Musings: You never realise how many people you don’t like until you try to name a baby

What name didn't make the cut for you?

Picking the right name for your child is an important decision, one that a lot of thought goes into. I knew when it came to naming my children that it wouldn't be easy to choose between going with a traditional family name or something outside the box. What I didn't know is how it would make me realise how many people I don't like as I didn't want to name my kid to share a name with them. I asked my mam before if she had any other girl names picked out for me aside from Melissa and she told me that she's been considering the name Genevieve. Personally I think Genevieve is a really pretty name so I asked her what made her ultimately choose my name instead. She told me at the time when she was pregnant there was someone she knew called Jenny that she really didn't like and she was afraid that if she called me Genevieve people would call me Genny for short. I've heard of other people vetoing names for exactly the same reason and I have to admit I did the same when I was pregnant. It was when I was pregnant on my youngest child that I actually found this to be a problem the most. I knew hands down what girl names I wanted as it is a family name but I had no idea what name to choose for a boy. My husband was throwing out names left, right and centre and all I could think of was fellas I had encountered with the same names over the years and I was just like 'no, no, definitely not, do you want the child to be twat?' I honestly didn't think that many people irritated me but then I thought could I face calling my child the same that they have and realised there's a lot more people on my 'do not like' list than I thought. It has made me wonder though if anyone decided that they weren't going to name their child Melissa because of me? Did you come up against this problem when you were naming your child?