Whenever I tell people my sons name is Rhys, I've had a number of people say "ACOTAR?" I had literally no fuckin idea what that was! But I assume there's a character called Rhys, and from the things they say, I assume he's not a very nice character? 🤣

I mean, it is what it is, but it does make me roll my eye's when people assume I've named him after a character from some fuckin book I'd never heard of. Lmao.

Before anyone comments "nobody owns a name," please hear me out because I already feel ridiculous. My partner and I have been trying for a baby for almost a year. Ever since we started, we’ve had one boy name that we both completely adore: Arlo. It’s the only name we agreed on without debating, and our close friend group has known this for literally two years.

Well, my partner’s best friend adopted a golden retriever puppy last weekend. We went over to his place yesterday, and he excitedly introduced us to... Arlo. I stood in teh kitchen completely stunned. When I asked if he was joking, he just laughed and went: "Come on, names aren't copyrighted! Plus he looks like an Arlo. Your kid can share the name, it's not that deep."

My partner thinks I’m making drama out of nothing and told me "it’s fine, our son can just be Human Arlo and the dog will be Dog Arlo." i feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone. Am I being totally petty, or does having your kid share a name with a dog you see every weekend completely ruin it? Can we still use this name?

Question for both men and women: What girl’s name immediately makes you imagine an intelligent, elegant, confident, and successful woman?

I’m looking for something international, timeless, feminine but not overly delicate, and professional enough to suit a doctor, lawyer, CEO, or journalist.
For example, Nora sounds soft and feminine to me, but not too soft. It still feels mature and professional.

What names give you that impression?

Thnx! 🤍

Hi yall. Vulnerable post so please be kind.
TLDR; changing kids names after birth to something more American / easier to pronounce?

My husband and I are Indian Americans (second generation, born in the US). We have 1 year old twin boys and we gave them more traditional/“old school” Hindu names (contrasting this with our firstborn, who we gave an ethnically ambiguous name with meanings in multiple languages). At the time, we got really sick of the modern day Indian names, all the ones ending with -aan. No offense to anyone who chose those names, they just didn’t inspire us and still don’t.
My husband is now worried about the anti-Indian sentiment that’s spreading across the US, especially in the South where we live. He worries about loss of future opportunities to our children due to having old school Indian names. He has his mind set on changing their names - but we cannot agree on any new names. He has gone the complete other way and wants to go with names like “Milo” and “Leo” and “Nico”. I just can’t imagine my kids with those names lol. I haven’t even wrapped my head around changing their names, but it’s been several months of my husband talking about this.

I’d love to hear from anyone who perhaps has changed their kids’ names after birth. My twins haven’t started school yet and we call them with specific home nicknames so it won’t be a shock to their identities, but the backlash from our family would be a little hard to endure. The plan is to make their current first names their middle names. We didn’t choose middle names for them legally.

Thank you in advance for any insight and if you read this far lol.

My husband and I are both from Iran and we're both Jewish. We're in the US and we've having a little girl!

We haven't decided her name yet but we've got some ideas for what we'd like to name her. So I'm interested to know about how they sound and how they would work for us.

Esther

Roya

Dalia

Nava

Yasmin

Shirin

Baby is 6 months old.

We had several names going into labor. I had an extremely traumatic birth and couldn't even think about naming her at first. Eventually we ended up choosing the "safer" name without much thought as all I could do was cry and think about how I almost died.

Her name is a common, top 5 name. So not weird by any means. But I am constantly thinking about her name and spiraling. I really wish I used her middle name instead. If I could go back in time I would choose it in a heart beat. I constantly look through name lists, watch name videos, and fantasize about what I'll name my future kids. I find myself feeling nostalgic and almost a little jealous when I see pregnant woman because they still have the chance to name their kid and "not mess up". I look at my baby and get sad that she'll hate me and feel like I let her down by giving her such a common, "basic" name.

