How We Chose Our Baby’s Name

Hi friends! Now that you’ve been virtually introduced to our sweet baby girl, Clay, I wanted to write a post about how we chose her name. If you’ve kept up with me on my blog and Instagram, you know I had multiple freak-outs about choosing her name and worrying if she would like it or not, what the “best” choice was, etc. You truly don’t know how hard it is to name a child until the time comes — even if you’ve had a running list of names saved in your notes app since you were a teenager (like me). Here’s what we did to select one we both love!

WHAT WE WANTED

We began our name selection process by discussing what we wanted. We knew from the beginning that we didn’t want to share her name with anyone until she was born, which felt special to have it just between us. Since our last name (Armbruster) is long and often hard for people to spell and pronounce (it’s pronounced like it’s spelled: arm-brew-ster), we wanted a simple first name that was short, easy to spell, and easy to pronounce that was unique without being unheard of. Personally, I also wanted a name that couldn’t be shortened. My legal name is Abigail and I’ve never went by it, so I’ve had to tell every teacher and doctor my whole life that I go by Abby, so I wanted to avoid that for our child. I love boy names for girls and gender neutral names, so there are several of those that we considered. I knew if we went with a unisex name, I wanted a more feminine middle name to balance it out.

WHITEBOARD METHOD

Justin didn’t have any name ideas of his own initially, so I kickstarted the process by writing a bunch of separate first and middle names that I liked on a giant whiteboard. We kept the whiteboard in our living room for a few weeks so we could look at the names, let them simmer and discuss them. We were able to erase some, add new ones over time, try out different first and middle combinations, and see what the initials would be, which we found to be a super helpful method for selecting a name.

FINALIZING THE NAME

Finalizing a name is SCARY. It feels like such a big decision and it honestly gave me a lot of stress — way more than I anticipated. We knew we wanted to have a name chosen before she was born and we didn’t see ourselves as the “we’ll decide when we see her” type of people. It’s also something that we just wanted to have out of the way so we could focus on other things leading up to her birth and we’re glad we did it this way. We knew it was the right name because it was one we fully agreed on. We only bought one thing with her name on it before she was born (blame me for second-guessing everything 😂), which was the pacifier clip we used in her announcement photos. So cute!

HOW WE CHOSE CLAY WILLA

Clay is actually a name I thought of back in August 2019, 6 months before I got pregnant. I had heard it on a TV show and I said to Justin, “what about Clay… for a girl?” and he said “okay!” For him, that was a good response since he’s always quick to veto names he hates. I immediately wrote the name down and silently thought about it here and there while we were trying to conceive, occasionally envisioning a potential future daughter with that name. When I got pregnant and we found out we were having a girl, I brought up the name again and Justin didn’t immediately jump on board like I anticipated. Looking back, I think this was a good thing because it allowed us to explore other options and eventually come back to Clay, which we both liked and agreed felt right. As for Willa, that’s a middle name option I had written on our whiteboard since day one, and when we decided on Clay, Justin loved the sound of it with it and I did too! It just felt right. I love how soft and delicate it sounds, and it rolls off the tongue.

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That’s the story behind how we chose our daughter’s name! I love it so much and I’m so happy with our choice. How did you decide on your child’s name? Let me know in the comments!