Hi there everyone.
Joanna has written in to YouTube asking how to go about finding a baby name for her new
baby.
This is such a fun question, finding a baby name is a real, thing you know, for parents
and for me I know that I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of name I wanted,
you know, looking on websites, looking in books, so here's what I want to recommend.
First I would start with the internet, and I would start with websites.
And maybe there's a certain type of name that you are considering, such as in my example,
you know we have Irish family, we have Swedish family, so I did look at some of those names
to see if I got some inspiration.
You also can look and see on the Social Security Administration's website, what were, you know,
the most popular, I think it goes up to a couple hundred, baby names each year.
So if there's a name you particularly like, you can see, you know, how popular that name
was, or it might give you some ideas about what kind of names other people are liking.
After that, I really used some amazing books which I really liked.
And here's kind of what we did, and I hope this is helpful.
I just really wanted names that were a bit classic but also sort of different.
But then I was worried my kids wouldn't like those names, so for their second names I gave
them very, very, you know, traditional family names.
Thinking that if ever they didn't like their first names, they could use the second family
name so they would kind of have an option, I don't know if that's appealing to you.
I guess I would say you can kind of do this in three ways, one, you can do a name that's
completely different.
Two, you can do a name that's pretty classic.
And three, you can do a family name.
So, we kind of did a combination of doing a different name and a family name, and from
the text of this video on my site, I'm going to link through to another video I did about
our baby names and how we chose them.
Anyway, I hope this is helpful to you.
Have fun with the whole thing, but here's one other piece of advice.
I actually recommend really trying to have a sense of what baby name you like before
you go to the hospital or the birthing center to have your baby, or maybe you're having
a home birth, and here's why.
A lot of people say you need to see the baby before you can make a decision, I found that
with all the hormones and everything going on that once the baby, you know, was with
us, I really got a little wacky and I was considering names that I otherwise really
wouldn't have considered.
So I'm actually a big fan of having a, you know, at least a top list before you go in.
And I was like calling people, calling my sister, calling my friends, interviewing nurses,
like it got a little out of control.
And with one baby we actually left the hospital a good three or four hours after we could
have because we couldn't settle upon a name, we were between Annaliese and Annalia, and
one of my best friends Melissa had a daughter named Annaliese, my husband thought that she
would be offended if we essentially took her baby name, so from New York hospital I had
to get her on the phone and ask her permission, and she was so lovely about it, I'll never
forget it.
I love her dearly.
So anyway, we both have an Annaliese, and that was the right name for us an I'm glad
we chose it so I'm glad I made that phone call even though by that point my husband
was ready to like, he was so angry at me.
So anyway, I hope this is helpful to you, keep me posted on what you choose, best of
luck finding a baby name.
And best of luck with your new baby.