Gabbing on baby naming

I recently read an article about baby names caught my eye: 22 Baby Naming Rules Worth Following.

The “rules” were submitted by parents who were surveyed, and most make sense to me. See: No yooneek spellings. Name your son (or daughter) Peyton or even Payton. But not Peighton, Patyn, or Paitynne.

Rule #3 is the one I broke when we chose the names Julian and Scarlett just because we liked them: A first name should ideally embody some kind of meaning. That might be family or ethnic significance, literal meaning, or even that you’ve loved it since you were seven. A name with meaning is going to have more staying power than one you choose simply because it’s attractive.

Here’s another good one: Don’t let anyone pressure you into or out of a name. It’s the Number 1 reason behind baby name regret.

And this one I may have followed subconsciously, but I never actually did the math: Ideally, first, middle, and last names will be unequal numbers of syllables. So 3-1-2 tends to work better than 2-2-2. (My son is 3-1-3 and my daughter is 2-1-3, while I am 2-4-1. I think those of you who have one-syllable last name probably were more aware of this.)

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Whitney

RookieMoms.com co-founder Whitney lives with her husband, son, and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area where she writes about parenting, crafts, and activities that moms can do with babies in tow. She and Heather also publish 510Families.com, a site for East Bay parents.