The System of Naming a Baby

When you find out that a loved one of yours, may it be your mom, aunt, cousin, friend, or anyone, is expecting, a lot of excitement jumps in. In the first three months, there might be fear involved because it is a very uncertain stage of pregnancy where the parents are afraid of their every move which could endanger their child. After some time when the tension has reduced, it is time to talk about the baby’s name. This is where you gain more knowledge about the names of boys and girls than you know about alphabets. Our family was also involved in this name search where we all gave inputs on what name should be given. I myself was once a part of this and would love to share this experience with you.

The task of shortlisting and suggesting a few names to a person will most likely take more than half of your day. The reason it takes so long is that there are many things to keep in mind while suggesting names. Let’s list it out for you.

The most important thing when it comes to names is the preference of the parents. Having a chat with the parents is important where you can understand their opinion on certain names and what they are searching for when they name their child. Suppose a person likes names like Reyansh or Ayansh, then you would assume they like names ending with a “sh” so you recommend names like Aadhish or Vivansh. This aspect is very customized, do they like long or short names? rare or popular names? universal or names of their culture specifically? unisex names or a defined boy/girl name? Always remember these preferences while searching for names.

I assume that if one is given the task to suggest a name for a baby, they are familiar with the baby’s parents. This familiarity is necessary to know things like whether the parents are attached to a specific god or person. You must have heard names like Saanvi (Goddess Lakshmi), Shiv (Lord Shiva), Shriyan (Lord Vishnu), etc. These all names are named after gods. Also, we all know how Indian rulers have names ending with ‘II’ like Rajaraja II indicating that there was a Rajaraja I before him. In these cases, the princes were named after famous rulers. Sometimes, people name their child after their mother, friend, etc. to in a way say that they want their kid to be like that person. Sometimes parents even combine their names to form a name. You can suggest these aspects to the parents in case they are open to such ideas.

A name is something which one is called by regularly. Therefore you should consider whether the names you suggest are easy to say daily. To do this, I kept on saying a name to myself to test whether I am comfortable calling someone that name often or being called that name often. Another thing to take care of is that the name should have a beautiful meaning. Names are one way of describing how much a child means to you or the blessings you bestow your child with. For example, Ishita means mastery depicting a quality the parents blessed their child with (somewhat like how in stories angels come and bless the child with good qualities). Abhilash means desired, showing that the child is wanted by the family indicating how much he means to them.

The last thing which I almost forgot about but was reminded of by my mom was to give many options to the parents. Knowing exactly which type of name a person would like is harder than you think, hence with more options available, the chance of a couple liking a name increases which is all the more helpful to them.

After the parents had gone through the 12-13 names I had suggested they said that they like one name which excited me for not more than five minutes because after that I realized that they had rejected the 12 other names which I worked hard and shortlisted. However, I tried to make myself satisfied about the fact that at least one name was selected. This rollercoaster of emotions is bound to happen but that shouldn’t stop one from enjoying this experience. I loved this system of choosing names and hope that one day a name I have suggested would be the final name of a child. Even if it isn’t, it won’t matter much as a new life would have entered the world and regardless of their name, I will love them.