The Name Game

Naming our first child seemed so easy. We found out she was a girl, picked out a girl's name and boom, that was it. We both loved it. There weren't any second place names. We had the best girl's name and that was it. We kept it secret from our friends, telling them her name would be Savannah Veranda (you have to say it with a syrupy Southern accent to really get the full effect!)

Now we're having another baby girl in oh, a month. We don't have a name. We have a middle name, which is the same as my daughter's middle name, my middle name and my mom's middle name. It's Noel. My husband said this little girl would feel left out at Christmas if she wasn't a Noel like the three of us -- and he's right.

So, Something Noel will be here in just a few weeks and goodness knows what we'll call her. My husband's been suggesting kind of sporty, genderless names. But they don't go with our other daughter's name at all. So I have been vetoing them. I'm not heartless. He started it with his vetoing of some of my favorite girls' names. No Sophie. No Emily.

I can tell you her joke name is Lourdes, which rhymes with my last name believe it or not. But I don't have her real name. We have several names in contention, but none of them are THE name right now, mostly because my DH insists on having a really solid nickname for the real name picked out at the same time.

We're getting down to the wire. Between the book I bought, 100,000 Baby Names, and the two he bought, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Baby Naming with 30,000 Names, and 60,000 Baby Names, we've got 190,000 baby names. Most of them are weird and made up:

Tammilynn. (American. Tammy + Lynn)
Honestly, like I need a baby naming book to tell me that.

Lilibet (Lily + Elizabeth or Betty)

Aden (Irish) Girl's name.
Aden? An Irish Girl's name? It's just a misspelled Aidan, which is an Irish BOY'S name! Heck, why not just name her Patrick? This author was stretching the whole 30,000 name thing, I can tell ya that.

And if you are an Irish girl named Aden, I don't mean to make fun of your name, so please don't flame me in the comments. It's just not the right name for me and my baby girl, that's all.

So now I'm going back through the 190,000 names in the three books. I've got four weeks. If I don't ever sleep, that's 672 hours. I'll have to go through 282.73 names per hour to keep up with the schedule. Luckily, I can skip Sophie, Emily, Aden, Lilibet and Tammilynn.