What to name our 5th baby?!?

I have four weeks until our baby is due… and we still haven’t made any firm decisions on names. I am sure we are overcomplicating things and being far too picky, however this being our fifth baby, it feels extra difficult to come up with names we love. Also, when you don’t know the gender, it makes it even more tricky. Let me talk it out with you (and please, please share suggestions or thoughts below!)…

We want to choose a name that goes well with the other four so there is a nice flow. For example, when we were in Chile last year, we met lots of cute little boys called Santiago (and nicknamed Santi), which I thought was such a beautiful name. But I just feel like we can’t go with that name because it doesn’t flow with the rest: Easton, Quin, Ivy, Marlow and… Santiago? I’m not convinced.

I have always liked the idea that each of my children has their own distinct first letter, so this rules out the letters, E, Q, I and M, crossing lots of beautiful girl names off our list like Maggie, Edith, Maeve and Imogen. (My mom had this rule when naming her children and it worked nicely whenever she needed to label things like laundry baskets or lunch boxes, etc. – we each had our own letter.)

Another big consideration for us is how popular the name is. We’ve always tried to choose names that are less common (not within the top 100), and I’ve never been able to choose a name for my baby that had already been used by a friend or relative. With all of our children’s names, they were the first people I personally knew with that name, and I liked that feeling of originality. The problem is, the more children I have, the more children I know. There are soooo many beautiful names that have already been taken by friends, colleagues or acquaintances, ruling out favourite names like: Wren, Romy, Coco, Nell, Joni, Lucy, Selma, Sonny, Julian, Jack, Raffi and Otto. (This is actually how we came up with the name Marlow. I have always loved the name Margot, but we had a couple friends name their baby Margot while we were pregnant and so we had to come up with something different. When my mom suggested Marlow, I loved it immediately!)

There is the option of choosing a family name, however we have always chosen family names for middle names and have already used up some of the best ones. My grandfather’s name is Leighton, which is a name I love and we haven’t yet used, but there is no cute or easy way to shorten it, and Leighton feels like such a big name for such a small person. (I told you I was overthinking things…)

This baby was conceived in Positano, Italy — one of our favourite places on this planet. We thought it could be fun to choose a name that stems from here, but again all of the Italian names are quite traditional or very Italian-sounding, and none of them seem to go with the rest of our children’s names (though they do go well with our Italian surname).

Ugh. Can you see our dilemma? Do you also have similar considerations when naming your children? I’d love to hear your thoughts, what sort of rules you have when naming your kids and any favourites you’d like to share.

Courtney x

P.S. I wrote a similar post when I was pregnant with Marlow and lots of people shared beautiful names with me (look in the comments section). We should really start a Babyccino name book!

I found the photo above on Pinterest. How cute! 

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