Will I know it when I hear it? Is there a magical name for my baby...

Yeah, I thought Shakespeare with Arden, too. But honestly, every name out there has baggage of some type or another. Maybe it's a murder victim or perpetrator or reality show star, and the original original names can sound weird and off-putting to a lot of people. My advice is not to even worry about the externals. You liked Arden. You liked Reeva. Don't not like them because of something out of your control. They're both pretty. You aren't going to win an award for best baby name 2014. You're not going to go to parent jail for worst baby name 2014. So look at your baby girl after she is born and say out loud "This is my baby girl _____". If it fits, then that's her name.

Also you say (whisper/yell/exclaim/sing) the name so much over first couple of years it loses any other meaning you had attached to it and just becomes "the word that refers to your kid".

"Right now our two top contenders are Arden and Reeva. Arden is his choice and I was in love with it until someone said, " oh like elizabeth arden." I don't want a brand name baby. And Reeva (which I thought I made up with the combination of two family names) is a recent famous-y murder victim." There's definitely no such thing as a name you made up and nobody else has used ... there are a lot of English-speakers in the world frantically mashing up sounds for their new babies, someone will have hit on anything you hit on as long as you stick with "syllables that can actually be pronounced." And every name will eventually, hopefully briefly, be a brand or celebrity name. Naming your kid "Lexus" or "Pepsi" is brand-y, but something like "Arden" is a legit name that happens to have a (quite minor, IMO) affiliation. I mean, look, eventually there's going to be an SNL character named "Aurora" who's hilariously memorable for 15 years, or there will be a trendy pomegranite drink called "Paloma" that then crosses over into a signifier for obnoxious drunk sorority girls who use it as a mixer with vodka, or there will be a Disney pop princess named "Astrid" who is as big as Biebs and then has a sex scandal. You cannot avoid it, especially with less-common or modern names (very common, traditional names have so many referents in people's minds that they don't tend to trigger the same association with one point in culture). Choose a name you like and don't worry too much about that sort of thing; it happens to everyone and it's mostly pretty fleeting.

My husband and I had a flip chart that we filled with names for nine months. Actual names, made up names, ridiculous names - it didn't matter. We just wanted to get it out of our system. When I went into labor, we took it to the hospital, stuck it on the wall, and waited for our daughter to show up. When she did, we held her up and started calling out the names to her, and used a marker to rearrange the possible names. I think in a moment of funny delirium, we might have sort of used her a a ouiji board talisman, moving her around the flip chart to see if she reached out to anything. She didn't. She just sort of spit up and slept. But, it all helped to put together a name for her. In the end, we chose a lovely first and two middle names, two of which were on the list and one that just made sense when we saw her. Sort of an easy to spell first name, a superhero middle name - because I just think every kid needs one, and a special middle name that means 'you are loved'. It absolutely was not the name we were thinking of 9 months ago. All to say that sometimes you need to be personally introduced to your kid before you can hear and see the name you want to call her. You get a couple days after that to register her name, so give yourself time. Perhaps wait toll you meet her, try out a couple of names and see what feels right then?

We like names that are a little different, An aside but one of my good friends is a preschool teacher and the names you mention are likely pretty common these days. She has two kids named Astrid. I know this because she has mentioned they are both nicknamed "squid". We blame spongebob. Apparently old timey names are the new Jennifer.

When I was pregnant, I had two absolutely fantastic girl names that I loved and a perfectly fine boy name. I had a boy. He has the perfectly fine name. He wears it well. It isn't anything I dreamt of my whole life or something that makes other people say "wow, what a great name!" But it's a solid name and ultimately in the scheme of things that matter about my amazing kid, it just isn't that enormous. Whatever you choose will be fine.

Mm.. So, I am going to go against the grain, and suggest that old timey, naturalistic, fond granny names (Hazel, Violet, Astrid, Harper) are probably going to sound dated at some point in the next ten to fifteen years. I say this as a Melissa. I don't mind my quintessential eighties name, but, along with the Jessicas and Jennifers and Amandas, I do have a quintessential eighties name, which I think sounded very riveting and exciting to my mother at the time. If you name your child something from the current aesthetic crop of names reminiscent of a tasteful antique shop, your child will have a very lovely name, which will probably be sort of exactly time stamped for 2014 and all our cultural climate of nostalgia for a previous time and aspirations toward innocence. Anyway, so I am going to name all my children after my favorite people from my life. If I think of awesome people I've known, the actual people made the name awesome and not vice versa. So anyway, name your child what is meaningful to you, but names don't have to be fashion accessories.

You will hate the names I suggest, that's ok, maybe it'll help you like your ones more. Also, Arden is fine, and Reeva... probably won't be memorable in a few years. I wouldn't normally suggest variant spellings, but it looks like Riva and Reva aren't really any less common than Reeva, but would be less recognisable. You could turn the syllables around, and have Evra. If not the Arden forest, then the river Avon? Sage? (P.S. I used to receive mail for Constance Paine. Very goth name!)

A friend of my mother's didn't name her baby for at least 2 months. Don't do that, but, in comparison, a week seems fine. (My mother flipped a coin, and gave me a teddy bear called Alice, the losing name).