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Pardon my cheesy Shakespearean subject line.
I'm tempted to lock this as I haven't been openly sharing our thoughts on names. I was at first and then I would get all these well-intentioned, but weird suggestions that I really wasn't interested in. But there's not all that many of you that read this journal that I know of and I doubt there's a plethora of anonymous readers out there, either, so I'll just go ahead and post it.
There's a lot of thought that goes into naming a child since they will be stuck with it their whole lives, or at least until they are old enough to change it if they really want to. But there's a lot to consider. I always think of one of the best SNL skits where they're trying to pick a name and the father (Nicolas Cage, I believe) is coming up with ridiculous nicknames for everything the mother comes up with, and then you find out his name is Asswipe Jones (pronounced Az-wee-pay). You have to look at what the initials spell and how it all sounds together with the last name and if that name makes you think of someone else you knew in life and if that was good or bad and so on and so forth. This is no small task.
Our plan for a girl's name has been figured out for years, actually. Perhaps since even before we were married. John's very close with his grandmother and has always wanted to use her name, Eleanor. I wasn't initially sold on the idea, but it's grown on me over the years and I agreed, on the grounds that we would call her Nora, and not Ellie. So that was an easy one for us to pick out.
Then we had to figure out a middle name. We were kind of leaning towards Zoe until Beth pointed out that this would make her initials EZ (you know, easy) and well, maybe that's not so great for a girl to have. I probably could have gotten past this, but then one of John's cousins that he's close with is now dating this girl named Zoe. Again, that alone probably wouldn't have been a deterrent, but the two things combined are making us hold off. Maybe if we have a girl later on, we'll use it then, as we do like the name.
Here's what I think we're decided on for a girl's middle name. The running gag in our family growing up was that one of us girls should have been named Rebecca since it rhymes with the last name we had. In fact, when people couldn't figure out how to pronounce it, especially when I was teaching, that's how I'd tell them to remember it, that it rhymed with Rebecca. Thus, somewhere along the line that got to be a bit of a nickname for me. Only I had this friend in 7th grade who spelled it Rebekah and I really dig that. It's also the Old Testament Biblical spelling and so it makes me feel better about having some wacky spelling rather than just some new-fangled change to a standard name like people like to do. I always thought it was cool that my middle name is Leigh, rather than boring Lee. John also likes the spelling and so we are pretty much decided on Eleanor Rebekah.
Boys are tricky. You can't go too weird with boys. In fact, my baby name book has a statistic about boys with unusual names being so many times more likely to have mental health problems than boys with standard names. There's no similar statistic for girls. And there's just not as many good boy names, it seems. I had thought many years about using the name Peter, my grandfather's name, but I don't like it with our last name. Too rhyming. And other people have told me they didn't think it sounded that bad, but John and I do, and well, like George Bush, we're the deciders. I really like the name Seth a lot, and had a friend by that name who died in a car accident several years ago, but the alliteration of that with our last name is something everyone agrees is just plain silly. Then there's the name Sean, which I also like, but anyone that knows my dating history knows that name is totally out of the question.
I went through the book and made a fairly short list of names that I liked for boys and ran them by John. We agreed on a few. What we're leaning is Aaron Joshua. Here's where I got stuck on that one for a minute. So Eleanor, called Nora, is pretty much going to happen as long as we ever have a girl. I don't know how I even noticed this, but I had this random realization that Aaron backwards is essentially Nora, and that just seems goofy. I briefly toyed with the idea of switching it to Joshua Aaron, but I really don't want to. So this is the one spot I would actually like to hear peoples' opinions. What are the odds anyone else would ever notice that Aaron is kind of Nora backwards? And would it really matter anyway?
Here's why I'm not for Joshua as the first name, by the way. Kim has this cousin Josh that I had a ginormous crush on since I met him at the ripe old age of 14 that went on for years and years and years (I'd probably still get flutters if I saw him). Now that's not really a big deal. But the other boy name that we'd like to use if we were to ever have two boys is Zachary and this cousin's last name is Zak. Purely coincidental, but that would just be too weird to me. So I want to keep Joshua as a middle name.
I know. I'm thinking about this way too much, aren't I?
I'm tempted to lock this as I haven't been openly sharing our thoughts on names. I was at first and then I would get all these well-intentioned, but weird suggestions that I really wasn't interested in. But there's not all that many of you that read this journal that I know of and I doubt there's a plethora of anonymous readers out there, either, so I'll just go ahead and post it.
