Too Many Choices

As parents, we have plenty of opportunities to land our children on a therapist's couch, where they will blame us for all their problems since birth. In fact, if you look at what the "experts" have to say, we can mess them up by breastfeeding or bottle feeding, by spanking or not spanking, by co-sleeping or putting them in a crib, by using cloth or disposable diapers, or pretty much by making the "wrong" choice in practically any parenting issue, and there are plenty of "experts" out there to tell us that any given choice is completely wrong!

So most of us try to concentrate on the things we can control. Like names. My goodness, the stress of picking the perfect name! A name is something your kid is stuck with FOR LIFE.

Sure, there are some people who change their names for one reason or another. Like my friend Aaron, who changed her name to Erin after she reached an age of maturity. The last straw was when she was sent the "college advertising box" intended for boys that contained a razor and some condoms (instead of maxi pads and shampoo, like the rest of us girls got). She didn't hate her name, but she hated the spelling, so she changed it. There was the woman who changed her name to Katie Scarlett O'Hara to win a radio contest. But most people live with the names they are given.

Nowadays, we have even more opportunities to screw up a name beyond hope. It's more than just using a boy's name for a girl -- a trend that is becoming more and more popular with names like Taylor, Morgan, Avery, Riley, Reagan, etc. No, now we can pull from a bottomless pit of names that include places (Dakota, Paris, Dallas, Montana, Zimbabwe...okay, maybe not Zimbabwe), occupations (Ranger, Hunter, Tanner, etc), and even weather patterns (Stormy, Sunshine, Wendy -- did you know the first time the name "Wendy" had ever been heard by anyone was in the book "Peter Pan"? Little bit of trivia for you, there). We can get really cre8tiv with ewneek spellings of normal names, like Jheniphur (Jennifer), Mathyew (Matthew), and Ohlyveeah (Olivia). We can carefully name all 17 of our kids names that begin with the letter J (Google "Duggar Family" if you don't know what I'm talking about), or we can name them after characters in our favorite movies/TV shows (Chandler, Ross, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, or Rachel, anyone?). We can follow the trend of celebrity baby names, which make absolutely no sense whatsoever (Apple? Tallulah Belle? Pilot Inspektor? Fifi Trixiebelle? Moxie Crimefighter? Where do they come up with these names?)

So Jimmy and I are now embarking on the wonderful adventure of trying to name this little bean, and the pressure is enormous! Personally, I like to avoid kids with matchy names, so A names are completely out. I also don't want anything too trendy or popular, nor do I want a name that is so bizarre that the baby's future teachers will roll their eyes and decide we're one of *THOSE* families. I refuse to name my child after inanimate objects, beer or any other alcoholic beverage, or any name that would be traditionally used for a pet (see Fifi, above). Unfortunately, those criteria don't really limit the pool of potential names very much, so I think we have a long journey ahead of us. I have a book of baby names -- 25,000 to be exact -- and I plan to scour it until I find the perfect set of names for a boy and a girl. Wish me luck.