What's in a name?

Well, Juliet, quite a lot goes into a name actually.

Don't get me wrong, I love thinking about names for my son and trying them out to see how they will sound. But it's complicated. For those of you that are parents, this is probably old news to you. Even for those of you who aren't parents, I know that most of us have thought about names and what all goes into a name. But it becomes quite real when you realize you have three months left to decide on a name that somebody will carry around for the rest of their life.

Let's review some of the pitfalls of naming that I've been warned about by others--many of these following the basic can-a-5th-grade-kid-make-fun-of-your-kid-because-of-his-name? rule:

1) no body parts or bodily functions as the name or part of the name.
2) no name or part of a name that can rhyme with unfortunate body parts or bodily functions ("Bart-fart")
3) opposite gender sounding names (this has become less of a no-no due to all the unisex names recently, but there is still an inherent danger of lots of teasing if you give a boy a very girlie name or a girl a very boyish name)
4) names that no one will be able to pronounce correctly on the first try (again, not a complete no, but you have to weigh the benefits of the name against the annoyance he'll have of telling every single person he ever meets how to say his name)
5) name combinations that cause their initials to be something bad. For instance, no one in our family will have a first name that begins with "S" and a second name that begins with "T". The resulting initials would be "STD"...

And those are just some of the things to avoid. When you get into this naming thing you start thinking about what the name means, how it sounds rolling off your tongue, etc. And you don't just want this to be any old name, you want it to be a good name, heck, a GREAT name. After all your kid is gonna be wearing it for a good 80+ years (enshall-yah).

Now that I've written an entire post about the difficulties and dangers of naming a kid...anybody have any suggestions?   :P

You don't have to give me the name you've secretly been hoping to name your first boy or anything...just some names that you like. We have some ideas for names of course, but I want to make sure I'm not overlooking any name or groups of names in the consideration process. It would be fun to hear why you like the name too, if you have a specific reason.

Seeing Pam in labor makes me wonder what our experience will be like

Provoke Your Own Mind

"Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives the expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."


-- Oswald Chambers