or your partner’s second cousin… you wonder if they’ll really mind if you steal it, then all of a sudden, you’re instantly turned off the name because you can’t, in all honesty, take ownership over it. Damn those destroyers of dreams…
7) Whatever name you choose will be the right name
Within hours of getting to know your newborn, the name you have chosen for them will morph into their being. The name will just fit, they just look exactly like the name was chosen for them*, and you’ll never fathom they could conceivably be called anything else. There are the exceptions; we know of one couple who renamed their child three times in the first six weeks.
