Choosing the perfect name for our baby was no easy feat. The process started almost as soon as I found out I was pregnant, and took months of arguing, researching, and thoughtful consideration before we had finally decided on a good, solid name for both a boy and a girl. With all the wacky names that celebrities were giving their babies, we wanted something a lot more low-key and normal. While the name Apple might be cute for Gwyneth Paltrow’s kid, it simply would not work for a non-celebrity family such as ours. And names like Kal-el, which is Superman’s birth name and what Nicholas Cage named his son, were just too strange for us.

Not only this, but I wanted the name to mean something.  I spent many hours reading through baby name books and searching through websites, looking up the meanings of the names I liked. I’m not sure if sentimental is the right word for me, but I would say the names out loud as if they were being spoken for high school graduation or as part of marriage vows. If they sounded good, then they stayed on my list of possibilities. My husband, the more practical one, was good at noticing if the name would withstand any sort of teasing or mockery.

In addition, because some of my husband’s family speaks Spanish, we had to think about how some names translated. Take, for example, the name Cameron. In Spanish, this word means “shrimp.”  You can see that this name didn’t even make it to the list of possibilities. These are all things you have to consider before selecting just the right name for your baby.

For some reason, agreeing on a boy’s name was easy. Perhaps this was because I didn’t have too many opinions either way on male names.  My husband is a big fan of Wolverine from The X-Men.  There was no way I was going to name my son Wolverine, so we instead agreed on Wolverine’s actual name: Logan. As for the middle name, we were thinking of something from Greek mythology and my husband liked Apollo. So there it was if we would have had a boy: Logan Apollo.

Girl names were difficult. We went through countless ideas, but nothing we came up with seemed right. Once we found out that I was carrying a girl, that made the importance of creating just the right name even more stressful. After a while, my husband gave up and started coming up with the most ridiculous or old-fashioned names just to make me mad. They were actually kind of funny, though. Some of the ones that made me giggle included Brunhilda, Gertrude, and Mildred.

So, here were my name choices:

• Boy: Logan Apollo, Philip Anthony, Darren James, and Jackson Diego
• Girl: Emily Allegra, Jocelyn Serena, Riley Alyssa, and Avery Quinn

We eventually agreed upon the name Emily Serena and that’s what our beautiful daughter is named.  Emily means “industrious” and Serena means “serene.” Her nickname is Emmy. I think we did well with the Baby Name Game. Would you agree? 🙂