Names, eh?
Happily, I like my name.
Maybe I just grew to like it, but there was never a time
that I can remember where I didn’t like it. I know folks whose name, and by
extension their parents, they hate a little bit. I knew a chap called Francis
back in school who hated his name with a passion; he goes by Frank now though. The
only gripe I’ve ever had with my own is the fact that my given name is actually
technically my middle name on my
birth certificate - Samuel Jonathan Cardwell - and whenever people found out
I’d have to explain the situation, which I’ve done countless times, or whenever
you went into a new school year and the teacher called out Samuel Cardwell, and
I’d have to explain it all over again. Also, to this day, when people find out
they think it hilarious to call me ‘Sammy’ until I explain the situation once
more, and they get bored.
Or I punch them in the throat.
But recently Jenny has come up with a few baby names and
asked me to think of some as well. It’s a fairly big task for anyone; naming
another human being. And although you say ‘baby names’ that’s not what you’re
doing at all; you’re deciding on what they will be known as for their entire
life.
That’s a pretty big thing if you ask me.
There are various factors one has to…um, factor in when
naming your unborn.
- You have to agree on the name with your partner.
This is the big one in my opinion. You can’t just acquiesce
to whatever name the other person picks. You can’t call your child a name that
you don’t like. Every time you do so, you’ll be reminded of how you were
overruled in the naming of someone you helped create, breeding animosity and
eventually murder.
Maybe. Probably not.
But I still feel a bit bad that I named our cat Oscar without
fully consulting the wife over what she wanted to call him.
- It can’t be a weird name.
Weird names are alright for celebrity kids. They’re expected
to have weird names. It’s like a right of passage. They send their kids to
expensive private schools with other odd named kids and therefore their own
child’s name seems normal by comparison. Not in the real world, sweetheart. If
you name your child ‘Fuchsia’ or ‘Marigold’ your child is going to be
mercilessly mocked in school, at work and by everyone, none more so than by
her/his own father. Basically, if it sounds like it could a stripper name,
don’t call your child that. I think that’s one of Ten Commandments or
something.
- Famous people/fictional characters
This sort of ties in with the above point, but the amount of
times I’ve cringed after hearing a mum calling her child and screaming
‘Rhianna’ or ‘Britney’ in a thick Belfast
brogue is probably in triple figures. Just because you like said singers and/or
their names doesn’t mean it sounds good shouting it up the stairs when it’s dinner
time. And more often than not it doesn’t fit in with your surname; Rhianna
sounds all exotic and mysterious, but if your surname is Smith it sort of
shatters the illusion a bit, doesn’t it? As for fictional characters, we all
want to call our kids after a character that we like from literature, or film
and TV (don’t we?) but very few have the balls to, because the names that stick
out are usually the weird ones, and as we learned from point 2 they’re a big
no-no. And as much as I think it’d be cool to call our first born Dean and any
potential future child Sam (even if they’re girls. Ha!), there’s no way I ever
would because it’s just…wrong. Clementine is out as well to my chagrin, even if
it was myself that vetoed it.
- Classical, yet modern.
Names, apparently, go in and out of fashion. And when I
heard this I started thinking about the names of my chums and people my own age
and it’s true; there are a lot of people named Adam, David, Christopher and a
hell of a lot of folks called Jonathan, let me tell you. So maybe those names
were an 80’s thing. Yet now, they don’t seem to be as prominent. The done thing
now appears to be going for more classical sounding names, yet not ones that
are so old that you feel like you’ve just given birth to a pensioner. I don’t
want to give out the list of the names we’ve already thought of but they’re all
ones that sound like “older” names yet we haven’t gone so far as to be
condemning our child to being called Mavis or Archibald. Who knows, maybe
there’ll be loads of Mavis’ and Archibald’s running about in 40 years when
those names come back into fashion, but right now I’m not going to lumber my
son or daughter with a name out of World War 1 that sounds like they should be
born with a monocle.
- Reverence.
