We chose family names as middle names for our three boys. My grandfather's middle name, my husband's middle name (and his grandfather's first name) and my brothers first name are all middle names for our boys.

We kept our names a secret and both had to like and agree on names before putting them on our "final" list.

My name is quite common and although I like it, I didn't want my kids to be in school with 2 or 3 kids with their same name. Our "rules" for a first name were that they weren't in the top 100 but were names that most people have heard before.