The Rules

Dave and I have created the most complicated baby naming rules. You wouldn't believe how much time we spend talking about our baby names, and how many word documents Dave has created with lists of names. And of course we try to have our next baby's name picked out. (Except for a girl, we have no girl names.) Here are our rules so far...

1. No boy/girl names. We want you to know the gender of our child based on the name.

2. No unique spelling. If there is a more common spelling of the name we have chosen, we use it. Both of us have sisters name Aimee. How many times do people spell their name right?

3. No kid's names starting with the same letter. It's hard enough to remember your kids names, and even harder to remember other people's kids names. We're going to make it easier on people by making all the names start with different sounds.

4. On that note, they can't end the same either. We had a Jess-ica and and Er-ica in my family, that's against our rules. No more names that end with ak, ey, or on. Not spelling wise, but sound wise.

5. We like our names to be all from a different genre. Some families have all names like: Brittney, Shaylee, Kylee or Henry, George, and Theodore. That's against our rules. So far we have: Isaac- Old Testament, Dawson- trendyish, Henry- Old Traditional Name, and Spencer- Latter-day prophet. Yes, we count Spencer even though he hasn't been conceived yet.

At this point we're struggling to even come up with another name that complies with our rules. We try to trick each other saying, "Hey do you like the name Tucker?" And then if the other one says yes we say, "NO Tuck-ER, Spenc-ER!" I told Dave maybe that means that we can only have 4 boys. But he still sticks with his fairly offensive phrase, "What's the point of having girls?" I try to remind him the importance of a certain woman in his life, but he just isn't into RAISING girls. Which is fine, since we have boys. But I think it would be fun to have a girl next. I wish I knew the genders and order of our future children. Wouldn't it be fun to know? I always wanted boys until now, but after having 3 boys I'm thinking it would be a very exciting event to have a girl, and I'm all about keeping things exciting. So we'll see if we can ever pull it off, we may just be a boy family.

Anyway, straying from the topic, naming rules. We think it's great to have naming rules in your family. Even if your rules are different than ours, as long as you stick to your rules we love it. But have you ever met a family that has one totally random name in there? It just doesn't fit with the others?

So true story- we know of a family who decided that the husband could choose the boy's names and the wife could choose the girl's names. After three boys I think she was wishing they hadn't made that agreement. The names of their children, in order, Peter, James, and John. But hey, they stuck to their naming rules!

So what are your naming rules? Let's hear them.