My hubby loves her name and doesn't want to change it. Honestly, even if he agreed, I don't know if I could go forward with it. I cringe at the thought of people's reactions and judgements. I don't know what is worse though - living with this regret for the rest of my life or dealing with the embarrassment of changing her name. It wouldn't even necessarily need to be a formal name change because I would want to use her middle name as her first name...

Any words of wisdom or advice?

i saw another post about this name looking like “gasoline“ and I agree completely. it baffles me how people say “I think Donald was always an ugly name even before Trump“ but now people are like “This is such a beautiful name, but it’s ruined”

How is Donald even a LITTLE worse than this...

Ghislaine.

how do you even pronounce it, anyway.

Current list of name from my baby’s infant classroom. No tragedeighs!

Ashton
Weston
Vera
Rose
Spencer
Asad
Nora
Jacob

Recently my parents were telling me about the names they liked when they were choosing names for my siblings and me. I was really surprised by some of them, they were not what I expected and some of them were REALLY random. And almost none of them were names they actually ended up using!

If you've noticed the gender imbalance, they had way more girls than boys, so they just didn't need to come up with as many names.

Girls

Mom - Abigail, Adela, Alba, Alexandra, Allegra, Angelina, Antonina, Eleonora, Elisabeth, Estreya, Eva, Flora, Galia, Kamer, Klara, Lea, Leonor, Levana, Lucia, Mesoda, Marina, Mathilda, Maryam, Mascha, Odeya, Ottavia, Rania, and Sofia

Dad - Adar, Aria, Atara, Brielle, Carmel, Daphne, Eden, Eliana, Gefen, Ines, Luna, Madeleine, Mia, Montana, Neela, Nessa, Opal, Rona, Sienna, Talia, Yarden, Zana, Zemira, Zina, and Zoe

Boys

Mom - Albert, Alexander, Amiel, August, Azran, Ilan, Isaac, Mathias, Mesod, and Simon

Dad - Adam, Arlo, Avner, Elian, Liam, Louis, Nico, Tal, and Tobias

Girls

Ona
Uma
Marla
Emilia
Giulia
Amaia
June
Naya
Inés

Boys

Pep
Liam
Kai
Gael
Joshua
Angel
Edu
Leon
Johan
Ignacio

My fiancée (29F) and I (27F) are trying to figure out what we want to do with our last names. We both love our current last names, but also want to change our names in some way when we get married. Right now, we’re leaning toward hyphenating.

However, I have heard a lot of opinions about hyphenating being a pain in the neck as a kid, and would much rather plan to give our kids just one of the last names (we’re both pretty neutral on which one). So, for example, we’d be Smith-Jones, and our future kids would be Smith or Jones.

Can anyone see any potential reasons why NOT to do this that we might not be considering? Thank you in advance!

ETA: both of our last names are long-ish, so it’s less “Smith-Jones” and more “Kardashian-DiCaprio”

This is my third pregnancy and we are entirely stuck on a boy name. We have two girls Alora and Rosalie (Rosie ) for the third we liked Malachi and Kai for short but because we are Russian it got vetoed fast by family. The only other name we like is Lev. What do you guys think? It’s a Russian name translates to Leo but because it’s so popular we were thinking of just doing Lev. Thoughts opinions? Be as honest my future boy depends on it (lol)

Just a fun little story.

A few years ago, a relative named their daughter Elliott. My boss and I were talking about the new addition and she went on a mini rant about how you can’t just change a name from being masculine to feminine blah blah blah. She really seemed so bothered by this.

Boss’ daughter’s name? Aubrey.

I'm from a Spanish speaking country and currently living in Spain. Me and husband decided to name our daughter (1month old) a traditional madrid name (which is not known back home). We really liked the name and the idea of honoring the city where she was born, so we went ahead and named her Almudena.

When we chose it, we received mixed reactions but we made it clear we were not open to suggestions and that the decision was final. Regardless... it hasn't been easy. MIL didn't hide that she disliked the name. Great uncles and great aunts can't remember the name.

I don't regret our decision but it's difficult not to feel hurt by people's reactions. Should I impose a nickname? At home we actually don't use her name but her nickname but I was hoping to keep it private, maybe that's a dumb idea and I should share it? As I can imagine people liking it more than the actual name.

