The Naming Game

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell just as sweet."

Shakespeare

If you had told me 3-4 months ago that picking a name for our coming daughter would be this hard I would have laughed. Now, I've always figured we would never agree on a boys name, but girls names, no problem. From day one we have both agreed that we liked the name Makaela. The spelling was a compromise, but the name we agreed on. I was all set to declare her name to be Makaela. However, Chris has other ideas. He felt we needed a list of names to contemplate and choose from.

So the compiling of a list began. Chris wanted to know what criteria we were going to use. I told him, 1- it has to sound good with our last name (duh), 2- we had to like any of the obvious nicknames choices (thanks Bob) that could be come up with. Other than that we had to both agree on it. So we started throwing names around. Chris's solution to the bulky baby name books and websites was to pull out the yearbooks and go through the names of girls in the classes older and younger than us (less likely to have any association with the name that way). After going through the yearbook and adding a few other names we ended up with a list of 16- I know ridiculously long.

Slowly, but surely, we have hacked away at that list. One name or two were eliminated at a time for different reasons: I didn't really care for it, Chris wasn't feeling it anymore, it didn't really click as well with our last name, etc. At one point when the list was still larger I had Chris order the list in ascending order, favorite to least favorite and I did the same. I wanted to see how the lists compared. Oh boy, I sure didn't know where that was headed. Our lists were the complete opposite of each other. His top 5 were my bottom 5, and vice versa. Chris leaned toward the more common names while I liked ones that we a little more unique (yet not crazy). We did have one common name: Makaela. So yet again, I was all set to go with the name we had all along. But shortly afterward, Chris decided that he wasn't sure he like Makaela anymore and how it paired with Hunsaker. Grrr....

So now we have a list of 8 names. I told Chris my two favorites and a couple days later when I asked what he was going to name his daughter he said, "I thought we had it narrowed down to two names." So, for now I guess it is narrowed down to my two favorites. And those are: Makaela and Emily.

Yes, the names are an exhibit of our polarity on names. Makaela is more unique, while Emily is the 6th most popular name in 2010. Chris mentioned that he thinks it would be cute to be able to call her Em. So my thought is that I might be more open to Emily if I can give it a more unique spelling. I have loved that my name isn't the most common spelling out there. This is where we are at odds again. I decided that I love the spelling Emmalee, but can't get Chris on board. I've come up with some others that I like too, but I'm not sure I've gotten Chris on board with any of them. My reason for liking Emmalee is that Chris's middle name is Lee, so she would have part of her dad's name in hers. So, the name isn't set yet, but I'd like to know what you guys think of different spellings of Emily. So, go ahead over to the side and vote. This doesn't mean we will name her Emily, or that we will go with the spelling everyone loves, but I am curious to know what people think.