What’s in a name?

I know, three consecutive days of blog posts! I’m feeling very motivated with the blog at the moment and I have lots of ideas floating in my head, so whilst I’m feeling like this, I’m just going to keep going. I can’t say that it’s going to stay this way, I’ve a lot of work on, plus my little man, but I’m just going to go with this blogging flow whilst I can.

This is a post I’ve thought about for ages, but never written down before, although I meant to. How did you choose your child’s name? Was it an easy decision, or a difficult one? Was there a family name that had to be passed on, or did you have the freedom to make your own choice?

I’ve always loved names, although generally we don’t choose our own, they’re such a part of our identity. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to change mine when I was a child, usually inspired by a literary/TV/film character that I wanted to be like. I was never that keen on my own name – although I quite like it now – however, had there been a Colette von Trapp or a Colette of Green Gables I might have felt differently! 

So when it came to choosing baby names, I was ready. After all, I think it’s so important, whatever name you choose for your child, it is often their name for life, so it’s important to choose the right one. It was one of the first things I wanted to discuss when we first knew that I was pregnant. After all, I’d given this thirty-something years of thought – I don’t think my husband had given it thirty seconds worth! I drew up a list. My husband, who didn’t think that he had massively strong opinions on the matter, suddenly did, vetoing some names that I had put a lot of thought into. And I have to say that I vetoed many of his. But we did come up with a list of sorts. 

As we decided not to find out what we were having we obviously had two lists. The problem I found was that with girls’ names there was just so much choice – too much – and then, with boys’ names, not enough choice at all. Is that just me? Somehow there just seems to be less names! 

With girls’ names I had a few favourites, which would change over time. However, when it came to boys’ names, I had just one favourite, that had been a favourite name of mine for years. I’m not really sure why it became a favourite, it’s not a family name, or associated with a specific person or meaning, but I’ve always loved it, and that never changed. Not even throughout my pregnancy. Over the years, when I used to daydream about possibly becoming a mum one day and maybe having a son, I knew that was the name I’d want him to have. 

And he does.

Fortunately my husband loves it too.

Colette x