There's a lot of thought that goes into naming a child since they will be stuck with it their whole lives, or at least until they are old enough to change it if they really want to. But there's a lot to consider. I always think of one of the best SNL skits where they're trying to pick a name and the father (Nicolas Cage, I believe) is coming up with ridiculous nicknames for everything the mother comes up with, and then you find out his name is Asswipe Jones (pronounced Az-wee-pay). You have to look at what the initials spell and how it all sounds together with the last name and if that name makes you think of someone else you knew in life and if that was good or bad and so on and so forth. This is no small task.
Our plan for a girl's name has been figured out for years, actually. Perhaps since even before we were married. John's very close with his grandmother and has always wanted to use her name, Eleanor. I wasn't initially sold on the idea, but it's grown on me over the years and I agreed, on the grounds that we would call her Nora, and not Ellie. So that was an easy one for us to pick out.
Then we had to figure out a middle name. We were kind of leaning towards Zoe until Beth pointed out that this would make her initials EZ (you know, easy) and well, maybe that's not so great for a girl to have. I probably could have gotten past this, but then one of John's cousins that he's close with is now dating this girl named Zoe. Again, that alone probably wouldn't have been a deterrent, but the two things combined are making us hold off. Maybe if we have a girl later on, we'll use it then, as we do like the name.
Here's what I think we're decided on for a girl's middle name. The running gag in our family growing up was that one of us girls should have been named Rebecca since it rhymes with the last name we had. In fact, when people couldn't figure out how to pronounce it, especially when I was teaching, that's how I'd tell them to remember it, that it rhymed with Rebecca. Thus, somewhere along the line that got to be a bit of a nickname for me. Only I had this friend in 7th grade who spelled it Rebekah and I really dig that. It's also the Old Testament Biblical spelling and so it makes me feel better about having some wacky spelling rather than just some new-fangled change to a standard name like people like to do. I always thought it was cool that my middle name is Leigh, rather than boring Lee. John also likes the spelling and so we are pretty much decided on Eleanor Rebekah.
Boys are tricky. You can't go too weird with boys. In fact, my baby name book has a statistic about boys with unusual names being so many times more likely to have mental health problems than boys with standard names. There's no similar statistic for girls. And there's just not as many good boy names, it seems. I had thought many years about using the name Peter, my grandfather's name, but I don't like it with our last name. Too rhyming. And other people have told me they didn't think it sounded that bad, but John and I do, and well, like George Bush, we're the deciders. I really like the name Seth a lot, and had a friend by that name who died in a car accident several years ago, but the alliteration of that with our last name is something everyone agrees is just plain silly. Then there's the name Sean, which I also like, but anyone that knows my dating history knows that name is totally out of the question.
I went through the book and made a fairly short list of names that I liked for boys and ran them by John. We agreed on a few. What we're leaning is Aaron Joshua. Here's where I got stuck on that one for a minute. So Eleanor, called Nora, is pretty much going to happen as long as we ever have a girl. I don't know how I even noticed this, but I had this random realization that Aaron backwards is essentially Nora, and that just seems goofy. I briefly toyed with the idea of switching it to Joshua Aaron, but I really don't want to. So this is the one spot I would actually like to hear peoples' opinions. What are the odds anyone else would ever notice that Aaron is kind of Nora backwards? And would it really matter anyway?
Here's why I'm not for Joshua as the first name, by the way. Kim has this cousin Josh that I had a ginormous crush on since I met him at the ripe old age of 14 that went on for years and years and years (I'd probably still get flutters if I saw him). Now that's not really a big deal. But the other boy name that we'd like to use if we were to ever have two boys is Zachary and this cousin's last name is Zak. Purely coincidental, but that would just be too weird to me. So I want to keep Joshua as a middle name.
I know. I'm thinking about this way too much, aren't I?
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 01:24 am (UTC)From:Anyway, I think that your girl name is incredibly pretty. I wouldn't worry about Aaron being Nora backwards. I am pretty sure that no on would notice, and if they did, they would probably think it was neat.
I know people that named their son Cameron, and their daughter Neely. It means nothing to me, but apparently there was some famous hockey player named Cam Neely, and the father is a huge fan. The mom wasn't crazy about naming her children after this guy, until she realized that most people wouldn't make the connection.
Good luck. Whatever you decide will be right. I wondered for a long time after Grace was born if we should have used Anna (it was my favorite, and meaningful, since we both have Grandmothers named Anna). Now, I can't imagine her being anything but Grace.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 03:24 pm (UTC)From:Had a good laugh over the Cam Neely thing. I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out.
Refresh my memory. What's Grace's middle name?
no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 03:34 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 04:29 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 03:16 am (UTC)From:I've always liked short boy names that seemed like something a strong guy would have: Sam, Jack, Jake, Max...I used to like Logan but now it would remind me of Wolverine and that seems weird. Of course, not as weird as Kal El...
no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 04:04 pm (UTC)From: