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We never knew any of the semester prior to birth.
For our first there was a boy name I had loved ever since first seeing it in the Bible. About the 3rd time I mentioned it my husband agreed. It has a great name meaning and I love the sound of it. The girl name we chose was Chloe also in the Bible less common from what we knew although in hindsight it was really popular on girls. We made a list of family names for middle names and picked what we thought went well with the first name. Glad we had a boy because I had a friend who had a Chloe with basically the same middle name a month before our son. We probably wouldn't have changed our girl name at the time but I'm glad our name isn't super popular.
For another kid we quickly agreed on our boy name Elijah which again is super popular recently. I had read a girl name recently that had the same meaning Elya. We weren't sold on the sound of it but that was a contender until birth. As we struggled to settle on a girl name I suggested we do Eliza as it sounded very similar to Elijah I figured we would like it and we did. We both thought we would have a boy and not need to worry about it. I of course told him if we used Eliza Elijah would be out for a future boy. He really like Elijah so we kind of threw out names until deliver. My baby came real quick and once we knew she was a she ultimately we just went with Eliza because we liked the sound better than Elya and figured either name we probably wouldn't do an Elijah. Again doing family names that we thought went well with the first names
For another baby we decided to stick with our Biblical first name and family name second name. I don't like the typical Mary Martha Ruth Naomi names so for girls we tended to look at ones that were less direct like Michaela, Danielle, Danette, Gabrielle, etc and pick a family name that went well with it. Our boy name again was pretty easy to agree on. We liked the meaning. Biblical. We had some family with the name but not direct family. I really liked a middle name for it and wasn't set on it because I didn't know it was a family name. My holdup was strictly liking that name more than family names. Then my husband told me it was his dad's middle name and I laughed because of course that's what it would be then.
Our next baby we plan to use that boy name and for girl name it was pretty easy to agree. We had a girl name we liked more popular than the others but not top 20. We found 2 family names we like as the middle name but I liked the sound of mn fn more than fn mn. What finally got me set on the fn being the fn was looking at the popularity of the mn. It is in the top 10 girl names. I just prefer a less common name.
My sister and her husband each came up with their own name he did boy name she did girl name. They could veto but that is what they chose. I personally liked deciding both together. I do think it was nice to have some direction as far as biblical name and then family name. There are names I like such as Fiona or Freya where It was just easy to say no to because they didn't fit the criteria but it also can be rough as you have more children. Do you actually want to continue the theme. I would have been fine to change it up for our girl name this time if it wasn't such a popular name. We also have run into a thought on family names as middle names can they be modified or changed or do they need to be the exact family name. So far we have done the exact middle name but could willhelmina work for William for example.
The big things for me are if one name has a good meaning and if they sound good together