Why You Should Never Let a Three-Year-Old Name Your Baby

We are all guilty of using Christmas as if it were an impenetrable barrier between us and the stuff we really should get round to but couldn’t possibly do during the start of December because we are too busy throwing ourselves into the festivities of the season. In our house we postponed preparing for our impending new baby, but now that the Annual Festival of Cheese (alternative title) is out of the way, the late February due date is approaching rapidly.

Baby clothes have to be dug out and sorted, sterilisers need dusting off and, crucially, names for my son and heir must be whittled down to a final shortlist. At least Elsa is helping on that score:


The pressure is on when you name anything. Give a dog a ridiculous moniker, for example, and you’ll spend more than a decade embarrassing yourself shouting it in the park twice a day. However, the stakes are even higher with kids. We thought we’d hit on an unusual-but-not-too-unusual name when we had Elsa, only for Disney to steal it just a month later, as discussed on the odd occasion (ahem) on this blog. I still think it’s the perfect name for her, despite having to constantly explain that we didn’t name her after the Snow Queen, and I’m hopeful we can get it right again.

This time it’s not just Jill and me sticking our oars in, though – we also have an opinionated, vocal and whip-smart three-year-old that will let us get away with nothing. Barbecue has been a big favourite of her’s for a while now.

Just like when she ‘accidentally’ puts both feet in the same leg of her pyjamas EVERY NIGHT as she gets ready for bed, it’s difficult to work out whether she genuinely wants her brother to be called Barbecue or if she just realises she’s hit on comedy gold and knows it will always cause a reaction.

Other Potential Baby Names

Her other suggestions include Olaf, Hans and Kristoff (all from Frozen, if you are lucky enough not to know), Little Roy (from CBeebies), Chubby, Baby and Sinky (no idea). Obviously, I’m not going to reveal anything here, not least because the shortlist is much more of a longlist currently, but I’m pretty certain we won’t be plumping for any of these:

Baby Name Suggestions

Don’t worry, we have consulted the forthcoming Disney releases to avoid any potential clashes and I can assure you we are not going with Dumbo for Child No. 2. In addition, we’ll definitely avoid calling him Andy Coulson – that’s for certain.

How did you come up with your children’s names? Any tips or things to avoid? Let me know in the comments.

Now to get back to those DIY jobs I couldn’t possibly complete before Christmas for some long-forgotten reason.

About bewildereddad 401 Articles
I'm Jim Coulson, a West Yorkshire dad blogger, content writer and radio presenter who loves heading out around Yorkshire with my kids and exploring the best family activities.

6 Comments

  1. we just had our third in May and my 5yo wanted like hell to name him Chalk. A few months later, we got him a Build-A-Bear for Christmas and they (my 5yo and 2yo) decided Chocolate Chip was a good name for it. But yeah, Chalk.

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