"So do you have a name?"
...here's the thing. We aren't the people who decided when they got engaged what they would name their children. In fact, we have a really hard time deciding baby names.
To catch you up on our backstory, here's something I blogged two years ago when I was pregnant with Greta.
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...here's the thing. We aren't the people who decided when they got engaged what they would name their children. In fact, we have a really hard time deciding baby names.
To catch you up on our backstory, here's something I blogged two years ago when I was pregnant with Greta.
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There's the standard three questions.
1. When's your due date?
2. Girl or boy?
3. Have any names?
Luckily, the first two are really easy to answer. Straightforward, and people readily accept one-word answers. But when I answer "no," to #3, people are always confused.
"No? Do you and Jason just not agree on names?"
"Well, I think we mostly agree. We talk about it all the time. We just don't ... have... any."
"Do you have a pool that you're thinking of? Some good options?"
"Not really, yet, no, sorry." (honest truth.)
"Did you have boy names but then found out it was a girl?"
"Well kind of, but, no, not really. We just aren't very decisive. And just don't have anything we like yet."
But none of those answers are very satisfying to people.
Sometimes I try and explain in different ways:
"Part of it's tricky when you have a last name like Brown. We don't want to name her Katie/Sarah, and have her compete with the other 5,000 Katie Browns that will be in the Utah school districts alone. But we don't want it to be too off the wall."
OR
"Part of me is just really indecisive. And I'd like to see this child before they're given a name. So I'm not planning on naming the child until the hospital. But I know I need to have some options before then, or else this child will never have a name. I'm working on being decisive."
OR
"We also get really distracted really easily coming up with names. We start reading billboards, and the name becomes "Ikea" or "Awesome" (pronounced ah-weh-so-meh). We've also gone through all the combinations of Light Brown, Chocolate Brown, Mahogany Brown, etc. Or other fun historical names, like Dostoyevsky Brown, or Gorbachev Brown, or... other nouns, like Geography Brown, or Grandma Brown. Yeah, we just get distracted really easily."
Or when Jason tries to explain:
"The other challenge is convincing Jennie that the name needs to be something appropriate for a white little girl born in Utah. You see, Jennie has this thing for hispanic names, or Middle-Eastern boy names. So, we have to focus a bit."
That one baffles people a lot. (My neighbor last night: "Like WHAT?!") I don't know how to explain it either, other than I would just love a Middle-Eastern little boy that I would like to name Amir, thank you very much. And my hispanic children will be Alma (as in "soul") and maybe Nico. And maybe these will be adopted children, or maybe they will never exist. I'm still dealing with the fact that I will likely never have any dark-skinned, dark-eyed children. But Jason reminds me there might be some cultural confusion if I name a white, pasty little girl something like "Nuria," or "Amir." In fact, he does facebook and google searches for first names, and then points out to me that all of the hits coming up have last names like "Gonzalez" or "Rahnavard" or "Assaf" and that this name is not really appropriate for a scandinavian mutt with the last name of "Brown." Jason introduced me to Russian names, which mostly just give me a kick, but are similarly not appropriate. We're working through this.
So, no, we don't have names.
We don't really have options of names. We have a few contenders that might be higher than others, but I don't know if they're possibilities yet at all.
Just thought you might need the update.
1. When's your due date?
2. Girl or boy?
3. Have any names?
Luckily, the first two are really easy to answer. Straightforward, and people readily accept one-word answers. But when I answer "no," to #3, people are always confused.
"No? Do you and Jason just not agree on names?"
"Well, I think we mostly agree. We talk about it all the time. We just don't ... have... any."
"Do you have a pool that you're thinking of? Some good options?"
"Not really, yet, no, sorry." (honest truth.)
"Did you have boy names but then found out it was a girl?"
"Well kind of, but, no, not really. We just aren't very decisive. And just don't have anything we like yet."
But none of those answers are very satisfying to people.
Sometimes I try and explain in different ways:
"Part of it's tricky when you have a last name like Brown. We don't want to name her Katie/Sarah, and have her compete with the other 5,000 Katie Browns that will be in the Utah school districts alone. But we don't want it to be too off the wall."
OR
"Part of me is just really indecisive. And I'd like to see this child before they're given a name. So I'm not planning on naming the child until the hospital. But I know I need to have some options before then, or else this child will never have a name. I'm working on being decisive."
OR
"We also get really distracted really easily coming up with names. We start reading billboards, and the name becomes "Ikea" or "Awesome" (pronounced ah-weh-so-meh). We've also gone through all the combinations of Light Brown, Chocolate Brown, Mahogany Brown, etc. Or other fun historical names, like Dostoyevsky Brown, or Gorbachev Brown, or... other nouns, like Geography Brown, or Grandma Brown. Yeah, we just get distracted really easily."
Or when Jason tries to explain:
"The other challenge is convincing Jennie that the name needs to be something appropriate for a white little girl born in Utah. You see, Jennie has this thing for hispanic names, or Middle-Eastern boy names. So, we have to focus a bit."
That one baffles people a lot. (My neighbor last night: "Like WHAT?!") I don't know how to explain it either, other than I would just love a Middle-Eastern little boy that I would like to name Amir, thank you very much. And my hispanic children will be Alma (as in "soul") and maybe Nico. And maybe these will be adopted children, or maybe they will never exist. I'm still dealing with the fact that I will likely never have any dark-skinned, dark-eyed children. But Jason reminds me there might be some cultural confusion if I name a white, pasty little girl something like "Nuria," or "Amir." In fact, he does facebook and google searches for first names, and then points out to me that all of the hits coming up have last names like "Gonzalez" or "Rahnavard" or "Assaf" and that this name is not really appropriate for a scandinavian mutt with the last name of "Brown." Jason introduced me to Russian names, which mostly just give me a kick, but are similarly not appropriate. We're working through this.
So, no, we don't have names.
We don't really have options of names. We have a few contenders that might be higher than others, but I don't know if they're possibilities yet at all.
Just thought you might need the update.
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Things haven't changed too much since then.
But we're now implicated by our history of having a child who didn't officially have a name on a birth certificate until she was a month old. And we have another baby girl coming in the near future who also needs a name!
To be continued...
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