Take Your Time – The worst thing you could do when choosing a baby name is to rush into it. Settling for second best may affect you and your child for a lifetime! Don’t commit yourself to the first name that you fancy. Keep searching until you find a name that you are 110% happy with. And don’t forget that you don’t need to have a name for your baby before birth. Some parents have been known to wait 2 or 3 weeks before deciding on that perfect name.

What Does it Mean? – Some parents don’t really care for the meaning of their baby’s name, where as others base their decision solely around it. But, in our opinion a quick check couldn’t hurt. Do you really want your big strong boy to have a name that means “pretty flower”? If you have a meaning in mind, but don’t know what names contain that meaning, visit NamesToBe.com.

Spelling - Try to make sure you don’t choose a name that ends with the same letter that your last name begins with. This can sometimes make pronunciation a challenge. There are some exceptions to this rule, but in general it is best to keep it in mind when choosing a baby name. Try it for yourself and you’ll see what we mean. Letters like “l” and “s” are especially bad.

Say it Out Loud – Instead of referring to your unborn baby as he or she or “the baby”, try using one of the names that you like for a week or so. Saying it out loud and using it in common sentences will give you a better idea of how much you really like the name. Don’t forget, some names look great when written on paper, but sound terrible off the tongue.

About the Author
This article was written by Sarah Mitchell from www.namestobe.com Find thousands of baby names, their meanings, origins and genders at www.namestobe.com.

Article Source: EzineArticles.com

All names which occurred at least five times in the sample are included in the table below. The total number of males in the sample is 916,592 and the total number of females is 875,550. Criteria to be included in the sample is simply that a Social Security card application was filed, that the year of birth was between 1990 and 1999, and that the birth was on US soil. As always each unique spelling is considered a unique name. It may be appropriate for purposes of ranking popularity of names to combine similar spellings of the same name. This kind of grouping, however, is subjective and time consuming, and is beyond the scope of this document. The 2000 edition of the World Almanac lists the top 10 names of each decade based on this data after combining different spellings of the same name.

No effort has been made to edit the data and as a result some coding errors are obvious. For example initials like “A” are included in the lists. Another common problem, especially for the earlier decades is females coded as being male. For example Ashley is the ranked 927 among male names. Although Ashley used to be a male name I suspect gender coding is to blame in the 1990’s. Finally entries like “Unknown” and “Baby” are not removed from the lists.

*This lists was compiled by the Social Security Administration.

All names which occurred at least five times in the sample are included in the table below. The total number of males in the sample is 977,255 and the total number of females is 936,349. Criteria to be included in the sample is simply that a Social Security card application was filed, that the year of birth was between 1980 and 1989, and that the birth was on US soil. As always each unique spelling is considered a unique name. It may be appropriate for purposes of ranking popularity of names to combine similar spellings of the same name. This kind of grouping, however, is subjective and time consuming, and is beyond the scope of this document. The 2000 edition of the World Almanac lists the top 10 names of each decade based on this data after combining different spellings of the same name.

No effort has been made to edit the data and as a result some coding errors are obvious. For example initials like “A” are included in the lists. Another common problem, especially for the earlier decades is females coded as being male. For example Jessica is the ranked 647 among male names. Finally entries like “Unknown” and “Baby” are not removed from the lists.