The Name Game

My friend, Patti, recently told me that her husband's parents did not give him a name until he was several months old. My own sister, Nancy, has spent a week or two before deciding on a name for her baby. For some reason I want to decide as soon as possible. I can understand the fun and excitement of waiting for the birth to discover the gender of the child. And I think I can also understand how it is good to see a baby and give it some time to decide what fits. I understand, I just don't believe that would be something I would like for myself at all. I want to know as soon as possible who the child is and as much about him/her as possible. I want to be completely prepared with the right clothes all washed in the drawers and a blanket with his name sewn on it long before I go to the hospital to give birth.

With String Cheese and Loumy, their names weren't necessarily what we felt we had chosen for them, rather they were names that were told to us and we were supposed to name them that. And that was fine. With Deedle, we didn't have a special feeling like that so we worked on choosing a name. Chancho came up with it and then we liked it. Seems the same thing is happening with this one. We definitely don't have a special feeling about what this child wants to be named or should be named. So, we are trying to decide. We've been playing a bit of a game this past week.

First Chancho bought us a book of "100,000+ Baby Names". That is a lot. Most of them are foreign names that I can't even pronounce. We went through ALL of the names. With what we each highlighted, we came up with a list of 45 names. Next I printed out a copy of the list for each of us and we each circled 20 names that we kind of liked. We then compared those lists to see which of the 20 names we had in common. Then we were down to 8 names. Some of the names that I liked but Chancho vetoed were: Atticus, Beck, Ezra, Franklin, Lewis, and Wells. Some of the names that Chancho liked but I vetoed were: David, Ian, Bill, Leon, Austin, and Colt. Of the names we both said we liked, he likes 4 of them best and I like the other 4 best. Here are our 8 names that we either like or would be willing to consider: Aiden, Adam, Cole, and Jonah (Chancho's 4); Cale, Jonas, Miles, and Mckinley (my 4).

So, do you all want to help us out? Maybe we'll take your suggestions, maybe not. Go ahead and vote for your favorite from Chancho's list and mine.

And for the record, we should note that String Cheese would like us to name the baby either Dallin or AJ. Not bad. Maybe if we decide on an A name we will give him a middle name starting with J, then she can call him AJ. Loumy wants us to name him Derek. Not our favorite. Deedle has no preference.

P.S. It appears that it will only allow me to do one poll at a time to have the voting done correctly. So, vote on mine this week and we'll do Chancho's next.