My sister’s name is the same as mine. No, not Jonathan. But
her given name is also technically her middle name. Her first name on her birth
certificate is not what she goes by as is mine. My name is the same as my dad’s
and his dad’s (my grandfather) and maybe even further back than that while my
sister’s is the name of my maternal grandmother. We haven’t discussed this with
any of our parents about whether this is a thing, but it’s something to
consider. It’s not a tradition as such (as far as I’m aware) and it’s a nice
gesture but I don’t think we’re beholden to call our son (if it’s a boy) Samuel
_______ Cardwell, or our daughter Hannah _____ Cardwell. Sorry, this wasn’t a
funny point, but a point nonetheless. And I got to use the word ‘beholden.’
- Originality
You want the name to have some semblance of individuality
and John or Jane isn’t really going to cut it, is it? Unless your surname is
Doe, in which case you absolutely should, if just for the lols. So you need to
think of something suitably different so that there aren’t 14 kids in your
child’s preschool group with the same name, yet not so different it contravenes
points 2, 3 and 4. Although don’t go too far off the other end and call the
child Adolf or Kim Jong or something, hilarious as that might/would be.
- Uncertain about sex
No, I don’t mean about what goes where. We’re already
pregnant, so I’ve worked that out, thanks. I mean because we don’t yet know,
and likely won’t until baby is born, whether there’s a boy or a girl in there
you have to come up with a list of names for both genders. Which is fine, but
as we’ve discovered, sometimes you can come up with girls names quicker than
boys ones. We have a list of seven or eight names should it be a girl, with
only two boys’ names. Now, we’ll have to come up with some quick-sharpish
because if baby’s a he and we don’t have enough names, I probably will end up
calling him Adolf Kim Jong Cardwell in a blind panic.
- Phonetics
The name has to sound right. It has to roll off the tongue.
This is where it gets slightly more complicated as you have to take into
account the syllables involved and the sounds they make when spoken aloud. It’s
all very well having a lot of middle names or double-barrelled monikers but if
you sound like you’ve got a mouthful of marbles or have to take a breath
halfway through giving your name, then something’s gone wrong. This is another
thing you have to take into account when your daughter gets a serious
boyfriend; if it’s looking like they might get married and his surname would
cause embarrassment (to her, but mostly you), it’s your responsibility to end
that shit as quickly as possible, or else you’ll end up like a teacher I had at
school called Lynn Lynn. In fact, I met a guy the other day called Andrew
Andrews. Seriously. That’s just cruel.
- Names of friends/families kids
This is the most annoying one. You find a name that works,
that you and your partner have spent ages thinking about and actually agree on,
that adheres to all the rules laid out above, it’s not too weird but it’s
different enough to stand out and it sounds right spoken aloud, only to find
that some other bastard parents have
decided on the exact same name. And because their baby has pipped yours to the
post by having the gall to be born first it forces you to come up with another
less good name. And it’s always someone who’s close enough to your own
family/circle of friends to have it be annoying. It’s never the second cousin
of a relative you’ve never heard of. It’s always your bloody brother or sister
or cousin or uncle or close friend or SOMEONE. The assholes. Anyway, the point
is it’s always someone who, if you proceed with your perfect name, you’ll look
like you were copying even when you weren’t or worse, that you couldn’t think
of a name yourself and just went for the easiest solution, copying the name of
the most recent child to be born.
Parents are dicks.
And finally…
- The Homer Test
Homer: Marge, we can't do that. All the kids will call him Larry Fairy.
Marge: How about Louie?
Homer: They'll call him Screwy Louie.
Marge: Bob?
Homer: Slob.
Marge: Luke?
Homer: Puke.
Marge: Marcus?
Homer: Mucus.
Marge: What about Bart?
Homer: Hmm, let's see. Bart, Cart, Dart, E-art... nope, can't see any problem with that
Works every time.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
So yeah, we’re still no closer to choosing a name, but its
early days yet, right?
RIGHT???
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