Unique Baby Names for Girls and Boys

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If you are pregnant and looking for unique names for your baby girl or boy, here is a short list of names I love for inspiration.

There is a popular tag video going on around YouTube these days called “Baby Names I Love, But Didn’t Use”.

Recently one of my subscribers requested that I do this video, so I did. Click here to watch it.

When I was pregnant with my son, I had a genetic test (NIPT) done at 10 weeks that can basically flag any potential genetic issues and also tell you the gender of the baby.

It’s highly accurate (98% I think) and just amazing if you think about it.

Normally, pregnant women only find out the gender of their babies at 20 weeks and if the baby cooperates.

Since we did the NIPT test, we knew early on that our baby was a boy, therefore the girl names were short lived, but I included them below just in case you need some inspiration for your little one.

How We Chose the Name of Our Son

Before I write the list of the names, let me just begin by telling you that we had many requirements when it came to naming our boy.

First, we wanted a strong, unique name. A name that invoked feelings of integrity and grit.

Secondly, the name had to sound good with my husband’s last name and be of Irish ancestry, since the hubby is of Irish descent.

Third, it had to have a strong meaning, because we believe that names and personalities go hand in hand a lot of times. Does a person become his/her name or does his/her name become the person? I don’t know, but I believe in the power of meanings.

Writers can tell you that a character’s name is one of the hardest things to get right and something they spend an awful lot of time deciding on, so why should it be any different for our kids, right?

Fourth, the name had to be short so no nicknames were needed.

We didn’t start by trying to match all those requirements, it got refined as we went.

Quite a few of the names below, we just jotted down because they sounded good and then, when we researched their origin and meaning, they got crossed off the list.

So to summarize, we wanted an Irish name, that was short, strong and had a good meaning. Piece of cake right?

Not really!

As I found out during pregnancy, you can think you have the perfect name for a long time and until you start using it with your child, you really don’t know how you will feel about it.

In our case, we had the name Collin picked out for a few years before we got pregnant that both of us liked and had settled on.

We announced our pregnancy and told my family the name. The baby was now called Collin and for some reason, it just didn’t sound right to me.

I couldn’t relate to it.

So I changed my mind and it wasn’t until the 8th month of pregnancy that we were able to narrow it down to 2 names- Quinn and Roark.

We took these names with us to the hospital and it wasn’t until a day after our son was born that we finally settled on the name Roark.

Had we not needed it for the birth certificate, I think I would have waited a couple months before choosing it, but that just wouldn’t work, would it?

In the end, we made the right choice. Our son embodies everything his name is. Keep reading to find out more.

Girl Names I Love, But Didn’t Use

These are the girl names we liked and discussed before knowing the gender of our baby or coming up with our “requirements”.

As you can see some have strong meanings and some were completely surprising like Kali. They are not Irish as well.

Beatriz – brings joy

Barbara – traveler from a foreign land

Isabella – devoted to God

Bianca– white one

Genevieve – white wave

Marjorie – pearl

Kali – the black one. In Hindu – Goddess of death and destruction

Sophie – wisdom

Boys Names I Love, But Didn’t Use

These are the boys names we narrowed down to and it came down to the one that fit our son the most.

Ian – gift from God

Wyatt – wood or wide

Ash – happy

Powell – son of Howell

Neal – champion

Kennedy – helmeted one/ chief

Collin – young pip or victory to the people

Quinn – wisdom, itelligent

ROARK – mighty

At the end, Roark won. The name sounded stronger than Quinn and flowed better with our last name.

It means mighty and has deep roots in the Irish heritage. It is unusual and unique, at least in the US; attributes that we also wanted in a name.

Today the name fits our son so well. He is rumbustious, strong, bright, persistent and stubborn. Those are things in his personality that fit the name perfectly.

The fact that he was born early, under weight, had trouble breathing and has become this solid kid just amazes me. He is mighty in every way in my eyes. But I am biased, right?

Anyway, I wanted to share the baby names I love, but didn’t use with you, in case you are trying to figure out your child’s name and also if you were curious why we named our son Roark.

If you want to know a little more about why we didn’t go with the names mentioned above, watch the video here.

What are some names you like for babies and why? Leave me a comment below.

Don’t forget to follow my travel or lifestyle accounts on Instagram and to subscribe to my YouTube channel for videos.

If you enjoyed this post you might like these other parenting post:

• Breastfeeding Tips and Tricks
• How to Save Money During Pregnancy
• 4 Classes You Should Take as A New Parent
• 10 Postpartum Care Essentials
• Favorite Baby Products 0-3 Months
• Favorite Books for Babies
• 1st Trimester Pregnancy Must Have for New Moms
• I Had a Missed Miscarriage

This website contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate and participant in other programs, I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases.