How to Pick a Baby Name

The process that works is boring: gather wide, cut fast, then live with a small list for a couple of weeks. Most couples do the first part enthusiastically and never do the second, which is why the list is still 40 names long in the third trimester.

Give yourselves one week of gathering. Anything either of you likes goes on the list, with no debate, no eliminating, no reacting to each other's suggestions. Debate during the gathering phase is what makes people stop suggesting, and the good name is often the one someone was embarrassed to say out loud.

Then stop gathering and start cutting. Run the list through the six tests below, in order, until you are down to about five names. Five is the number where a decision becomes possible; twelve is not.

Finally, live with the shortlist. Use the names out loud for two weeks before you commit. Almost everyone finds that one name quietly drops away and one starts to feel like a person.

Say it out loud, at volume. You will say this name across a playground for the next decade. Names that are lovely on paper and mumbly in air get cut here. This test alone usually removes a third of a list.

Say it with your surname. Listen for the collision where one name ends and the next begins, and for rhymes. A first name that is beautiful alone can be unusable in front of your particular surname.

Check the initials, including the middle name. Two minutes now saves a decade of a child explaining their monogram.

Say the nickname you did not choose. Children get shortened by other children. If there is a diminutive you cannot live with, you are not really choosing the long form.

Weigh the spelling and pronunciation burden honestly. An unusual spelling is a small tax collected at every school registration, coffee counter and phone call. Some names are worth it, so decide deliberately rather than discovering it later.

Look up how common it is in your country, then decide what you want. Some parents are aiming for 'familiar but not top ten'; others do not mind three in a class. Either is fine, but knowing the number stops one of you assuming the other agreed.

Deadlocks are usually about veto power, not about names. Two things break them. First, each of you gets a fixed number of vetoes: three each, spent silently, no justification required. A veto with no argument attached ends the negotiating that makes both of you dig in.

Second, score separately before you talk. Each of you rates every surviving name out of five, on your own, without seeing the other's list. Compare only the totals. Names you both rated four or five are the real shortlist, and it is often shorter and less contested than the conversation suggested.

That is where the wheel comes in. Put the two or three survivors on it and spin. The point is not that the wheel decides; you can spin again, and you will if the result lands wrong. The point is that the half-second of relief or disappointment when the wheel stops tells you which name you actually wanted. Several couples do this and then choose the other name, entirely on purpose. That still counts as the wheel working.

If you are starting from nothing, borrow a starting list and cut it hard. These are common enough to be recognised in most English-speaking countries without being unavoidable: Noah, Leo, Oliver, Ezra, Arthur, Felix, Theodore, Isaac, Jude, Milo, Caleb, Elias, Hugo, Rowan, Samuel, Micah, Julian, Aarav, Idris, Mateo.

Paste any of these into the wheel above, add the names you had already, and start spinning to hear them in a random order rather than alphabetically. Alphabetical lists quietly favour whatever begins with A.

The same starting-list trick for girls: Maya, Ada, Iris, Nora, Elena, Hazel, Freya, Clara, Amara, Juniper, Sofia, Ruth, Naomi, Esme, Talia, Anika, Beatrix, Wren, Leila, Margot.

A note on middle names: they are the safest place to put a family name you feel obliged to use but do not love as a first name. That obligation is real, and the middle slot handles it without you living with the name daily.

Unisex options worth a spin: Rowan, Quinn, Sasha, Avery, Kai, Nova, Sage, Jules, River, Emerson, Alex, Robin, Charlie, Nico, Frankie, Blake.

If this is not your first child, run the shortlist next to the siblings' names before you commit. You will say the names together thousands of times. What you are listening for is not matchiness (matching sibling sets go out of fashion) but whether one name is markedly more formal or more unusual than the others in a way that will be noticed.

Two weeks, five names, used out loud. Call the bump by one name for a few days, then switch. Write each name on an envelope as if it were the birth announcement. Introduce the name to a friend and listen to yourself say it.

Watch for the name you keep forgetting to try. That is a decision you have already made without noticing. And keep two names alive until the birth if you can. A surprising number of parents look at their newborn and switch to the runner-up, which is only possible if the runner-up was still in the running.