grrlTravels

One of my favorite OCD behaviors

I am back to the naming thing. I've been able to procrastinate to this point because the paperwork took precedence over everything else. But last week I drug out the baby naming books and jumped right in.

The First Time
I am mostly overwhelmed. I remember feeling like this when we were choosing a name for E. We had a long list of girl names. We found out we were having a boy. We had no boy names that we liked. We went through the books over and over. I declared that naming a boy was much more difficult than naming a girl. We felt powerless. We vowed not to show up at the hospital without a name chosen for our son.

The priorities for naming a boy are different than when naming a girl. You want something masculine and strong, but not nerdy or stiff. None of the names we liked felt right. Some were too "cowboy" (Carson), some had no good nicknames (Hewitt), some were just too far off the radar (Radcliff). Mostly, my naming preferences were complex and hard to satisfy.

The story of naming E. did have a happy ending. We found a name that we both really liked. There were a few minor drawbacks, but no deal breakers. We named him fairly early in the pregnancy (about 5 months?) and kept the name a secret from almost everyone until he was born, not allowing for any "helpful" comments. We did saddle him with two middle names (one is a family name from my family) but I still love his name. So we were successful once.

Amy's Love of Words Backfires
I will admit to having quite a few personal "rules for naming things". So many rules, in fact, that K. threw his hands up in disgust at one point and decided to leave the naming to me.

Personal Rules for Naming

1. The name cannot start with D (like our last name)


2. The name cannot start with K


3. The name cannot start with A


4. The name cannot start with E


5. The name must not be popular or common


6. The name must be unique, but spell-able and pronounceable


7. The name must mean something meaningful

Personal Preferences about Names

1. The name must be more than one syllable, and preferably 3 or more


2. The name must have a good nickname


3. The name should not be too strongly tied to an ethnic origin which we ourselves do not possess as part of our DNA


4. The name must not rhyme with any bad words


5. The name must not have belonged to someone who I did not like at any point in my entire life

So there's a lot to consider, first and foremost being that I am a total freak. But once you get past that, it's hard to find the right name. I have never not liked my name, except for the passing thought that it was a little too common for my tastes. It was embarrassing for a very shy third grader to have two other girls in her class with exactly the same name. But other than that I have always felt comfortable with my name and liked it. I want the same for my kids. I want them to have good strong names that they can like and be proud of. Names that I can stand to say approximately 751,000 times per day under many unique sets of circumstances.

Amy is definitely neurotic
So here I sit, trying to name another child. I am sorry, and I deeply appreciate the feedback from my lovely readers and friends, but I can't, can't, can't make any headway on deciding whether or not to consider a Chinese name for a first name. It is a complete given with us that our daughter will have a Chinese name, either the one from the orphanage or one that we choose ourselves. But will it be her first name or a middle name? Will she hate us for an extremely unusual first name, or appreciate the cultural significance? Will it cause her school life to be even more painful?

I am discussing this issue with a lot of people right now because I want to make the right decision and also want to get on with choosing a good name for our daughter. I mentioned all of this to my cousin who is a teacher (in an admittedly non-diverse school district) and said, "But you probably have lots of kids with all kinds of unique names, right?" She replied, "Hmmmm... I think there's a kid in the 4th grade named Ali..." Not really the answer I am looking for.

Solution: Move to Hawaii already
We have always had it in the back of our minds to move to Hawaii at some point. Perhaps to retire, perhaps before then. Hawaii has a very ethnically diverse population:

Honolulu is renown for its diverse ethnic mix. Forty Six percent of the population is Asian and twenty one percent are Whites. In addition, 19.9% of the population is comprised of one or more races. Native Asian and Pacific Islanders form 8.9% of Honolulu's diverse ethnic mix. African American's constitute 2.4% of the population and the remaining 1.3% is made up of the population is made of other races.

taken from Enterprise Honolulu
Ok, perhaps a bit extreme, but you could look at it as killing two birds with one stone (a distasteful saying to be sure).

Figure out what's really important and get on with it already
I am committed to a name with an Asian flavor, whatever that might mean. For me, it's important. Unfortunately all of the Asian names I am drawn to are Japanese in origin and I believe that the Japanese and Chinese don't like each other very much, or didn't for a very long time. And anyway, if I'm going to give her a Japanese name I may as well just give her a straight American name and be done with it for all of the similarities between the Japanese language and Chinese. I mean, who am I really fooling?

So here I am whiling away the winter days reading baby name books. It helps to pass the time as we wait months for our referral. Also, I am further clarifying my Personal Rules for Naming and may be close to excluding 95% of known names. That should make things easier.

Posted by grrlTravels at January 7, 2005 4:30 PM