Since it took us over a year to get pregnant, we had been thinking about baby names for quite a while. Several months before we first conceived, we had first and middle names picked out for a boy and a girl.

The middle names were easy. For a boy, Mr. TTT’s paternal grandfather passed away a few years ago, and his name was Thomas. While I don’t love it as a first name, I think it works perfectly as a middle name, so it was decided. For a girl, my maternal grandmother Natalie and I were very close. When I was 20, she was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor and I moved in with her until she died a few months later. I always knew our first daughter’s middle name would be named after my grandmother, so that was an easy decision to make, as well.

Before we were ever pregnant, we both decided we loved Lila for a girl and Liam for a boy, but I had a feeling our minds might change by the time we were actually ready to welcome a baby into our home. When we got pregnant the first time, I went right out and bought a baby name book because I was so excited and wanted to be sure we had explored all of our options. We lost that pregnancy pretty quickly and when we got pregnant again, we waited a while to start looking at names again because we were pretty nervous that something might happen. Eventually, we were far enough along that we felt comfortable talking about names again, so we got back to highlighting the book.

One thing we discovered? Picking names is tough! If I made a suggestion, my husband usually didn’t like it and vice versa. Any names that were really popular when we were kids were out because we knew too many people who had those names and the associations bothered us. We also didn’t want to go with any names that were really popular right now. We didn’t want our kid to have the name name as five others in his or her class, so we tried to avoid anything too trendy. It seemed like an impossible task!

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After we found out we were having a boy, everyone started asking us if we had chosen a name yet and I started to get antsy. We still liked Liam and Mr. TTT had recently put Aiden at the top of his list. I have always loved the name Aiden (SATC, anyone?), but I had a student with that same name who… wasn’t my favorite person. That was another challenge with picking names: being a teacher, many names are off limits because they remind me of current or former students, and sometimes it isn’t such a happy association. My husband fought pretty hard for Aiden, but then we found out that it was the number one baby boy name for 2011, so that was out.

One way we came up with ideas was to search our family trees for classic names that we might like and that had meaning. I found out that my great grandfather’s name was Jack. He was from Ireland and had an accent and everything. I have one picture with him when I was maybe two years old, and I was told he was just the sweetest man. We both loved the name Jack, but we have a dog named Jackson, so that was out.

Then, we came back to Liam. Even though Liam was the number four baby boy name for 2011, I was ready to commit to the name. Names are cyclical and it was way too hard to find something that wasn’t popular when we were kids, isn’t popular now, and doesn’t remind us of someone we know. My husband agreed that Liam was probably the best choice, but he had some reservations. He felt like if we told people what the name was, we’d get negative feedback and he wanted to wait. I kept begging for him to just commit to it already, but I didn’t get a confirmation until a few days before Christmas when we were filling out gift tags for our family members’ presents and he suggested putting the baby’s name in addition to ours.

So it was settled! Liam Thomas it is! I love it and I hope others do, too.

Did you choose a popular baby name that you love?