I’ve been asked a lot lately how we came up with the name Violet, so I thought it might be helpful to share our process for narrowing down names and how we chose “the one.”
As with most couples, Dave and I had playfully discussed what we might name our future children, but hadn’t gotten too serious about it before I found out I was pregnant. Once we knew naming a child was imminent, we started having more serious conversations about names we liked and ultimately began creating “the list.”
Our list consisted of boy and girl names that we both liked. We each both had a couple initial favorites, and then I would scour name lists online (Pinterest was particularly helpful) and would shout out suggestions that I liked. Whenever Dave agreed on one, I added it to the list, which was really just a note in my phone. We eventually narrowed the list down to five girl names and five boy names that we both liked enough that we would’ve been ok with naming our child those names.
From there, we each ranked the names 1-5, with 1 being our favorite. The names for each gender that had the lowest total number (as in, highest total ranking) were the winners!
We didn’t tell a lot of people the girl name we’d selected, but knew pretty early on in the pregnancy that we’d most likely be using Violet if we had a girl. It was Dave’s #1 choice and my #3. It grew on me throughout the pregnancy and now I’m really glad we ended up using it. I’m also glad we kept it a secret, which gave us the opportunity to change it at any point and prevented us from hearing any bad feedback about it.
Hudson, Violet’s middle name, was actually one of my choices for a boy’s first name, as it’s my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Dave didn’t love it as a first name, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to use it now that multiple of my friends have. But I talked him into it as a middle name and I think it’s the perfect gender-neutral complement to the super feminine Violet. And yes, we are aware that her initials are VHS. We discussed and decided no one her age will even know what that is!
What’s really fun about this process is that it led us to an agreed upon boy name if we happen to need one in the future, and a few other girl names (although I see that list changing if we were having another girl some day. I don’t want to give away all of our potential future names, but I’ve listed a few of the ones we discussed below:
- Boy – Jack, Hudson, Henry, Winston
- Girl – Ava, Leighton, Charlotte, Scarlett
Naming a child is a huge responsibility, but I’m really happy with how it turned out and I think Violet fits our little girl perfectly! I’d love to hear how you selected your children’s names. Let me know in the comments.
From Morgan to Mom 