Did You Know There Are Rules To Naming Your Baby In Texas?

Having a baby is one of the most incredible and exciting periods of a persons life. It's also a very stressful time, from the moment you find out you're pregnant to the next 18+ years you endure after that. Parenting is hard, and it starts early.

One of the hardest things you can do is name your child. Both parents have an idea of what they like and what they want to go with, and it's not uncommon to disagree for a long time on the name. As if simply agreeing on a name you both like wasn't hard enough, there's other things you have to take into account.

The main thing you have to account for are the rules of the state you live in when naming your child. Yes, some states have rules as to what can be included and not included in your child's name. Sorry for the curveball.

For example, if you live in Florida and the two parents can't agree on a name, you can't list one on the birth certificate until the parents have signed an agreement over the name. Still can't agree? You run the risk of the court selecting a name for your newborn. Not ideal.

Thankfully, we don't live in Florida so we don't have to deal with that. But does Texas have rules on what you can name your baby? You bet they do.

First things first, you have to stay under 100 characters for the full name, so first, middle, and last. Now I would imagine this wouldn't be a very difficult thing to do, unless you're wanting to include family names into the child's name so you give them an abnormally long last name. Our first born has two middle names for this exact reason, but we still only used 24 characters, and his name is plenty long.

The other rule when it comes to naming your baby in Texas is a relatively common rule around the country, and that is you can't use any special characters, diacritical marks like tildes and umlauts, or numbers. If you're wanting to name your baby the same as several others before them, you can still use a number, but it has to be in roman numeral form.

So there you go, just a little added stress when it comes to selecting the name of your precious little one.