since my wife it's from China and I am from Europe it makes things more difficult, our rules for both babies were: - can't contain R so wife can pronounce it,

since my wife it's from China and I am from Europe it makes things more difficult, our rules for both babies were: - can't contain R so wife can pronounce it, so no Klara for us - can't be in top 10 in countries we are going to settle (since my own name was extremely common when i grew up and didn't want my children to experience other 4 children in their class with same name, i feel pity for my sisters children which both carry names in top 5), but also nothing weird. so my favorites (but sadly also everyone's else) Adam and Anna were out of question - length should roughly match my family name for balance (since children carry my family name, combination with Chinese would look a bit odd in Europe) - it should be written same way in multiple languages (English/German and my own language) for international use to avoid mistakes (one of benefits of my own name) - didn't want certain origins of name to imply nationality, for instance I liked Alina but have to pass after finding it's mostly Russian name - nobody in extended family should carry these names (first child name i met twice in my life, second child once in my life though it was my very close female coworker known even by my wife, so it took few weeks to disassociate her from my child name, it helped it's years since we worked together and my wife had always multiple other options though this was my first choice after eliminating many of my favorite names) - no infamous celebrities should carry it in countries we are going to settle (we were sure about two countries) - i am big fan of names beginning with A and in general beginning of alphabet, so bonus points for beginning, it almost never hurts being on beginning of list if sorted by given name Things we didn't care about: - proximity between birthday and name day (i have like less than 5 days, first child exactly one week, second child months) - out of 5/6 letters of their names both children share same 3 letters core, though most of the people would never notice it - if someone else carry exactly same given and family name, though combination should be completely unique, pretty sure there is zero people in world carrying same combination as second child, first child extremely rare since also my family name it's very rare - not easy to make fun of name, since any name which came to my mind i could ridiculous and i am sure children have even bigger imagination, so unless it's really obvious one should not bother trying to avoid it