So, I don’t suspect that my Mother reads this blog, I suspect she would find it pointless and inane if she did. That being my assumption, it would then follow that it would be safe to discuss the fact that my yet to be born child is a boy.
I suspect that my son will also be unlikely to read this, but even so, I would imagine that we are open and honest enough with him that anything he does read here, would be of little surprise to him (how we doing, son?).
That being said, there is still the lingering sadness that our daughter will not be, as she turned out to not be so much a daughter, but a son, instead. Heather and I were quite looking forward to a little girl for several reasons, and with a bit of guilt, I felt somewhat disappointed when the Ultrasound revealed the kiddo to be a boy. I am getting used to the idea, and have started to look forward to raising my son to not be a camo wearing, sports watching, football playing, redneck jock; but instead, a game playing, movie watching, book reading, glasses wearing, self confident, dork. I think the self confidence is the key. If there was anything I learned far too late in life, it was to be proud of who I am and not care what other people think.
We saw a lot of little boys at Scarborough this weekend (you should see my awesome parade photos from the faire on my Flickr page), and one of them in particular made me look forward to being the father of a son. He was scrawny, and quiet, but proud to be out at the faire, dressed the part, and just enjoying himself in the Renaissance spirit. Every time he walked by (which was more than a few, as we sat in the Sky Chairs), I imagined my own son being very similar.
Now that I think about it, I should have asked his name. You see, one of the several reasons we were looking forward to having a girl, is we agreed on her name almost instantly. Aislin. But from the time that we started discussing names up through the present, we have yet to both find a name that we completely love and agree on. We can find names that one of us loves and the other “isn’t opposed to,” but nothing has been as definitive as our little girl’s name. We still have four months left to figure it out, but I’ve read through the baby names so many times, that they’re starting to sound less and less like names, and more like animal noises.
Its frustrating to say the least, but I’m sure that a year from now, it will all be so unimportant that we’ll hardly remember the struggle. At least until we go back and look at these old blogs, right son?
23 replies on “Naming your Child is much harder than Naming your Pet”
Hm, perhaps it was best not to know that boy’s name. But remembering him may lead you to a good name for your son.
Looking up Aislin, I saw that its origin was Gaelic – have you and Heather looked up male Gaelic names? Just a suggestion 🙂
have we looked at Gaelic names? hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!
yes.
Well, yeah – obviously. Not too many really GOOD Gaelic boy names though :/
actually, there are quite a few, but they all begin with hard C / or K sounds.
We don’t mind the K sound, but since of the four recent babies in our circle of influence, three of them have C/K names, we’re a little put off (Corwin, Kaylan, Ewan, Connor).
Kaytlyn was supposed to have been a boy… her name would have been Austin Michael! Little butt…
so did you tell her that she was supposed to be a boy? my brother was supposed to be a girl, and for the first year or two, my mother didn’t deny that he wasn’t a girl. She let his hair grow out and put him in all whites and yellows.
Yup… she hates it when we call her Austin lol.
HAHA!
Our first choice for a boy’s name was Aidan, but it is the #1 name of 2006 (if alternate spellings are taken into account – the SSN database is a bit flawed in that sense).
Yeah, and my hair was beautiful, so what? Better than bald til 3 😉
I didn’t disagree.
Yeah, I can see how that would happen. The hard K sound would sound pretty cool with your last name though.
I like Aidan. It can’t be that popular. I’ve never had an Aidan.
yeah, it actually sounds great… and the more hard K sound last names I think of, the more they are frequently paired with hard K first names.
currently Aiden and Aidan are in the top 40 of the SSN list for 2006. And since SSN doesn’t account for variations, that means that there are effectively twice as many “aidans” as they counted.
Many of our baby name communities and databases have already listed Aiden/Aidan as the number one name for a couple years.
ahh.. they just aren’t old enough to get to my classroom yet…
yeah, I think its only been the last couple of years that its made a huge jump in popularity.
In the spirit of being totally pointless today — here is a list of the male first names currently in my inbox:
Mark
Jeff
Thom
Owen
John
Joe
Zane
Cliff
Randy
Ron
George
Russell
Arthur
Amit
Eric
Kevin
Todd
Patrick
Jay
David
In a completely non-biased and informative sort of way, I’d like to point out that “Sean” is a GOOD name of Celtic/Gaelic origin. 😉
I do wish you luck on the name search. I mean its one thing to grow up with a name and maybe talk to your parents about why they named you what they did, and another thing entirely to be in that position yourself.
my name is my dad’s name.
and heather feels that with a single syllable last name, we need a two syllable first name. so sean is out.
RE: Names – click the random blog button on any blog site, that’s how I get names for my characters in my stories..when I write. I know, not as committal, but I’ve found some awesome names.
RE: the rest – Hey! I like sports and I read and am all that other stuff…eh, just kidding, I understand your fear and share it myself.
Speaking of the SSN database…can you look up past years? Pull a popular 30 year old name out, or least popular even?
I’m fairly certain the database goes back several years. I’ll have to check that out.
That might help and ease some of the anxiety.