We ran into a little girl named Charlotte the other day and I mentioned that it had been on our short list for #2 who turned out to be a boy and didn't get to be named Charlotte.

What names were on your baby name list and didn't get used?

Max's emergency boy name (cause he was supposed to be Sophie) was Charles. I was gunning for Charles-Wallace cause I'm a huge Madeleine L'Engle fan.

Morgan would have been Flannery Rose if he'd been a girl. Morgan is a boy's name after all.

And yes I was an English major for 2 years.

Direct from my text file. Only one of these names got used:

catalin
sabina
eda
matea
marisol
soledad

dominic
ramon
eron
pascual
sebastian

The question is. Do we save them for another baby or think of all new ones?

We had Anna Tharshini for a girl, but unfortunately we didn't get to use it.

Little B was almost a Garrett. But that was the only other serious contender. AlphaGeek and I almost came to blows over picking a boys name. We really couldn't agree on any of them!

For the Little Miss, it was a toss-up between Ava and Ada. When I found out my FIL's grandmother was Ada that decided us. And the 'Rose' seemed to magically attach itself. And I do find myself actually calling her Ada Rose fairly often.

Ada is a town in Oklahoma, so even though I like the name, it was never an option for us. I heard it mentioned too often in weather forecasts and such. Odd, I know.

We only had one boy name and one girl name. My husband's cousin had a baby boy a few years after GirlWho was born, and they used our boy name. We'd never mentioned the boy name, but it's not really unusual. It's a nice name, and my husband is a big X-Men fan - Logan. I forget what our middle name choice was.

The Girl would have been Elijah James if she had been a boy. We're still holding on to that one if our next kid is a boy. Emily Rose if it's another girl.

MNM - The Girl's name is Ella Rose. We call her the full name quite often. She calls herself her full name all the time.

I refuse to give out my girl's name on the off chance we decide to have another kid and it's a girl. We call Smudge "Ollie Grey" all the time. It's a name like Ada Rose where it all rolls off your tongue.

GirlWho is Madeleine Rose. It frequently comes out all together, too. I had no idea that Rose was going to be so popular!

Our Rose would have been to honor Sailor's grandmother. But we had a boy and two years later Sailor's brother beat us to the punch.

We already have a girl middle name picked out. We're going to call her _____ Holiday. After Doc Holiday.

Both of the first two shorties were going to be called Shane, but they never made it out of the hospital with that name. And we learned we were having #3, we were both kind of tired of that name. Luckily, we already had a girl name picked out, so we are finally getting a chance to use it now. Although I'm sure there is a chance it'll change by the time she's actually born.

MttM, maybe you can call her Summer? Or Roman?

We had Charlotte on our list for a girl as well. It didn't make it to the top and we ended up with a boy. Good thing, too, since Mr. Shoes's cousin had a baby girl before we had littleshoes and named her Charlotte. I also really liked Scarlet, but someone pointed out that, with our last name, it would have sounded really "goth."

Like McG, I'm also holding on to my alternate names for the next one.

We could never agree on a girl's name but we had the boy's name picked out from the beginning. The first two are the same as my husband's (and his uncle, grandpa and great-grandpa) and then his middle name is my uncle's and and my husband's god-father's name (Peter) who both died within about a week of each other when I was about 1 month along and before we had told anybody yet. Once we found out we were having a boy, we stopped discussing the girl names. We are hoping for a girl next time so we should probably figure out a name!

I too am hanging onto our names just in case. But I would have to have a football team to use all the names I love!

BDQ - my Italian grandmother was called Ella - short for Rafaella. And how funny is it with all the girls' middle names being Rose.

It's like how half the girls born in the 70's came out with 'Marie' as their middle name.

Before we had kids, my mom got so desperate for grandchildren that she actually went to a psychic to find out when me and my sisters would have kids. The psychic predicted that I would have three boys, two of which would be twins. I laughed at the prediction, saying the psychic probably picked that number out of a hat.

To prove my point I went to a different psychic and asked the same question. Shockingly, I got the same answer. AlphaGeek and I referred to it as The Prophecy.

