7 Seriously Funny Steps To Finding The Perfect Baby Name

Naming your child is probably one of the most difficult things you’ll ever have to do, unless you’re the mother who is also responsible for birthing them.

All parents go through a process to find the name that best suits their little bundle of joy, and it’s surprising how often you end up doing the same thing as other parents. The mums at SAHM know this process well, so we’ve compiled the 7 Seriously Funny Steps To Finding The Perfect Baby Name.

1. Make A List

At the start of the process you’re so full of hope. You browse the internet and start to make a list of all your favourite names, knowing that somewhere in the list will be your child’s name. It’s so exciting, you get caught up in it. All those wonderfully creative, slightly unusual names that you’ve come across in your life and harboured are right there on the page. You become a little paranoid when your friends, particularly the pregnant ones, ask you if you’ve chosen a name yet. If you do let one of your favourites slip in their company a certain madness comes out in you. No it’s mine, my own, my preccciousssssss…

2. Remove The Dirty Rhymes And Initials

Before you get too in love with anything, you need to start to slash and burn through your name list, and the best place to start is with the innuendo rhymes and initials. You might love the name Coral, but it’s hardly a stretch to imagine the poor girl in high school being taunted by the phrase “Coral does oral”. Same thing goes for names like Chester (Chester the molester) and Tucker (no need for us to tell you what that rhymes with). These might not bother you, but for your kid this stuff will matter. The same goes with initials, so write them down and make sure you don’t have a D.I.C or a B.J or, in the case of a chubby little boy I went to school with F.A.T. Poor Frankie.

3. Take Out Unexpected Meanings

Once you’ve gotten rid of the dirty rhymes and initials, it’s time to look for the unexpected meanings in the names that you’ve chosen. Say the name over and over again to yourself. Think about the responsibility you have in your hands. Got a last name that sounds like a word? Be cautious of what you use as a first name. Real life sufferers like Debon Ayer (an actress and producer), Tahra Dactyl (a real person), Dick Felt (an American football player), Mister Love (a sex offender), Bear Trapp (a hockey player), and poor Fonda Dicks (a 1970s high school basketball champ) all want you to pay attention to your child’s name. They’re already going to hate you as a teenager, don’t give them more fodder.

4. Survive The Partner Veto

Next comes the partner veto where you learn that all the names that you love so much, are names they just happen to hate with a passionate fury. Maybe they dated someone with that name, or really disliked someone with that name, or hate the name all together ‘just because’, but we can guarantee they’ll burn through what is left of your list like a summer bushfire. Watching them react with derision when you trot out the name you were so sure they were going to love is the emotional version of having the carpet pulled out from under your feet. Crash.

5. Buy A Book

Finally, with your name list whittled down to absolutely nothing, you cave and buy one of those enormous bibles of baby names. There are literally thousands of names in the book, and you and your partner think that surely in here you’ll find a name you can both agree on. So you decide to go through the book with a black marker, crossing out the names that you definitely don’t want your new spawn to be saddled with. The only issue is once both of you have gone through it that baby bible looks more like a classified government paper, covered in red-actions. You’re starting to get desperate.

6. Stress Sets In

Your due date is getting perilously close and you still have no idea what you’re going to call that bundle of joy that’s bearing down on your bladder. Baby, little one and bug are hardly appropriate monikers once your bump has bumped, and most evenings are now spent with the two of you throwing out desperate suggestions over yet another tub of peanut butter ice cream with pickles, or whatever else your body is craving this week. You start picking obscure names out of your family tree, your favourite book, that TV show you watched one time on the plane or random syllables strung together into something that might just be right. But it’s not.

7. But In The End

Then B-day rolls around with neither of you the wiser about what your child’s name will be. When the contractions start all that drama suddenly becomes less central in your mind. You just need to get this baby out, to push and push and get their little life started.

Then the code is suddenly cracked.

Maybe it happens when you’re in a peaceful break between contractions.

Maybe it happens when the birthing is done and the nurse hands you that little screaming bubba. Suddenly you just know; the perfect name for your new addition.