Choosing a name for your baby may seem like one of the trickiest little tasks you will ever tackle. After all, the pressure is on – the name will be around for a lifetime and you'll be saying it pretty much on a daily basis. There are parents to please, family members with opinions and a whole host of other issues that seem to creep up when it comes time to choose a name.

While those issues may be something each person needs to contend with, the bigger hurdle is getting your significant other to agree to a particular name you have in mind. Or they may be pressuring you to succumb to one they have suggested. Either way, it's not unusual for couples to do battle over choosing a name. Arguments may arise, but it helps if you understand why they happen and how to address them.

Many of us seem to launch a mission to choose the most perfect name we can find before the baby arrives. Thumbing through books that contain thousands of names is common, as is looking up the meanings of names and trying a host of various ways to spell a name. But is it important that a name be unique? Does it really matter what a child's name is? To an extent, yes – there is cause for concern if a name is chosen that is too far out of the mainstream.

The good news, however, is that it doesn't appear that a given name will be a determining factor in how a child's life will turn out, according to research discussed in the popular book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (William Morrow, 2006). However, the book does offer lists of names that are popular among high- and low-income families, and those that appear to be common among high- and low-education families. Just one more thing you may want to keep in mind when narrowing down a name.

"People's feelings about their own names is an important factor in which name they choose for their child," says Donna Wilburn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Las Vegas, Nev. "When a couple is choosing a name, the emotional history of each person gets involved with them."

Automatically, someone may want to rule out a name the other person suggests. This is common. The important issue is to find out the reason behind it and whether it's a good enough reason to support the decision to avoid the name. For some people, a name may conjure up certain images of people in their mind, quite possibly not people with whom they've had a favorable experience.

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