The baby names we didn't choose

Since our family is complete, I figured it's safe to finally put out there some of the names we didn't choose for our kids...

If we'd had another girl...
I love the name Genevieve (Francophile much?) and since I have a sister (unabashedly my fave) named Jennifer, it would have been kind of an homage.

And even though it seems ubiquitous now, my great grandmother's (and mother to my namesake great aunt Catherine) name was Grace, which I've always loved, though she was gone before I came along. We actually had a running fight between my sisters and I growing up as to who would have a daughter first and name her Grace. When my elder sister married when I was 17 (and she was 21), we figured she'd win. But then that didn't work out, and when she married again, it was her married name, so she was out and I was back in the running. Then my younger sister got married at 23, and she was in it, but then that didn't work out, and she is now happily unmarried, cohabitating, with no plans for kids. By the time I got married and was expecting a daughter (a million years later), we went a different direction, so ironically there will be no little Grace in our family after all.

We would have called Genevieve Grace, "Gigi", which is what my really cool (step) great grandmother (GG) went by to us, though her real name was Edith. She lived to be a very feisty 100, long enough to meet DH, before passing suddenly a few months after our wedding.

If we'd had another boy...
There are several boy names I like, though I think we would have needed a decent amount of time to agree on a second pair. Charles (Charlie/Chase) is another family name of mine and I've always adored Samuel (Sam), though DH would never have agreed to giving his son an alliterative name like he has, which is why Surya (Hindi for sun) also didn't make the first cut. Indian names are another post entirely...

I think names are so interesting... I love classic names, but even with classic given names both the kids and I (before and after marriage) are the only ones that have our full names, since our last names are not common. And for you history buffs the SSA has compiled a best of the century list. Did your name make the cut? If you count all the spellings/forms for mine, it actually comes in #2 (just ahead of my mom's). My dad is also #2 (#1 counting other forms) and my sisters (Jennifer, Emily and Sara) made it high on the list too.

Our twins' names

So for the big reveal...

Even though their names are not strictly common, I guess it turns out that unintentionally their initials (as well as their names) are on trend for 2012... (and apparently somehow influenced by me being a pre-med poms nerd from N WI, as Marissa Mayer used both names w/her kids born after ours). Here's the full explanation/story of how we decided on them (as promised), just in case you are interested...

Baby girl:  Marielle Claire Patricia S. (Mar-ee-el)

DH's name means "sea" in Hindi, and Marielle Claire means "bright" "star of the sea" and "wished for" (French, but also from the Dutch, Danish, German, Latin, Hebrew, etc.).  Marie happens to be my eldest sister's middle name (along w/half the free world) and I've always just loved the name Claire (which I guess could be seen as an homage to my home town).  Patricia means "noble" (English, Latin) and is my mother's name.  We will call her "Mari", which rhymes with sari and as a random aside with our last name (which sounds nautical, but means gold) makes her a marigold, which is the sacred flower of India.

Baby boy:  Alistair William Ratan S. (Al-iss-tur)

I've always loved the name Alexander (despite having an ex by that name, and not just because my name is Katherine (which is also Greek), a la "the Greats"), and my mother actually recently traced it back to the early 1700's as a family name (Alexander Harper was an ancestor of my late grandmother), but DH doesn't like nicknames in general and doesn't like the NN Alex at all (for whatever reason).  DH is a huge fan of all things Scottish (he jokingly claims to be half), think Scotch, golf, etc. and traveled extensively there when his brother worked in the UK.  Alistair is the Scottish (and English/Celtic) version of Alexander and both mean "defender of mankind".  Alistair also happens to be the name of one of his best friends since pre-school. 

William means "determined guardian".  I like Will for a first name, but with Mari it sounds like they rule 17th century England or have their own college in Virginia, so no dice.  My late grandmother's parents' names were Wil and Ella. :)  Ratan means "precious jewel" in Hindi and is the name of my late father in law, and is DH's middle name.

Baby names (and post #400!)

Sorry for those looking for a big reveal, we have yet to 100% finalize our babies' names and likely won't be sharing them much in advance of their arrival.  But when we do, I'll be sure to explain all the thought that went into them. :)  But I've been reading articles about a recent study that showed that nearly one in ten new parents regret the name they chose for their kids, up significantly in recent years.  Ouch! 

The top reasons given were that they bowed to peer pressure and chose "trendy" names and that their chosen name ended up being much more common than they realized.  Sadly, both of these are completely avoidable with a little common sense and research.

Given that my full name (Katherine Eliza) is traditional (as are all those in my family) and DH's (by Indian standards) is of a similar ilk, we were not terribly interested in bizarrely unusual names for the sake of being different, but rather ones that would mean something to us, hopefully grow well with the babies, and not scream anything other than that they are what they will in fact be, citizens of the world.  So we passed on common Indian and American first names, and plan to forgo the tradition of using DH's name as a middle name, but give them third names after his late father and my mother.  It also probably goes without saying that we weren't interested in matching twin names, unisex names, names inspired by popular culture, made up names, or anything that is misspelled for the sake of being clever.  There is plenty of that out there already.

The first names we are looking at don't happen to be in the top #1000 (by SSA measures), though the middle names are, but are not actually that unusual.

How did you come up with your baby names, even if you are not yet pregnant?