While we won't be naming our child Hashtag, the naming of our future spawn has so far been the most difficult thing for us on a number of levels. We're running into a lot of problems, frankly, and we're still trying to figure out how to solve them.
Among the issues:
* My father's side of the family is massive. My father is the youngest of 14, 12 of them lived long enough to have children, and those children have children now. Some of those children's children have children. This means a lot of names are taken. We could duplicate names without a big problem, but who can say for sure?
* We're a little too well-read. Literally every name one of us comes up with, the other can come up with a reference to attach it to, often with hilarious consequences. We're all a little bitter that Twilight has ruined Bella/Isabella/Isobel for us, and our leading boy name right now is also the name of a child in a well-known movie and a famous author.
The reality is that we'll have to settle on something and that something will have a reference no matter what. That doesn't mean we have to like it, though, but it does help cull the list a bit.
* We're really good at girl names and really bad at boy names. We had a boy name in mind that we've since had to discard for unfortunate reasons, but the one that we have now? That's...pretty much it. And we like the name a lot, but it's one thing to like a name and another to default to it, and I don't want to feel like, if we have a boy, we've defaulted on a name. Plus, we don't have a middle name yet. Whee!
On the girl side, though, we already have a middle name (I'm being a bit of a dictator about it, and Ann's letting me have that one piece), but we have a ton of names in mind and can't really settle on just one. I have a few favorites as she does, and we've already discarded a few, such as the Isabelle Variations and Pella, which I (surprise surprise) read in a book (The Art of Fielding, if you care) and loved, but is also the name of a window company. When we mentioned the name to a few friends, they all said "like the window company?" So that's out.
(On a side note, I hope that, if we have a girl, she becomes a musician and names her band The Isabelle Variations.)
So we're not settled on anything yet. It's been a pretty funny road so far, emailing different ideas and such. We're also taking suggestions - we're looking for quirky and fun without being ridiculous and hipster. Traditional with a twist is good (Ann has a baby name site bookmarked and she spent a little more time in "Steampunk Names" than I'm ultimately comfortable with), but at the end of the day, we want our kid to have a name that will really highlight the type of kid we hope s/he'll be at the end of the day.
Otherwise, maybe we'll have to name it Hashtag after all...
Even if you avoid all possible references, two days after he/she is born they will announce the new, big movie/book called (insert name here).
ReplyDeleteGood luck with everything. It all seems to work it's way out in the end, when they become themselves no matter what their name is.
We were in the same boat - one boy name and several girl names. So of course we had a boy ;) But that was cool with me because the name Anton was my suggestion, and I'd picked it years before. It is both a family name (my dad's stepfather's last name) and of course, I love Chekhov. We were undecided on a middle name almost until he was born, when my mother in law (who was pressing very hard for a Jewish name) suggested Ruvim, which was David's grandfather's name. We liked the sound of Anton Ruvim. I'm sure you'll end up with a cool name for the kid!
ReplyDeleteJason is right. I still can't believe that honey boo boo's name is Alana. I mean really? Who ruins a beautiful name like Alana.
ReplyDelete