the name game

I spent the entirety of my first pregnancy obsessed with picking a name for my daughter. We literally went through hundreds of names. I spent many sleepless nights on the computer doing research on the popularity, meaning, and origin of names. To add to the stress, I had to avoid names that would be difficult for my mom to say with her Japanese accent...we had to rule out Lulu and Rally right away which are two names that I love. The "r" and the "l" sounds are too tricky for the Japanese tongue. A week before I gave birth (and after hours of researching the name), we settled on "Lyla". It's a name from a movie called "August Rush" that Travis and I love. Since Lyla's birth, I have heard of several other babies with the same name. I can't help but get a tad bit peeved whenever I hear about it because growing up with my name in the 80's, I always had another "Jessica" in my class at school and I despised having to go by "Jessica H". I wanted to avoid that for my kids.

Next it was time to name my son. Our favorite name, "Wyatt", was out of the question because we have close friends who have already used the name. We knew we wanted a cowboy name, so we went through options like, "Ace", "Levi", "Cole", etc. Nothing sounded quite right. The first time Travis came to me with "Cody", I thought it sounded like a dog's name. But it grew on me. I started saying it over and over and really started to like it. Needless to say, I did my research on the name and it met all my criteria: 1) not on the top 10 list for popularity, 2) it's popularity on the chart has not been sharply increasing in recent years, 3) no one we know by the name, and 4) sounds like a cowboy character from an old western. Lyla gave her stamp of approval and Cody got his name.

Now baby names are a fun hobby for me and I love dreaming up names for our next baby. Babycenter just announced the most popular names for 2011 and I wanted to share in case anyone else out there is like me and finds it interesting!

Girls:

Sophia
Emma
Isabella
Olivia
Ava
Lily
Chloe
Madison
Emily
Abigail

Boys:

Aiden
Jackson
Mason
Liam
Jacob
Jayden
Ethan
Noah
Lucas
Logan

I was happy to see that "Lila" is only at #37 on the top 100 list and has actually been on the decline since 2010. Phew. Also, I was relieved to see that "Cody" is not on the list at all. I noticed that the name "Mason" has sky-rocketed since last year thanks to Kourtney Kardashian. Babycenter also has an article about trends for 2012 names sounding fierce and heroic. You can read it all here. Good luck with the baby name game to all my pregnant friends out there! I can't wait to hear what you come up with.