Baby Names

• It needs to sound nice when you say it.
• It needs to sound nice in combination with the baby's surname. (A good choice would be names belonging to the same language.)
• It needs to sound nice when shortened. If you don't want your baby's first name or middle name to be shortened, choose one such as Ben, Dan, Ella, Mary etc.
• It should have a nice meaning, even from an exotic language. (E.g. Tegan, meaning beautiful in Welsh, has become a popular middle name choice for new baby girls.
• It should be easy to spell. After a while, your child will get fed up with being asked the same question time and again: "How do you spell that?"
• It shouldn't be too popular, otherwise your baby risks having friends with the same name.

If you have more than one, consider choosing different initials for your children. E.g Julie and Jane Spencer are sisters and they live with their parents so they receive all their correspondence at the same address, addressed to "Miss J Spencer, Private and Confidential".

If you're torn between two great names, don't use them both for your first child - just in case you have a second child who could be the same gender.

Also, make sure the initials don't form something undesirable. Louise Olivia Owen is a beautiful name, but the result of the names initials could be considered funny by her classmates and she even could end up by being called that.

To make the hunting process easier for you, we have gathered together the most popular names in England and Wales in our top 100.