We thought about naming one of our kids Sophia, until my mom reminded me that she named her Yorkie Sophia. I was kind of bummed, but how can you explain to a kid why she’s named after Grandma’s dog? We found out we were having a boy though, so it didn’t really matter. I still love that name. :)
With our first two kids, we told people ahead of time which names we picked. Each time, there was someone who didn’t like the name. Our daughter is named Lauren, which we thought was somewhat unique. It turned out to be a very popular name that year! My grandma told me right from the start she didn’t like it, but it didn’t bother me. Next time around, we knew we were having a boy but couldn’t agree on a name. A couple of weeks before my due date, we decided to name him Carter. I wasn’t crazy about it, but it turned out to fit him really well. My mother hated the name Carter and still goes around telling people we named him after Jimmy Carter. WTF?? We just picked it because it was one name we could mostly agree on! We use family names for middle names, which no one seems to object to.
For our youngest, we didn’t tell anyone what we decided to name him. We picked the name Colson early on, which is my husband’s grandmother’s maiden name. If any of our relatives didn’t like it, they didn’t say anything! We decided to keep it a secret just to avoid hearing opinions and dealing with nonsense. It was also fun to just surprise everyone.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time. Best to politely ignore the opinions and go about your merry way!