Names

We're working on boys' names and it seems hard.  The first conversation we had, we both liked "Thaddeus" and "Philemon".  But I feel like it's a little much for Stellan (not his real name, remember) as he's already had enough to deal with in life and I'd like his name to be more straightforward.  Maybe even more common.  Or more American.  Just to make things more simple for him.

So, as with each of our children, I continue through the baby names' lists, narrowing down what I like, present them to Matt and he narrows them down further.  So together we added about six more names.  Pretty straightforward.  Varying degrees of common.  And when I would feel pretty sure about one, Matt didn't agree.  And when he'd push one, I wasn't sure I agreed.

It just seems so hard.  I think partly because Stellan is already here.  And we can see him.  It adds another layer as we're both picking a name and I can also look at him and contemplate whether or not it fits.  There are a few that I think fit, but it's hard to be definitive.

at almost 3 years old

Tonight I really wanted us to decide.  So we pored over this small list of names.  And I like them.  But at least for tonight, none of them have quite been clicking.  So I told Matt that what needs to happen is what has happened every other time:  he randomly provides a name out of left field that I have to contemplate and end up acquiescing to.  (Hence both Titus and Kali.)

Side note:  I threw out the name "Titus" one night when we were talking baby names, but not seriously.  We had been disagreeing on EVERY name so I started suggesting random ones.  But then Matt said he liked it.  I had to sit back and think about it.  And mentally came around to it.  And we both decided we kind of liked it.  And we didn't really talk about it much more for the next however many months and then Titus was born and that was his name.

For baby #2, I thought naming her after she was born would be a great plan.  I made a huge list of girls' names, assuming we'd have plenty of labor-time in the hospital to talk about them.  Sitting in the hospital bed, Matt in a chair beside me, he pulls open his laptop to look at this list of mine, starts running through it crazy-fast, going "no" or "maybe" and the first one he got to that he liked said, "Let's name her that."  Without even looking through the whole list!  So I stop him to start trying to explain each name.  And I pick one of the most ridiculous ones on my list (Calliope) and start explaining that for instance, we could call her "Callie".  And he loves the idea of Kali, because it's a computer program he's used in the past.  And I love my husband's mad computer skills and think that would be a special thing to name her (and find out later that it was a program he used to play older video games on a new type of Internet infrastructure).

So most common name of all?  I named Ella!  How in the world did that happen?  I was looking at little girl names one night and saw quite a few that I liked that began with "El" and I had this great idea that we could pick one of these more unique "El" names and call her "Ella".  I run it by Matt and he likes the idea.  So we start calling her Ella while she's in my belly.  And I'm thinking that we'll maybe name her "Eloise".  But by the time she was born, we had spent so many months calling her "Ella" that it seemed wrong to name her anything else.

So onto Stellan... my husband threw out a left-field name for me.  Well, actually I started to do a few more out-of-the-box searches and while throwing out names to him stumbled upon this one that he remarked, "When you told me to give you a left field name, that was what I was thinking."  So we both sat back to think about it.  It is not as common as the other names on our list, friends.  But it is more straightforward than "Philemon".  We're sleeping on it.  We'll see.  :)

Side note:  Bank of America got back to me with a document and it works!  We'll have to send it back to California to be apostilled, but it works!

Also, Stellan is already born so once we name him, you can't hate on our name choice.  Not that I know anyone that would have ever given a family negative feedback on their baby name choice before their baby was born... ;)

(I wouldn't know--we never shared ahead of time to avoid that very thing.)