It never came to pass (thank Isis for small favors), but I did have two twin names picked out: Aidan and Avery.

We were planning on William if the Parasite had been a boy, shortened to Liam. He would have been William the third, technically, although Dad doesn't go by his first name. However I'm very glad tP turned out to be a girl for many reasons -- not the least of which is that we now see boy babies named Liam every way we turn.

For middle names for tP, after we learned her gender, I was lobbying for Valentine. She's a character in one of my favorite books and the name means "strong." Which I felt was especially fitting when she started trying to punch her way out my side. But the Mr. put his foot down and we went with something a little more conventional.

Anybody else place as much importance on name meanings as the aesthetics of the name?

Eden
Marisol
Winter (even though we scratched it because she was a summer baby)
Bellatrix

boy- Roman

We used up both of our girl names but if we had boys they would have been nathanael and euan. I am still hoping to use one or both of those names in future.

We had a boy name picked out since number 2 - Vincent. But before we found out number 3 was a boy, I decided I didn't like that name. And then we found out it was a boy, and, well, it was just his name. I wanted to use Elliott if it was a boy or a girl. After my father and grandfather. It was going to be a hard sell if #3 was a girl. no worries. Other options were Charlotte, Anabelle. I also liked Elanore, Ellen
I love old, simple names. And apparently the letter E.

Ronan was going to be Kellen. As a strange twist of fate, we now know a Kellen who is just a few days younger - weird. I really really really wanted Riley to be named Olivia, but my husband didn't. She works as a Riley though, so I'm glad.

My niece is Ella Marie (really Gabriella, but nobody calls her that) and my other niece is Audra Rose. Both my sisters named them for my mom--Rose Marie.

I have noticed that Rose is a very popular middle name these days. Not just here, but there are at least 2-3 girls in both N's and A's classes who have that as well.

If Nathan had been a girl, he would probably had Rose in his name someplace because Mom would have been pissed if not. So he would have been Anna Tharshini Rose S. But by the time I was pregnant with Andrew, we already had Audra named for mom, so he would have been just Anna Tharshini S. Tharshini is part of the name of all Mr. S's sisters--Sutharshini, Priyatharshini, and Rupatharshini.

Hey ks? Do your sister in laws go by just the first part? I taught a Priya once and it didn't occur to me that that could have been a shortened name.

Atomic, I never did, but both my boys have Tamil names which mean, respectively, "like god" and "godly". I didn't do that on purpose, but I do like how it turned out.

Our son was going to be Owen or Henry - then for some reason after a scary emergency c-section I declared his name was Sam. I have no recollection of this and two day after his birth I stated crying and asked who named him Sam. Luckily the name suits him very well. we decided on a name for our daughter and never wavered.

We had absolutely no boy names for Peanut Pants if she had been a boy. We had tapped out our naming skills with our boys. I think I've mentioned it, but we have A Thing where we all go by our middle names, and we couldn't think of any boy's name that had a good middle name. When the doctor declared that she was a girl, we were completely relieved, because he would have gone home as Baby Boy.

We had considered Emilyn for a girl...we liked Emily, and Lynda was my mother's name, and the combination of the two wasn't too bad, but we decided to go ahead and use Lynda as her first name since we couldn't think of anything that went with Emilyn.

Although, I really, really, REALLY like the name Xiomara (we would have called her Mara), but since no one would have ever been able to pronounce it, we decided not to torture her with an impossible name, since so many people mangle our last name as it is.

Similar to Bap - straight from the word doc...
Boy
Conan
Makani
Lance - I hate this one but The Surfer loved it.
Quiron (KIRON)

Girl
Hera
Sophia Moana
Grace
Anna

Sigh. Those girl names *ALMOST* make me want another one.
The deal was to have The Surfer pick the final girl's name and I would pick the final boy's name. He picked Sohpia Moana and I picked El Destructo's name - Kai Marcus.

Some very beautiful names here. I like the shift to more 'traditional' sounding names... even though I did not pick that for my own kid.

our left overs are:
boys- siddharth, nigel
girls- svati, blake, ghanima (from Dune)

I'm definetly done making my own babies, so I probably won't get a chance to use any of them.
we ended up using the one gender neutral name we liked.

