Choosing your baby’s name is one of the first big decisions you will make as a parent. It will accompany you for a lifetime, so it is something that parents think about a lot because we want to be sure of choosing the best name for our son .
The intention is not to influence the choice, each one gives their child the name they want (it would be missing more!), But so that you take them into account, we tell you some mistakes that parents tend to make and that you surely do not want commit when choosing your baby’s name .
1) Choose the fashionable name
Here is a very important clarification. To taste the colors, and just as there are parents who want the super-original-ever-heard name for their baby, there are others who prefer the most popular names of the moment.
Just know that if you choose a fashionable name, this implies that your son or daughter will have the same name as five other classmates and that when you call him or her in the park, he or she and a few other children who have the same name will turn around. .
Despite this, there are names that we have always liked and we want our children to wear them. What am I going to tell you that my youngest daughter is called Sofía, the most popular name in the whole world (and I don’t think she made a mistake when choosing it). But it is a warning for you to take it into account, because there are parents who regret having given their child the fashionable name.
The INE (National Institute of Statistics) has a tool to know how many people in Spain have a certain name. It will help you to know which are the names most chosen by parents, and not choose them. Or yes, if that’s what you want.
2) Bad initials
Something that we must take into account when choosing the name of our children is how they will combine their first and last initials. We do not want them to form bad acronyms, shortenings or acronyms such as HDP, FYI, ONVI, NASA or WTF.
3) A very difficult name to pronounce
There are parents who want maximum exclusivity and choose unpronounceable names for their little offspring. They add or change the order of some letters and then the children spend their whole lives clarifying how it is pronounced and how their name is written .
4) Not taking into account the name of the siblings
There are parents who do not take it into account when choosing the name of their next baby, without realizing that many times they will call their children pronouncing one name after the other.
It is important, on the one hand, that they sound good together, and on the other not to make mistakes such as calling two girls Isabel and Elizabeth, or two boys Juan and Jon (in Basque), which is the same name in different languages .
5) That combines fatally with the surname
It is important to write and pronounce the child’s first and last name to see how they sound together. You don’t want to make rhyming mistakes like “María Lauría”, “Enrique Manrique” or “Raúl Seúl”. Also avoid that the name coincides with the surname as Gonzalo González. It sounds very monotonous.
Not to mention names that together with the surname lend themselves to ridicule like “Dolores Fuertes” or “Armando Puertas” or that lend themselves to puns like “Elsa Pito”, which will make them the target of ridicule.
You will also have to take into account if you choose a long name and it will also have a long last name, it can sound very tiresome, or on the contrary, if the first and last names are too short. Although here, once again, it is a matter of taste.
6) Follow the name day to the feet
Nowadays it is not as common as before to name the children of the saint of the day, in fact it is hardly taken into account. The child may be lucky, but also be born on a not very graceful day like “San Pancracio”, for example. Maybe you like the best.
7) Too quirky or ridiculous a name
Some seem like a joke but they are not. There are very ridiculous names going around the world. There are parents who choose names as geeks as Google, Facebook, Superman, James Bond, Ikea or Pocahontas. Think of your son and what it can take for him to carry such a bizarre, and sometimes even offensive, name throughout his life.
Many give their children names of brands such as Adidas or Nike, or of fictional evil beings, of superheroes or phonetic transcriptions of other languages … There is no limit to the daring of parents who give their children what they do to the majority They seem mean or ridiculous names to us. And then the children who are ashamed of the name they bear pay for it.
8) Choose a name to follow tradition
When your child’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather have the same name, you may feel pressured because the baby on the way has the same name. But it is important that, above all, it is a name that you both like .
9) Take into account the opinion of others
Finally, the choice of the name is something that should be left to the couple, since they are the ones who choose and decide.
If you start asking friends, family and co-workers for opinions, you will receive all kinds of comments that will condition you when choosing . They will tell you how badly a person with the same name falls, or that it is the same name they had in mind for their baby, and it will end up limiting your choices.
In Babies and more | The seven best applications to choose the perfect name for your baby, what name do we give it? 15 keys to choosing the perfect name for your baby
