Tips on picking a baby name

Our first thoughts were to use a family name, but most of them just don't sound right, and the relatives we wanted to honor were mostly very outdated names. We then bought a baby name book with thousands of names, including the most popular, and several very obscure names.

We both went through and highlighted our individual favorites, then compiled a list of both of our choices. This list ended up being about 100 names, so it didn't help narrow it down much. Next we went through eachothers lists, I looked at my wife's, and vice versa. We crossed out the names the other had picked that we didn't like, and that actually narrowed it down to about 20 names.

We realized however that many of these names were in the most popular list of current names, and we did not want our daughter to be the 4th Eva in her class, so we just crossed off all of the names on the most popular list. That left us with a manageable list of 5 names that were unique and we both liked. We circled our collective favorite name off that list and will most likely use that name. However, we are taking three alternate names to the hospital in case we see our daughter and the name we picked doesn't feel right.

I think this will give us the best chance of having a name we like and our daughter will hopefully like. It is a big decision since she will be stuck with that name. But I guess she can change it when she's 18 if she really doesn't like it!