What's In a Name? Well, a lot, actually....

When you are pregnant, you happen to find out everyone's opinion on everything.

And names seem to elicit the most strong opinions.

We are not finding out the sex of our baby before his or her birth, so we are choosing a boy and girl name. Both first and middle. Everyone has given us their opinion. Some border on awful. Some are comical. Some are impassioned pleas.

There is one lesson I have learned for certain about naming your child: don't tell anyone the actual selected name until after the baby is born and its printed on the birth certificate. Why? Someone will not like the name you have chosen and until the little one is born, they will feel it is their God-sent mission to change your mind. And some of these people will make your life as difficult as possible.

One of my friends had a family member who hated the name she had chosen for her son. Hated it with a passion. This friend had announced the name at a baby shower when she was seven months pregnant. For the rest of her pregnancy, she was bombarded with emails and phone calls on an almost daily basis with things like lists of criminals with the same name and the crimes they had committed. That is just one example of the insanity this poor woman had to go through. To her credit, she held her ground and named her son the selected name. And for the record I think this relative was way out of line and shouldn't have been surprised if she had been cut off.


Aside from that, what's in a name? Well, you wouldn't think much because names are totally arbitrary, but then you find yourself in the position of naming an infant and suddenly there are a million things you have to consider. Does this name rhyme with anything that could be used to tease your child? (ie a bodily function or animal) What does this name mean in English? What cultural image does this name conjure up? (I could never name my child Damian, remember that movie, The Omen? Same thing with Reagan. Heard of The Exorcist?) Does this name "flow" with your last name? Can you find a middle name you find suitable? Are you spelling this name in a way that people will pronounce it correctly? Is there more than one spelling of the name? (Yeah, try being named Kristen--I get every spelling possible.) One middle name? Or two? Do you want a conventional name? An unusual one? Do you want to name the baby after a family member? Are there religious considerations?

See what I mean? We've given our families a long list. We won't tell them when we cut it down. They are already going to have to wait to find out the sex... we'll see how they take waiting on a name.