Baby Name List

 Previously I gave a list of 7 names that I like. Last month I started to get more serious about it. I will likely need pick one within the year. So I am being more serious about it.

I have always thought that I wouldn't pick a name until I meet a baby. I think a name has a lot of meaning and power. I don't think I can decide a name without ever seeing the baby. However, I can still eliminate names I don't like and compile of the remaining names. I think being able to review and look over the list during the pregnancy will help me decide when the time comes.

Filtering for Popularity

As you know my main requirement is that the name isn't too popular. My name is pretty unique and I never shared the name with someone in my class, grade or even school. It was only a few years ago that I shared the name with a co-worker. While I don't need a name that is that unique, I want to aim for a name that the baby won't share with classmates at least. 

So what I did was I went back to the social security website and looked up the top 1,000 names for girls and boys in for each year from 2010, 2012, 2014-2019. I put all of them names and the number of people who were given that name in excel. Then I had excel add the numbers together by year. There ended up being 1,251 girl names and 1,224 boy names in the top 1000 sometime in those years. 

Then, I sorted by top names. Liam for boys and Emma for girls. I decided to highlight the names in red if I didn't like them and orange if I was interested in them. I immediately made the first 100 names in girls and boys names red. While I wouldn't mind using a name with was number 90, but a name that is 90 in the last decade might shoot up to top 25 in the next decade. That is what happened to my sister, Caitlin. There are that many Caitlin's her age, but a it became pretty popular in the next decade or two. So I want to try to avoid that if I can. 

After that I went down the list and highlighted the cells orange or red depending on whether or not I liked it. There were a few names that were the same as the top 100 but with different spellings, so I looked out for that too.

When I went through all of the names I realized some of the names that I have been jotting down in the last few years weren't on the list so I added those to the bottom.

Middle Names = Family Names

You might know that I am a genealogist. I have a tree on Ancestry and it almost has 4,500 people on it. I also have the tree cross posted on a some other sites, but I don't updated them as much. I was lucky because my Grandma and her cousin did a lot of work on their side of the family and my Uncle had a lot of information on my Dad's side of the family. So it was easy to grow the tree after I entered their information. I always think it's so cute when parents name a child after grandparents (first or last names) or great grandparents (first or last names). Although it can be frustrating if the person's 10 other siblings also name their child after their parents. Luckily, people don't tend to reuse names in this day an age. 

I mainly want to use Melissa after my Mom and Bernard after my Dad and his Dad. Some names will not go with Melissa or Bernard so back up middle names that I have are, below:

Louisa - my grandmother's middle name which was her great grandmother's name. 

and

Walter - Grandma Mary Louisa's father's name 

These were the top two backup names, but if Walter and Louisa also didn't go with the first name then I used the names below:

Grace - Grandpa Bill's grandmother's name

Helen - my Aunt's name

Hazel- Grandma Mary Louisa's mother's name

Frances- Hazel's mother

Harriet- After meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, my 4th great grandparents named their daughter Harriet and she named her daughter Harriet as well.

William - my grandfather's name

Eli - Walter's middle name and his father's name

Arthur- William's grandfather's name

Leonard- Grandmother Rose's maiden name

Griffin- Frances's maiden name

If the name didn't go with my top two middle names I just looked at my family tree and tried to find a middle name that suited the first name. So there is no reason why I picked on over the other. I also used some relative names as first names as well. There was one middle name that was not a family name. It is paired with the first name of Louisa and I was having trouble finding a good name to go with that. Since Louisa is a family name I think it's ok to use a different name.

On telling my brother my idea for middle names he said he liked the name Louisa. So I might have to rethink using that as a middle name. I will have to determine if he would really use it or not before giving up on it.

Baby Name's List

After I narrowed down between names I would never use and possible names. I sorted by color I had 85 girl names and 66 boy names. So I took another look at it and sorted between names that I thought were okay and names that I might actually use. I changed the color to yellow if I thought I would actually use it. Then I ended with 35 girl names and 40 boy names. So I put in middle names for all of the yellow cells. 

I wanted to be able to share my list with people and get opinions from people. I have noticed with couples they can bounce ideas off of each other and that can help narrow down the names. Since I am doing this on my own, I wanted to get input from other people. I added the names to babynames.com. It allows for 100 names so I added orange names to the list to make it 50 girl names and 50 boy names. So you won't know which names I like more than other. Also, I don't know why the list is in the order that it is. I might also put a poll on the blog.