If a rose was called a skunk-cabbage would it really smell as sweet?

(To paraphrase L. M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley.)

It seems odd that what is in many ways one of the most insignificant decisions we make for our children is also one of those that will affect them for most of their lives.

Most people have a favourite name or two, and the challenge is choosing a name that both Mummy and Daddy like equally and which doesn't offend or over compliment either side of the family.

Choosing names for our children is such a huge responsibility.  I've always subscribed to the theory that a child's name should "work" in both childhood and in adulthood, and should suit whatever path their life takes, Prime Minister or Plumbers' Mate. Solicitor or Street Sweeper.

And like traditional names, and for boys, fairly solid ones. So we have Sam, who is really Samuel - I think it was in the top 20 or so names the year he was born but we'e never really known many, and Sam tends to decide to be Samuel in these situations.
We have Josiah, which is maybe a little fanciful - though I was surprised by how few people had ever heard of the name, I expected that people might say they'd never met a Josiah, but never heard of one? Spode? Wedgewood? Not to mention the biblical boy king, and of course President Bartlett of the "West Wing" series. Anyway he can choose to be simply "Jo" any time he likes, or "Jed" as we'd originally planned. And I've stopped being concerned that he might be considered "odd" as a result of his name in school, that's never going to be an issue in a class that includes "Zeus".
Choosing Ben's name was harder, it needed to "work" with the others and to be honest anything goes with Sam. But with Samuel and Josiah? What worked but didn't make us sound like deep south red-necks? It was tricky, and became trickier when he was born, and had very dark hair, we'd expected a redhead, like Sam, or a dusty blond, like Josiah, and here he was, one very dark haired baby.
Eventually we settled on Ben, who is really Reuben. So we have Samuel, Josiah and Reuben. Or Sam Jed/Jo and Ben. All traditional names, all biblical prophets, all also english revolutionaries.

And then we gave them each two middle names.

Now, in retrospect, this was a mistake. In fact we sat at the registrar's desk waiting to register Ben still debating whether or not we used the second middle name, or saved it in case we ever had another baby boy. And we used it.

So when we knew there was going to be a fourth baby the debate started early, but it was hard right from the start.
Knowing there was also going to be a fifth was liberating in a way, it meant we didn't HAVE to follow the set pattern, we could have a pair of names that worked together that didn't have to work with the others.

It's still hard though, not least because J is still wedded to that name we were debating in the registry office 3 years ago, and would re-use it. While I don't think that's right.

What would you call them?