My husband and I knew that we were going to be surprised about the sex of our baby so when we set out to choose names we always knew there would be more than one to find. We each took private time with one baby naming book and wrote down the names that appealed to us, we ended up with about 20 each. We didn't have any that overlapped (which would of course been very easy). After comparing the lists and eliminating the names that didn't work at all we ended up with 10 boy and 10 girl names that we "could live with".
By the time my belly was big and round I had narrowed the names down to 4 girls and 4 boys. By accident half of the names were ones I had originally chosen and half were his. We decided to leave it at that and wait and see who arrived in our arms. After the adventures of labor, delivery, the announcement "It's a girl!" and looking at her pretty face we knew that we didn't have a Lillian, Josephine or Nora, but beautiful little Marisol and we were in love.
Our boy names were Benjamin, David, Edmund and Oscar and now that we have named Marisol, we decided that we're not so sure about those boy names anymore... I love how Marisol works for this little tiny joy as well as a grown woman. The boy names we had just feel like old men somehow... Oh well, back to the drawing board next time I guess! But we will definitely wait and see who we meet before we make a final choice.