John's naming rules

1. Cannot be the name of someone we are related to, friends with, or might come in contact with more than once a year.  Unless we are specifically naming the child after that person.



2. Cannot be a name we have "bad associations" with.  This vetoes naming our potential son after John's grandfather because that happens to be the name of my ex husband.  Also a name I like happens to be the name of one of John's old girlfriends.



3. No presidential names (like Kennedy, Regan or Clinton)



4. No biblical names



5. The name has to be "American".  Meaning we can't use names that are obviously from a different culture or country (e.g., Paco, Sven, Pierre or Kumar)



6. The name can't mean anything in English (even with different spelling).  Most names mean something in some language somewhere, but he doesn't want our child to be named something like Paige (like a page in a book) or Brooke (as in a stream) or Cole (like a lump of coal)



7. No cars (Mercedes, Porche, Astin, Cooper or Bentley are all out.  Also Harley, even though it's not a car, but a motorcycle that happens to be one of my favorite sounds in the world)



8. No names that are also names of a widely known company (Unfortunately, my very favorite name, Avery, is a paper company)



9. No names that have multiple different spellings.  Like my name Jamie or Jaime. This is a problem because there is a trend where people give their children a common name then spell it in a unique way.  For example, instead of naming your child Ashley, you name her Ashleigh. Essentially, if John has to ask how we would spell it, it is vetoed.



10. No geographical names (e.g., Austin, Dakota, Paris...)



11. No androgynous names.  The name has to be distinctly male or female.  Unfortunately this vetoes Avery again, also Afton, Peyton and Delaney.



12. Cannot contract into a common nickname.  No Nicholas (Nick), Benjamin (Ben) or Abigail (Abby).  We can, however, name our child just the nickname (which is why we have an Alex instead of an Alexander).



13. The name can't be a common last name.  (e.g., Conner, Sullivan, Anderson, etc.)



14. The initials can not spell a word or common acronym.  Like Max Alan Dillier (MAD) or Benjamin James (BJ)



15. Even if the name conforms to each and every rule, John still has to like it.  This vetoes about 99% of the names I've come up with so far.