What's in a name?

I've begun to think about the name of this little one. It's something I put a lot of thought into, I really think someone's name tends to define them a bit. We don't know what it's going to be, so we'll need our boy and girl options. Girls names are always tough for us, is it just me with a feminist chip on my shoulder, or do so many girls names sound very unintelligent? I like the sound of flowery girls names, but how is a future employer supposed to take your resume seriously when you're named after a flower?

Here's my baby name criteria. I want it to be unique and give them some individuality, but not in a way that someone can't spell or read their name correctly. Troy is also reminding me quite frequently that a lot of the unique baby names I suggest just aren't names a caucasean baby can pull off, at least without sounding like we appropriated a name from someone else's culture. We also try to find unique names without crossing the line to trendy, faddy, or just plain made-up names. I appreciate a name carrying heritage and longevity, but I also don't want it to be too common. I really like the names Olivia and Sarah, I think they're solid, pretty names, but when I grew up there were always at least three Sarah's in my classes and this seems to be the case for Olivia's now. I don't mind the baby being named after a deceased relative, as long as the deceased relative had a nice name worth passing on. I'm sure my mother, Gertrude, dearly loved the aunt she was named after, but could have done without the honor of carrying on her name. Although she was 12th of 13 children, I'll give my grandparents some credit in that they were probably running out of ideas. It also has to be a name that will suit this new little person throughout their life, when thinking of name possibilities I try to picture the name on a baby, child, teen, mother/father, grandparent.

I feel like we did really well with Thane, every time I write it down I still love it. Although when I say that people tend to do the quiet, not responding response, that indicator that they differ in opinion but aren't going to mention it. So maybe other people don't like his name as much as we do. I also get this feeling from others with Amelia, the girls name that tops our list, and it was the reason Claire didn't get named Amelia. But although I love Claire's name, it bothers me now that I meet other little Claire's quite often. I think we scored perfectly with Seth, it's a strong old name, a unique but not weird name, and I've only ever met one other little Seth. So we have Thane Jonah, Seth Reid, and Claire Elise, now what? Oh yeah, I'd like to land on a name that is more that one syllable, we seem to be stuck on the short names. :)