1. If the last name is very unusual, think twice about a killer-unusual first name. Galadriel Gunsch is going to have a much harder time of it than Emily Gunsch.

2. If the last name is common (as is ours), try not to use names in the top 100 or so. We were scrupulous about this rule until our youngest, to whom we absentmindedly gave a very popular name. She went to school with a girl with the same name (variant spelling) a year ahead of her all through middle school & high school. They had the same pediatrician, the same pharmacy…the mix-ups were endless.

Bonus rule for the prescient: try to avoid future household names. My niece, aged 27, was given what turned out to be the same first-and-last name as a well-known racy television character. She was delighted to take her husband’s name when they married.

We’re working on number 2, and have a boy name picked out from the last go-round (Husband’s dad’s middle name husband’s middle name), but I’m stuck as stuck for a girl.

I like Ada Grace (two famous women computer scientists) but think Ada and Audrey are a little too close together. There’s already an army of the same name on my side of the family — one aunt, one grandmother and my sister all share the same name, and my sister’s middle name is after the other grandmother. I’ve been trying to find out what my maternal grandmother’s middle name was since it might be workable.

In short — naming girls is hard!

I kid, I kid. Thanks for the well-wishes! I’m due in November, and I have to say the reality of the whole thing hasn’t quite hit me yet.

We came up with a great name for the Munchkin, and wound up giving him my father’s (who had two daughters) name for his middle. Fitting, I think, because they are best buddies.

Congratulations!

Girls names can be difficult. Personally, I’d cut out all the names on the top 25 of the Social Security list. (Maybe even top 50.) And then you need to do research on what names are popular in your area, because they may not be on the top 25, and on what are “up and coming names.” A friend of mine fell in love with the “unusual” name Chloe four years ago. Now his daughter is one of five Chloes in her nursery school. You can also think of what kind of name you want: an unusual name (a truly unusual name); an old-fashioned name; a unisex name; a strong, traditional name; a family name, etc.

As far as naming your son after his father, in the Jewish tradition, babies are never named after living relatives, so that’s an out if you dislike your husband’s name. And when you do name a baby after someone, you only need use the first initial, which is how my baby daughter got the middle name of Jane and is named in honor of my MiL Joan, and of my aunt Jean. (Yes, I realize they’re same name, different traditions.)

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

And a GIRL!!!

And Glinda, if the husband won’t come up with any of his own, do what I’ve been doing: hand him a book of baby names and a pen, and tell him to put his initials next to the ones he likes. Give him a deadline of a month or so before your due date, and warn him that if he doesn’t pick any names out, that you’re picking the name, and he won’t have anything to say about it. You might not like any of the ones he’s picked, but then again, you might be surprised.

And yes, I hate it when there are a bazillion relatives. I would have loved to have put “Grace” on our list of girl names, but The Stonecutter’s cousin has a little girl named Grace. If they had a different last name, and/or lived in a different town, I would have done it anyway, but they don’t, so it would just be too confusing. Damn them.