**Once again, life has gotten in the way of writing about
life. So, here is a long overdue entry about choosing just the right baby
names.**
There are so many intense and stressful things that go into
planning to have children, and for a lot of people, choosing a name is the most
intense and stressful. After all, this is the name that your child will likely
carry for the rest of his/her life, and if you choose wrong, you could be
looking at thousands of dollars worth of therapy. Just think of the people who
have chosen names like “Robin Graves” (get it?), “Adolf Hitler” (that really only worked once)
or this selection of names favored (but ultimately rejected) by our Kiwi
friends: Stallion, Yeah Detroit, Fish
and Chips, Twisty Poi, Keenan Got Lucy and Sex Fruit were disallowed by registration officials. Choosing a name like that is clearly more
about the parents, and their desire to be unique or different, than it is about
the children. If it were about the children, the parents would have given more
thought to what it might be like to go through life with such a name. People
are mean. Kids are especially mean. Why set up your child for a lifetime of
teasing?
Even if the name isn’t something ridiculous, naming your
child after a famous person, or a literary character can have its own issues. I
taught a student named Emily Dickinson once. Her dad thought it was clever. She
hated it – and hated every time a teacher said to her, on the first day of
school, “Oh, like the poet!” or “You know, there’s a famous poet with that
name!” How could she not know? She was a writer herself, and a talented one,
and her ambition, in high school, was to one day be able to Google her name and
not have to sift through page after page to actually find herself. That’s quite
a burden to put on a kid.
Then there was the student I had in England named Lizzie
Bennett. Now, I know that one won’t be as obvious to some, but she shared her
name with the heroine of Jane Austen’s classic, Pride and Prejudice. She didn’t face quite as many frustrations as
Emily Dickinson, but she certainly dealt with her share.
It’s important to me not to saddle my kids with names that
will prove to be more of a burden than a blessing. I’ve thought about names a lot,
and I know my preferences have undergone a change over the years. In the past,
I focused on somewhat superficial things, like should I give my kids the same
initials as me (a long-since rejected issue)? I also thought about what the
names meant, and whether anyone would actually know what they meant. Much time
was spent browsing baby name websites, although I’ve thought about it
long enough that I actually started with a character naming book that I’ve had
for years.
I didn’t take it as far as some, though. A New York Times article from last year detailed the extreme lengths to which some New York parents would go to
insure that their children had names that were both unique, and Ivy-league worthy.
The article explains the status symbol that a child’s name can be – for the
parents – and even describes how some parents have lied about how they came up
with the name, if it’s found that others in their child’s playgroup or class
have the same name (apparently, Ethans and Ellas are a dime a dozen in NYC
pre-schools).
For me, the baby naming process became more heavily
influenced by a different factor in recent years. The loss of my parents made
it important to me to carry on a part of them. I was unable to do that
genetically, but I decided that I could do it in the selection of my children’s
names. I didn’t want to simply use their exact names, because I still wanted my
children to have their own sense of identity, but I figured I could use names “inspired”
by my parent’s names.
I had some choices picked out, depending on whether they
were boys or girls, and now that I know it’s two girls (Yay!), I can reveal
what they are. My dad’s name was Joseph Patrick, and my mom’s name was Haydée (no middle name). And, of course, my middle name
is Marée, taken from “Mary” (Mom had a strong
faith in the Virgin Mother), and the last two letters of Mom’s name.
So, little Bedazzler will be named Jocelyn Marée (I liked Jocelyn as a variation of Joseph, rather
than the standard feminization of Josephine). And, Sparkle will be named Hayden
Patrice (I thought Patrice flowed better from Hayden than Patricia, and adding
the “en” onto the “Hayd” from Mom’s name also puts a little bit of me into that
name). As for nicknames, time will tell. Jocelyn could be Joss or Josie (I
favor Joss), or something else entirely. I have more trouble thinking of
nicknames for Hayden, but then again, I may not have any control over what they
choose to call themselves, or what their friends choose to call them.
I’m happy with my choices, and I do like the fact that the
names stand alone as pretty girls’ names, even without the backstory. The names
will be significant to me and my family, and anyone who might be curious. To
everyone else, they’ll just be names.
