What's in a name?

I don't know about you but I find it very daunting choosing a name for your child.

Names I like James doesn't, names he likes, I don't. I can go off names in a instant by seeing/hearing something that puts me/us off. If there's someone we didn't like at school for whatever reason we automatically associate that name with them and therefore dislike it too. Peoples reactions when you say the name may also give us doubts.

We did struggle with choosing Alex's name, and as we didn't find out the sex before he was born we obviously had to pick out girls and boys names we liked and agreed on. Typically I had a big list for girls and only very few for boys, the main name we agreed on was Alex, although he is Alexander on his birth certificate (James won on that debate, but I am quite happy about it as it gives Alex the option to use whichever variable of his name when he is older). It was slightly awkward when we first told James' parent's that, that was one of our names we had on our list as they had still born baby girl at about 23 weeks who was named Alex (or Alexandra I'm not 100% sure)-I wasn't aware of this until later when James told me. But I think Alex being a boy it sort of disconnects the association for his parents, at least I hope it does anyway, and they said it was ok for us to use the name if we wanted much before he was born.

The name we had decided on for a girl was Isabella/Isabelle and although I do still really like the name now I am not sure if I like it as much as I did 3 years ago. And as for my list of girls names I had before Alex was born-I don't like them any more at all!

So we are a bit stuck, James is too busy at the moment to even give it much thought, I have been through one baby name book and not really found anything that grabs me, and online sites drive me mad with their separate lists and then not being able to go back and easily find a name that may have caught my eye. Typically a couple of names I do like are already within the family, even if they are cousins children it sort of feels like we shouldn't use that name too!

I know we have have 20+ weeks to decide or at least have a select list of names, but at this stage of my pregnancy with Alex we definitely had Alex and Isabelle on our list already.

Names are something that stick with us forever, so I don't want something that isn't going to suit them when they are OAP's or something that will go terribly out of fashion and them to be laughed at school etc (I do feel sorry for a lot of celeb children)!

How did you decide on your children's names?  Was it in advance, or did you wait a few minutes/hours/days/weeks after they were born to get a feel for it?

I would love to know, and if you have any name suggestions please do share :)