What's in a name?

We debated long and hard before picking Emily's name (and even now, I admit, I consider her to be Pumpkin first, and Emily second. I'm sure this will change over time. I hope it will....). We considered that picking a name is like buying a house - in other words, we both had to agree. I spent hours reading the whole Oxford Dictionary of First Names (OK, not the Asian names chapter) and came up with a pretty long list, which Husbandio then spent about 19 seconds decimating, leaving only two names. How is that fair? Anyway, Emily was about the only one we could both agree on.

One of the things which was important to us when choosing a name was that it must definitely be a name (i.e. nothing made up), and pretty classic. We also didn't want a name that was too popular, but I now realise that we may have not done our research properly here. Apparently Emily has been the top name in the US for the last 12 years although fell to number three in 2008, while in the UK, Emily was number four in 2007 (2008 data isn't yet available). I just hope this doesn't mean there are several Emilys in her school class - Isabel's the only one in her class, which is great. Although there are two Ambers (#48 in 2007 - so what are the chances?) and two Louis's. Fingers crossed....