My Baby Names Over the Years

It’s funny. I wrote a post previously about life plans and it made me think about how set in stone I’ve been over the years with my baby names. I’m sure I’ve shared all of my previous baby names before but I thought I’d like to have them all written down in one spot.

For years and years as a child (9-22), I had a single boys name and a single girls name picked out. Sophia “Soph” Elizabeth and Lucas “Luc” David. The middle names for the first born of each gender remain set in stone. Elizabeth is my middle name, my mother’s middle name and my great aunt’s middle name. It’s a family tradition I wish the continue. On a similar wavelength, David was my late grandfathers middle name, but is also my paternal uncle’s middle name.

At the time, I honestly didn’t know where Sophia and Lucas came from, but I think they were inspired in part from two different places. My favourite television of all time is One Tree Hill and one of the lead actresses is Sophia Bush and one of the lead characters in Lucas Scott. Alternatively, I loved Teen Mom and one of the baby’s in the show was called Sophia. Then, Hilary Duff is my idol and she named her son Luca.

When I fell for my Luke, I realised I could no longer use Lucas as a name because I just don’t like the whole junior version of fathers and sons. I felt the two names came as a pair and therefore wanted to switch them both. I also recognised that with two children, I could actually have two boys and two girls, of course, so needed some back up names!

My girl names became Willow “Will” Elizabeth and Evelyn “Evie” Sarah. Willow is a name I absolutely love and with the trend of boy names being increasingly used for girl names, I thought Will was super cute. Evelyn (or Everly) is one of my all time favourite girls names, but I just don’t think it works well with the middle name Elizabeth, hence being the second choice. Sarah is my mum’s first name, but it was also his mum’s first name so very fitting.

For the boys it was Archer “Archie” David and Carter “Car” Jonathan. Archie is one of the cutest boys names to me, but I don’t live the long form Archibald. Luke and I met at archery, so Archer seemed perfect. Luke also had an uncle tie to the name David. Carter has been a name I really liked but it had no meaning behind it. It wasn’t until we had a conversation one day when I realised it was his granny’s maiden name and I thought that was meant to be. Jonathan is my uncle’s first name but also Luke’s middle name.

Now that we’ve broken up, I don’t know what to truly do. Whenever we spoke of baby names, we disagreed entirely. He wanted very traditional first names, whereas I wanted something a little more unique, without being outrageous. He never once particularly voiced a strong opinion for or against any of the names. Let’s face it, he rarely had a strong opinion of anything and I always left trying to decipher him.

I’ve always struggled with boys names and so I honestly have no idea what names to pick. Girls names come a little easier, but I have a difficult criteria, where I want them to be able to have a nickname from them. My favourite girls names at the moment, and have been for a couple of years now, are Wren *swoon* and Briar. However, I just don’t if I’m cool enough to do those!

I need help! What are your favourite baby names. Leave them in the comments below. I have to say, despite it all, I do think I’m quite set on the four middle names regardless, at least the first for each gender.