Favorite Baby Girl Names

It’s 11:00 p.m. Never mind that you have to be up early, you are going to look for “just a couple of minutes.” With baby name book in hand, you lay back and get comfortable. Soon you discover that your ever expanding belly is great for propping up books. Before you know it, it’s an hour later, and you are in a heated debate with your husband about why Katherine is a perfect name for you baby. It’s cute, not to mention it goes well with your last name. Your husband tells you that that name reminds him of someone he knew once, and that he’s not a fan of the person he knew or the name. Trying not to be annoyed, you ask him what he thinks the name should be. He offers a name that he really likes, and you think to yourself, “He can’t be serious…”

Does this scenario sound familiar? I laugh when I think back to these days, as I was pregnant with each of my daughters. It seemed that somehow the name chosen for my first child was, quite frankly, easy. Piece of cake. We knew what the name would be and that was that. Picking out names during subsequent pregnancies was agonizing. I would tell my husband, “I love the name Gabrielle. Do you?” He would just give me that look. The one that said, “ummm…not so much.” He would usually say something like, “Now Charmaine is a great name…” or pick some other name that I wasn't particularly crazy about. And so it went, like a very long tennis match -- back and forth, back and forth for nine months. Our family and friends were standing by to offer opinions and see who would win out in the battle of the wills. Fortunately, we were able to compromise!

To that end, here are baby girl names that are at the top of my list. I’m a fan of modern names (names that have really come into popularity in the last few years), as well as classic names that never seem to go out of style.

1. Maya
2. Avery
3. Grace – Before I had my first baby, I always told my friends that I was going to name my daughter (if I had one) Grace. Of course, my friend got pregnant first and “stole” the name for her daughter! I was so upset at her for awhile, but I think when you like a name you should just go ahead and use it! We ended up using Grace as a middle name.
4. Isabella
5. Kate
6. Lara
7. Elisabeth
8. Kyra
9. Madison
10. Olivia – When my second daughter was born, we were initially thinking about naming her Olivia. We told that to our 4-year-old son. When she was born, however, we decided on a different name. He came to the hospital to meet his baby sister, and kept calling her Olivia. We told him that we actually named her something else, and he looked at us and said, “Okay. But when’s Olivia coming out?” For weeks afterward, he would ask about when his sister Olivia was coming!

Naming your baby girl is fun part of having a baby, albeit there’s probably a little compromising involved. Just remember that you need to pick the name that YOU and your partner like, don’t worry about what other people think about the name that you’re choosing.

Jessica Holdaway is mother to 3 children and writes for Baby Talk Radio, a podcast radio show for the baby crazy crowd. www.babytalkradio.com