How did you choose your baby name/s?

Good topic OP! First of all we agreed that the mother should get 10 votes. So my criteria were:

1. My choice but he had to like it

2. They were getting his surname (that was rules back then if you were married) so had to flow with that

3. Because they were getting his surname the given name had to reflect my heritage

4. We had lived in Sweden before children and that inspired the names of 3 of them as these names also fit with criterion 3

I was browsing a magazine one day and there was a small story about the entertainer Peter Allen (this was probably 30 years ago). The story was about a newly released song, a lullaby written for his newborn niece. She had a lovely name that really appealed to me. I thought if I was going to have another baby (over my dead body, I already had 3), I'd have that name for a girl.

Well the body's still well and truly alive, the unborn baby is now 26 and she's got that name. The closest traditional name would be Bridie, but it's not Bridie.

DD named herself. I had a dream when 8 weeks pregnant that it was a girl and her name was X. Mentioned it to her father and he said ‘sounds good’ and she was X from that day on

DS1. DH wouldn’t commit so I said ‘it’s either A or B, you pick’ I liked A but he picked B. B was 6 mths old when dh says ‘I preferred A but knew you wanted B’.... now I’m glad we went with B

Ds2. Name I loved for ds1 but dh said no (name from home and away) when I suggested it for ds2 he said ok so I locked it in before he realised

Ds3. I was watching One Tree Hill while pregnant. Dh would come home for lunch and I would have it on. One day he suggested the main characters name saying ‘I keep hearing it an I like it’ again locked it in before he realised why he kept hearing it (it was on my list that he had already said no to)

DHs one rule was no names from tv shows and he doesn’t realise he ended up with two lol

Child #1 named after FIL (does not get shortened)

Child #2 named after my dad (gets shortened)

Child #3 we each picked a name we liked and went with my choice (just a name I liked) (doesn't get shortened)

All names are traditional, in the top 100 but only 1 in top 10 recently for boys.

I realise now we would have been a little stuck if we had a boy as we hadn't picked any boys names!

We have 2 children but didn't find out sex until birth so had to come up with girl and boy names each time. How it went was I suggested names I liked until he agreed. The girl's name we got almost immediately, boy's took longer. We had to come up with a boy's name twice but there was never any other contender for the girls name. Considering I've been pregnant 4 times but have just the 2 boys, we became quite attached to that girl name over years. I have never once pined for a daughter but it was actually quite difficult to say goodbye to that name forever.

No special significance or connection with either of my son's first names but each has the middle name of one grandfather.

I realise now we would have been a little stuck if we had a boy as we hadn't picked any boys names!

We had a girls name locked in from very early on. And a girls name locked in after DS died should we have had another.

It was almost bizarre how easily we agreed on the girls name.

My oldest I dreamed the name - then looked it up and found its meaning. We had a whiteboard in the kitchen and everyone was welcomed to write a name on there - so we went to the hospital with about a half dozen she could have been but she was definitely this name.

My younger we liked the nickname but the most common name that it comes from is far too similar to my own name to be contemplated. We then caught a story on the local news about a lady who had her name and we loved it. Again, it was one of a few that we went to hospital with (and each of them had their own stories) but this was her. We actually met the son of the lady at a party years later - daughter was the only one who he had ever met with the same name as his mother (although it is very popular in some regions of the world)

With our first, I wrote a list of names I liked & then told DH to pick one. Second time round, I said I like this name & DH’s response was sounds good.