Oh MttM by the way... Charles-Wallace -- LOVE it!

Only leftover was the girls name we had picked out; Eleanor Mary after both great grandmothers, to be called Ellie. Never got my girl :(

If my boys had been girls, they'd have been Magdalena Elise and Willow Mahal. William is a leftover boy name. My husband put the kibosh on Kivrin (as a girl's name) and Charles-Wallace.

None of mine are extras exactly, since none have been used yet. But since I'm weird and like to see them written down, here they are. For girls, I like Anastasia Marie and Carmen, in that order. Boys would be Michael Alexander and William (Will) Robert. And because I'm crazy as well as weird, I'm also highly amused that boy/girl twins would have sort of inverse initials and that the initials of a Michael Alexander Ourlastname would spell out the shortened version of my first name.

All pretty tame, I guess, but after having gone through life with a name no one can spell, I'm okay with that.

heh. coming from ethnic NY families, names were to come from the families, so look at my elder relatives and you see names that were not used.

When Seb was born, I wanted Paul Sebastian (Paul = my grandfather, Sebastian = my uncle and also my middle name), but she wanted Sebastian Paul. After suffering something like 95431596053548374311596 hours of labor, she won.

When Sophie was born, we agreed from the start: Sophia Ilona (Sophia = my aunt, Ilona = her grandmother).

When I was preggo with Girl6 I wanted her middle name to be Khalil, but we couldn't agree on a first name. I really liked Iman (a very sweet former student), but everyone who heard it asked, "like the model?!" We went back and forth between Leilani (DaddyMartini's choice) & Layla (mine). She came out wailing, and when the doctor asked what her name was, I answered Layla and she kept wailing. DaddyMartini said, no, her name's Leilani and she instantly stopped. the dr. said, I think she's made her choice. So we ended up with Leilani Khalil and it totally suits her; she was opinionated from the very beginning.

Boy3 is Miles Joshua, which was our boy name the first time around. If he would've been a girl, he would've been Malia or Kaia.

Blaise, Cash, and Darius are our boy names that didn't make the cut.

Oh, and some of the options that didn't get used (some could have, some never):

Corradino
Joseph (Giuseppe)
Louis (Luigi)
Vincent (Vincenzo)
Frank (Ferenc)
Rose / Rosa
Mary
Rosemarie
Antionette
Blanche (Bianca)
Lucia
Kathy (Katherine, Katalin)

I knew these darling twins named Sophia and Lucia.

MozMan - most of my mother's family still lives in Ecuador, but I'm dreading meeting them, because everyone is named after everyone else. There are several Francisco's, Maria's, Cristina's, and Daniel's. I know I'm going to get very confused.

My Italian father kept INSISTING that we name little B 'Gino'. I'm not sure where that came from, but it sounded ridiculous with our current last name.

MNM - Gino yourlastname is either a great porn name or a bad sci-fi name. I love your last name, but it really needs a more Anglo-Saxon type first name.

re: Sophia - I had always heard stories about my great-aunt Sofa. Yes, Sofa, as in "couch." I thought this was such an odd name, but my family insisted that it was a common and lovely name. I finally saw her name on a family document several years ago - Sophia. When translated into Okie, you get "Sofa."

i'm gonna hafta wait to answer this properly until we've finished having kids, cos some of those names are still on the whiteboard. it took me FOREVER to get DaD to like my no. 1 choice for a boy's name, so i don't want to say it out loud in case i jinx it, and someone tells me that their aunt mabel had a pet monkey/python/slug with that name, or something equally deterring. as for girls' names, she was almost a Sadira, but combined with the surname was sentencing her to a lifetime of 'how do you spell that's", so we opted for the more user-friendly Sabrina. Which is at home in almost any language. Yay!

Ebay would've been either Felix or Matias. I wanted Portia, but in Spanish that means "pig" so Hubby vetoed it.

mamawho - hahahahahaha! Your poor aunt went through life called 'Sofa'? That's so wrong. But funny.

And yeah, I think my father might have discovered the joys of weed in his old age. There is no other accounting for it.