Choosing a baby's name is wonderful – and sometimes frightening. It's an awesome responsibility to give a label, an identity, with which the child will be associated the rest of his or her life. Sometimes names are easily chosen, while others are harder to come by.

Is there a perfect name?

Of course there isn't one perfect name. Naming is as individual as the parents bestowing the name and the child receiving it. But there are many aspects of a perfect name.

According to Lesley Bolton, author of The Complete Book of Baby Names (Sourcebooks, 2006), first and foremost, parents should seek a name that allows their child to feel special. "One way to do this is through meaning," Bolton says. "This doesn't necessarily mean the actual definition of the name (though it certainly can), but what the name means to the parents – having a solid reason for choosing a particular name."

Lauren Baratz-Logsted of Danbury, Conn., and her husband chose their daughter's name using religious principles. "Our daughter's name is Jacqueline Grace," Baratz-Logsted says. "Jacqueline for my father, because I'm Jewish, and in the Jewish religion you name only for the dead and my father is dead; Grace for my mother-in-law, because my husband is Christian, and in Christianity it's perfectly OK to name for the living."

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