How to choose a baby name: a practical guide

Last updated 8 October 2026

Your child will hear, write and spell their name every day for the rest of their life. This guide walks through the checks that help most, wherever your family comes from: how the name sounds with your surname, what it means, the nicknames it invites, how common it is, the initials it makes and how it travels across languages and family traditions.

1. Start with a long list, then narrow it

Collect freely before you judge. Names of relatives, places that matter to you, characters, words from the languages in your family and names you have noticed and liked all belong on the first list. If two parents are choosing, write your lists separately at first: it is easier to see where you agree when neither of you has already argued for a favourite.

Then cut the list down to three to five names, and run each of them through the checks below. A name that survives all of them is a strong candidate. A name that fails one is not ruled out, but you will know what you are trading.

2. Say it with your surname

The first, middle and last names are heard together far more often than you might think. Say them aloud:

• Rhythm. Names of different lengths often flow well together: a longer first name with a short surname, or the other way round. Two names of the same length can work too; listen for whether the full name has a pleasing beat or feels rushed.
• The join. When the first name ends with the sound the surname begins with, the two can blur into one. Try saying “Aarush Sharma” quickly and listen to the two “sh” sounds merge.
• Rhymes and repeats. A first name that rhymes with the surname, as in “Shaan Khan”, can sound like a jingle. Matching first letters, such as “Priya Patel”, are a matter of taste: some families love them, others find them too neat.
• Real-life use. Imagine the name read out in a school register, called across a playground and said on the phone to someone writing it down. A middle name can smooth a bumpy join or add the length a short combination lacks.

3. Check the meaning, properly

Many parents want a name with a meaning they would be happy to explain. Look the meaning up in more than one place: baby-name books and websites often repeat each other’s guesses, and a meaning that sounds lovely is not always the one the word actually carries.

Remember that one spelling can come from different languages. Tara is the Sanskrit word for “star” (तारा) and also the name of an ancient hill in Ireland. Leela comes from the Sanskrit for “play”, while the similar-sounding Leila and Layla come from the Arabic word for “night”. Decide which meaning you are choosing, and expect some people to assume the other.

Name pages on this site will show each meaning with the published source it was checked against; they are coming. Our editorial policy explains how meanings are checked.

4. Think about cultural roots

A name can connect a child to a language, a faith, a region or a family story. If your family spans more than one culture, look for names that work in all of them: names that both sets of grandparents can say comfortably and that do not sound odd or carry an awkward meaning in either language. Short names built from sounds most languages share, such as Maya or Tara, are easy to say in many languages, though even these can be ordinary words elsewhere: maya means “yeast” in Turkish.

It also helps to think about where your child will grow up. A name that is ordinary in one country may be unusual, or hard to pronounce, in another. Neither is a reason to drop a name you love, but it is worth knowing in advance.

5. Check pronunciation and spelling across languages

• Sounds that do not carry over. Hindi and other Indian languages distinguish sounds that English does not, such as two kinds of “t” and “d”, and breathy consonants like “bh” and “dh”. The “th” in Siddharth is a breathy “t”, but an English speaker will usually read it as the “th” in “think”. Decide which pronunciations you can live with.
• Choosing a spelling. Names written in Indian scripts can be spelled several ways in English letters: Lakshmi or Laxmi, Pooja or Puja, Aarav or Arav. The doubled “aa” shows a long vowel but adds a letter. Pick one spelling and use it on every document, from the birth certificate to the passport.
• Gender cues differ. Andrea is a man’s name in Italy and a woman’s in the English-speaking world. Jean is male in French and female in English. Nikita is a man’s name in Russia and usually a woman’s in India.
• Hidden meanings. A name that is harmless in one language can be slang, or an unfortunate word, in another. Ask a native speaker of each language your child is likely to meet, and search the exact spelling online.
• Other scripts. If your family writes in Devanagari, Tamil, Gujarati, Arabic, Hebrew or another script, check how the name is spelled there too. Traditions that set the first syllable, such as the nakshatra letters, go by the sound in the original script, not the English spelling.

6. Plan for the nickname

Almost every name gets shortened, stretched or rhymed. List the short forms your choice invites and say each one aloud; if you dislike all of them, that is worth knowing now. If you love a particular nickname, you can choose a fuller name that leads to it naturally, so your child has both a formal name and a friendly one.

Many cultures build this in. Bengali families often give a child a daak naam (a pet name used at home) and a bhalo naam (the formal name used at school and on documents), and pet names used only at home are common across India and beyond.

7. Look at popularity, and its direction

Official statistics show how many babies are given each name. The US Social Security Administration publishes yearly counts going back to 1880, and the Office for National Statistics publishes yearly counts for England and Wales. India has no comparable official national ranking.

A very popular name is familiar and easy to spell, but your child may share it with several classmates. A rare name is distinctive but may need spelling out or correcting more often. The trend matters as much as the rank: a name that feels unusual to you may be climbing fast. Popularity trends on our name pages are coming, based on these official figures.

8. Check the initials and the full name on paper

• Initials. Write out the initials of the first, middle and last names, and the order a monogram would use. Make sure they do not spell a word your child would rather not carry.
• Email and usernames. Try the usual formats, such as first name dot surname, and see whether the result reads well.
• Forms abroad. If your family follows a convention without a fixed surname, common in parts of South India where a father’s name or a family name appears as an initial, think about how the name will look on passports and forms that expect a first and a last name. People with a single name can end up recorded with a placeholder such as “FNU” (first name unknown) in some US systems.
• Length. Very long names and double-barrelled surnames can be cut short on cards and forms. See how the full name looks written out and signed.

9. Respect family traditions

Many families have naming customs, and knowing yours early avoids surprises later. A few examples from around the world:

• Hindu families often begin the name with a syllable tied to the baby’s birth star, the nakshatra the Moon was in at birth. The nakshatra letters chart gives the syllable for each of the 108 padas, and the rashi letters chart gives the nine letters of each Moon sign. Our guide to the namkaran ceremony explains how the custom works and how it varies.
• Sikh families often open the Guru Granth Sahib at random and choose a name beginning with the first letter of the hymn on that page; boys also receive the name Singh and girls Kaur.
• Many Muslim families name a baby on the day of birth or on the seventh day, when the aqiqah may be held. Names of prophets, and names that join Abd- (“servant of”) to one of the names of God, such as Abdullah, are popular choices.
• Jewish families often name a child after a relative. Ashkenazi custom usually honours someone who has died, while Sephardic families often name children after living grandparents.
• Greek families traditionally name the first children after their grandparents, and many Christian families choose a saint’s name.
• Some Chinese families give siblings or cousins a shared generation character, so each child’s name marks their place in the family.

Traditions vary within every community, and many families blend them. A tradition can often be honoured in a middle name, a second name or a nickname while the first name follows the parents’ own choice.

10. Live with it before you decide

Pick a front-runner and use it for a week: say it to the bump, write it down and imagine it at different ages, from a toddler to a grown-up at work. Some parents keep the shortlist to themselves until the baby arrives, so that every relative’s opinion arrives after the decision rather than before. If a name still feels right after all that, it probably is.

For more references, browse all our baby naming guides.