Quite possibly one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make. How do you decide on a name that your children will have for the rest of their lives? It’s such a tough one and an incredibly important one at that.

There are endless possibilities and pretty much anything goes nowadays. You can take inspiration from family members, story books, nature or astrology. We’ve put together some inspirational lists for you below and a few of the team are also sharing how they came up with the names of their little ones. And you can find more inspiration in our previous round up of the predictions for the most popular baby names of 2016.

Me {Lottie}

I guess I have a certain preference for more traditional names. A bit ‘granny chic’ if you like. Luckily Edd was on the same page as, believe me, it’s hard enough finding a name you both like.

With Molly that was really the only name we liked. We knew we were having a girl and Molly was just perfect. Milly was a back up but Molly was always the front runner. Her middle name is Rose as that was my grandparents’ surname.

Alice was very different. We didn’t know we were having a girl and had already used up our trump card. We just couldn’t agree and despite having a shortlist for boys and girls none seemed quite right. Even whilst in the throes of labour we were disagreeing on the names. Needless to say the poor child had no name for the first two days of her life. We were finally put on the spot by family and went back to Alice which had been one of our original favourites. I have no idea where her middle name ‘Florence’ came from. It wasn’t even on the list but Edd suggested it and I love it.

Lorna

Apart from the fact that I was completely obsessed with all ‘E’ names. The inspiration for Elliott’s name may have come from the film E.T!

Similarly with Joseph I was obsessed with all names beginning with ‘J’ but when we heard that Rob’s grandad’s first name was Joseph and not Roly like we thought, we just had to incorporate the name back into the family line.

I was ALWAYS convinced I’d have a little girl and call her Eleanor, but Rob thought Elliott and Eleanor were too similar so it was vetoed 🙁 Then Elliott suggested Anabelle after a character he was reading in a book and it stuck.

All the children have middle names after family members too. The boys have my Nans’ and their Grannies’ maiden names which also happen to be my Dad and Rob’s middle names, and Anabelle’s middle name is my other Nan’s forename. It is SO hard naming more than one child, trying to find names that complement the first. One thing that really upsets me is hearing my children’s names abbreviated, but this is a whole other post!

Fern

We only really had a few options for both genders, and so when we had a girl it was either Eva or Elle – I like E names too 😉 I wanted something unusual and there seemed to be lots of little Eva’s around, so we went with Elle. Although as is always the way, there are lots of Elle’s around now too – so I suppose I must have been inspired subconsciously by something…

Baby Name Inspiration

 

Hope that provides you with a bit of baby name inspiration. How did you decide on your names?