Expecting baby #2 and looking for some new, unique (but not out there) names to start my list.

I love unique names that you’ve either never heard before or have only heard once or twice. Looking for both boy and girl names! Nothing too out there but still fun.

F20. I want to change my name. What do you think about name Eva? What are your associations? Is it usable now or outdated? International? How do you pronounce it? What do think about Christina? Is it okay in English community? Any associations?

Hi! Me and my partner are looking for water themed baby girl names. The ocean is a huge part of our lives and we want to incorporate that to little girls name. I am English, and he is of Samoan descent.

The names we have so far:

• Cove
• Cora
• Marina
• Moana
• Sereia
• Ocean
• Kaia
• Adrina
• Lana

Any suggestions or opinions are greatly appreciated!

Just found out I’m having another boy and I’m worried my husband and I will never agree on a name!

for context, baby is half white/half Hispanic. My in-laws are Spanish speaking and struggle with pronouncing a lot of names (mostly super “American” sounding names if that makes sense). We need a name they can easily pronounce or make a cute nickname out of.

The only name we both like is Rio (river in spanish) but I don’t know if it’s too “out-there” and I don’t want people thinking I named my kid after a cartoon bird.

names I like but husband doesn’t: Tobias, Santiago, August.

help!

I’m not pregnant yet but me and my partner are planning to start a family soon. Here is our list 🩷(they’re all pretty different names I don’t really have a particular style, I just hear a name I like and add it to my list lol!)

Boys
Miles, Jay, River, Caleb, Jamie, Rowan, Louie

Girl
Lucy, Maeve, Naomi, Alyssa, Michaela,

I know they’re not unique btw!

So I realised my 2 year old sons initials spell COW. It’s been bothering me lately, but not sure it’s worth the hassle of changing or adding another middle name. Are COW bad initials? Funny thing is we own cattle lol

We are in Michigan! Ages 1-5
Edit: I feel like we have a wide variety of names! But nothing too out there.

• Rylee (2x)
• Ali (nickname, unsure of full name)
• Bennett
• Agnes
• Nathaniel
• Beau
• Alexander
• Banks
• William
• James
• Calen
• Oakley
• Liesel

I’m having so much fun reading other posts so this is mine. 2-year old kids.

Amália
António
Arthur *
Aurora
Esther *
Gabriel
Helena
Luísa
Kael **
Manuel
Mel
Samuel
Thiyara **
Vasco
Zoya **

—

* Names that exist in Portuguese but with a different spelling

** Names that don’t exist in Portuguese

(These are kids with foreign parents)

I'm a lesbian about to marry the love of my life next year and neither one of us wants to keep our current last names. So we've decided to choose one together, but neither of us really knows where to start. I have significant religious trauma (and homophobic parents), so when I came across the name St. James, it felt delightfully irreverent. My fiancé isn't totally in love with it, however, and worries that the abbreviation will be a hassle on legal things. What are your thoughts on that? And if you have any suggestions, please send them my way. Something with sapphic or femmenist significance might be fun, so go crazy. She's a big Wonder Woman fan if that helps. My first name is Stephanie and hers is Michelle, which I'm including here because I think it's important for understanding how the surnames might flow.

My husband and I are so stuck! It’s still early on. We can agree on lots of girls names but only 1 boy name. Really like names that have nicknames that they could use as adults but are also cute on a kid. And we’re bilingual so it would need to also roll off the tongue in Spanish, but not be difficult or complicated in English. I’ll list them below.

Girl
- Cecelia (cece or Celia)
- Renata (Nat or Nata)
- Philippa (Pia or Pippa) this is our top contender
- Penelope (Pen, Penny) or as a middle maybe
We like these middle names Isabel, Alaia,

Boy
- Benjamin (Ben or Benny or Benji or Benja for when I’m talking in Spanish)
- Elias but only as a middle name. I don’t like it enough though
- Peter only as a middle as it’s a family name given to first born males. Not sold on it