My cousin J and his wife did not tell anyone the names of their kids before they were born. Their oldest are twins and the way they were situated in the womb no one could ever get a clear picture of the gender anyway. They did the same thing with their youngest. All the kids are First Name Mother's Last Name as middle name Father's Last Name. The names aren't really that odd or but they are good names.

I can't remember if J's sister followed the same thing but her daughters both have slightly unusual names that read Old School Southern to me and both girls have traditionally male names and then a more traditionally feminine (but unusual) name, which is what I think makes it seem old school southern.

Some family members were not happy but I think they are cool. Both girls have the type of names that sound like Women Who Did Something and Kicked Ass.

Also I'm home from work early. I didn't have an issue getting to work, but I started feeling tired and started coughing intermittently and dropping/tripping over things.

And we had tons of coverage and no customers so I framed it "I'd like to go home and rest so I don't get run down and catch something else" which was fine.

holy moly that eshakti site looks amazing. Custom measurements, for realz? I gotta try that!

And i'm on the "never use given name until after the baby is born" bench. What if you start using what you think in advance will be a perfect name and then it doesn't fit right? Nah, my mom friends referred to bean or sqirrel or boo until it greeted the world properly. Names are Important. Ltc seems perfect.

I didn't find out the gender until birth so my selected names were in theory. I think all my family knew my choices. They aren't the kind to say negative stuff about your selections. Firstborn was named for his father. I think we both were set on that. Secondborn was named for my nephew who passed a couple months before he was conceived, so I did ask my sister's opinion first because I would never have done it if it would cause her pain.

I didn't get a Victoria, but will toss it out as a suggestion for my theoretical Holt granddaughters. At this point still very theoretical. Neither son seems to be planning this move any time soon.

Yeah, we used the name we'd chosen for the daughter up until the eighth month when I got tired of people picking the name choice apart. I think we ended up with a name we liked even better; a little bit of a twist on a name that was only becoming popular, but not in a huge way. Whereas, if we'd stuck with the original one, there's millions (or it seems like).

eta: we didn't know the sex, we just really wanted a girl. We didn't even have a boy's name picked out!

Matilda is a long, looooong way off from presenting us with grandchildren, but her current name plan when she gets around to it is:

"If I ever have a little girl, I think I want to call her Ozma. Ozma, or Melancholy. Isn't that a beautiful name? It's like a combination of Misery and Clementine."

I'll endorse all of those. Matilda sounds like she's going to end up quite a wordsmith. All in the family.

My daughter said if she ever has children, a girl will be Sloane and a boy will be Zander (or Xander, not sure, it's intended to be a variant of her name).

We picked names that could be boy or girl names but from the start K-Bug's name was the girl choice and CJ's name was the boy choice. Even with a 6.5 year age gap and trying to have baby number 2 that whole time, we never came up with a new girl name. Luckily CJ was a boy and we didn't have to scramble.

I didn't get a middle name when I was born, instead I asked for one for my 18th birthday. Ended up sharing it with K-Bug and it would be nice to see it filter down to the next generation - but I'm not going to be upset if it doesn't.

I am now idly wondering if there's anyone in the US who's named their child Sharknado.

Almost cetainly