9/9/11

Everyone keeps asking us if we have named our baby yet. Picking a name is stressful business. You don't want to pick a name that rhymes with something unfortunate (Dennis the Menace). You can't pick a name that means something you're not aware of (I heard of a lady who named her daughter Latrine because she though it sounded pretty not knowing it meant toilet!). You don't want your baby to have a name that could be associated with someone bad (if you're last name is Manson you probably shouldn't name your son Charles). You don't want to give your child a name that rhymes with your last name (Julia Gulia).

My mom gave us a book of baby names. The book is really fun it includes lists like: Future Serial Killers, Future Politicians, Future Millionaires, Future Geeks, Future Activists, Future Athletes and that sort of thing. We loved reading through these lists, this isn't how we were going to pick a name though.

Before we knew if we were having a boy or a girl we sat down and each made lists of names we liked for both a boy and a girl. Then we compared our lists and narrowed them down to the names we had in common. From there we looked up the meanings and origins of the names and put them together with the middle names we knew we wanted to go with and decided what we liked best. We decided that if we were having a boy it would be Zachary Carl, but didn't have a definite girl's name. Then we found out that we were having a girl so we really got to thinking. We got the list narrowed down to 2 names and decided to keep it that way until we see her. We figure when we see her we'll know what to call her. 

We shared the 2 names with our families to hear how they sounded when repeated back to us and we like them both and so do our families. It's funny because their opinions are split about half and half between the names. We learned that once you share the names you will get feedback. In our case it's been pretty good, but I imagine for some people feedback could be bad. So we decided not to share the names with anyone else. 

Did you share your baby's name before he/she was born?

For fun here is the list of babies born in the last month at Ministry Saint Michael's Hospital: http://ministryhealth.org/MinistryHealth/Services/OnlineNursery/SMHStevensPoint.nws