Name that baby!

Naming a baby is one of the most fun things about being a parent. There are literally endless possibilities. I have two rules: I won’t name a kid after a non-dead relative and first names should use standard spellings. Both of these rules save a lot of heartache. The first for your family members that might feel slighted and the second for your kid having to constantly explain and correct people. But I, as well as my husband, love the idea of using names from our families.

So about a week after I found out I was pregnant the first time, we were driving to Las Vegas to visit some friends of ours. It’s about a four hour drive from Los Angeles. I thought this would be a good time to talk about baby names to give us something to talk about on the drive. The whole conversation took all of 2 minutes. Maybe less.

Me: We should think about names for the baby.

Sam: I want to name a boy Edward after my grandfather.

Me: Ok, sounds good. I want to name a girl Jean after my mom.

Sam: Ok, sounds good.

Me: How about middle names? Edward Russell, after my grandfather?

Sam: Russell is a little weird, but ok.

Me: Yeah, but it’s a middle name.

Sam: How about Caryl for a girl’s middle name after my grandmother?

Me: Sure. So Edward Russell for a boy and Jean Caryl for a girl?

Sam: Yeah, sounds good.

I don’t remember what we talked about during the other three hours and 58 minutes.

So now I am pregnant again. The names for the new baby weren’t as easy or obvious. Well, the girl’s name was since we didn’t use it. If we have a girl it will be Jean Caryl. But for a boy’s name? My other grandfather was named Otis and Sam’s other grandfather is Sylvester. Sylvester is ok for a middle name and I don’t like Otis at all. Neither did my grandfather, he went by Bob. If you go farther back, my family is nothing but James and John (for generations they had no originality AT ALL). Both of those names violate my “no non-dead relatives names”. Sam’s dad is John and my dad is James. The rest of Sam’s family has VERY German names that didn’t excite me at all. Yes, including Adolf. We talked about other names but didn’t come up with one that we could both agree on.

My uncle has done quite a bit of genealogical research of our family and put it all on line in a searchable database (check it out here). I was playing around with it and started going back through my direct line and eventually got to the first family that came over from Scotland around 1770. The first one of my family that was born on what became American soil was born in 1771 and named Benjamin. I love it. It’s a Biblical name and a family name.

So if we have a boy it will be Benjamin Sylvester and a girl will be Jean Caryl. The difference in the length of the two names cracks me up. We don’t know the gender of the baby to be yet, but we are prepared either way.

It’s nice to have one thing I’m not clueless about.