Name Game

Two in the morning, sitting up in bed with the wife, a big book of baby names in our hands. That’s when the real fun begins.

"Egbert?"
"Arlo?"
"Theophilus?"
"Babar?"
"Scholastica?"
"Scholastica???"

Like most parents-to-be, we recently discovered there’s a great deal of fun to be had in picking a name for your imminent child. First, we devised two columns – one for girls, one for boys – and began working our way through a book of names. (This particular one – simply titled Baby Name Book by Michele Brown – argues that "in recent years parents have chosen unusual names for their children, in an attempt to assert the child’s individual identity against so much competition"– hence more entries from Europe, North America, Africa and the Muslim world. Hey, we’re game.)

"How about ‘Rajni’ for a girl (pronounced ‘Rjni’)?"

We try this one out, tossing the name back and forth, shortening the pronunciation to ‘Rjni’ until it sounds almost like a sneeze, and until we’re both helpless with laughter. "Gesundheit!" I guffaw back. We put "Rajni" in the "emergency laughter" column and move on.

"What about ‘Plaxy’?"

"Or maybe ‘Flossie’?"

"How about ‘Bevis’?" I offer. "Says here it’s Old French for ‘boy.’"

"How about no?"

We move on, through the ages and the regions of the world, looking for that perfect fit. We debate the subtle differences between "Akiiki" and "Okechuku," sniggering with laughter (at least the second one can be shortened to "OK," I reason.)

Oh, there’s just no end to the fun that can be had at an unborn baby’s expense!

By the third day of this, however, you begin to realize there’s a little more at stake here than just your own selfish amusement. After all, a name is a symbol – a word, a shape, an utterance used to denote some other living thing. There’s no time for mirth here. A name has to stick, and stick well. It must last a lifetime – or at least until the age of consent.

As a person who diddles around with words, I do find it interesting to learn what certain names actually mean, as opposed to how they sound. Like the name "Graham," which, to my ears, is a cool and all-around solid-sounding name. Except what it actually means is "gravelly homestead," and that’s not something you’d want your son to be labeled in the schoolyard.

Nor, for that matter, would you want to call him "Curtis," which actually means "short hose."

The Baby Name Book also notes that no less than 30 girl names starting with the prefix "Mo" or "Mar" actually connote "bitter child." So all permutations of "Mary," "Marie," "Marisa" or "Molly" are out.

We thought about the cruelty of parents naming their kids after movie or TV characters – so "Trinity" for a girl or "Neo" for a boy were quickly scratched off our list, cool as the names may sound to Matrix fans. All we had to do was imagine the consequences if our own parents had been huge Planet of the Apes fans when we were being named: we’d be walking around as "Cornelius" and "Zira."

On the other hand, the exotic name "Uma" actually translates to "Hindu goddess," while "Winona" is Sioux Indian for "little shoplifter." (By the way, I think people should cut the embattled actress a break already. Free Winona! I mean, it’s not like going to jail for shoplifting is going to stop her from making movies. I mean, look at Robert Downey Jr., for God’s sake.)

Of course, Filipinos have long adopted the practice of giving far-out, colorful names to their kids: the Bong-Bongs and Cherry Pies and Twinkys in our midst, for example. Some parents go for unusual scientific names, like Quark, Kelvin and Xenon. One attention-starved dad in the southern Philippines even dubbed his son "Osama bin Laden" – one month after the 9/11 attacks. How’s that for a legacy to leave your kid?

And of course, there are the wacky Filipino-Chinese, who love giving their kids a touch of literary class or Hollywood glamour. You’ve no doubt heard of "Edgar Allan Pe," "Doris Dy," "Gregory Pe," and – perhaps funniest of all to Pinoy ears – "Jonathan Livingston Sy"?

Americans, it goes without saying, are less adventurous when it comes to naming their offspring. They look at names as something simply handed out at birth, kind of like military-issue gear: it may not be pretty, but pretty soon you won’t even notice it anymore. Thus cute nicknames are out. Substituting "Jack" for "John" is about as daring as Americans will get.

The name game is evidently more fun for husbands than wives, or so claims Thomas Hill in his valuable father-to-be book, What To Expect When Your Wife Is Expanding: "According to 1990 figures, the average pregnant woman finds 3.5 joke names amusing, and will laugh politely at roughly 7.7 names; a pregnant father, however, will laugh at up to 78.5 ridiculous names that he himself has made up."

This would explain why I’m writing this article in the first place, despite the fact that my wife is tugging at my sleeve and starting to look at me with real concern when she says, "We have to pick a name for the baby!"

I tell her to relax. We’ve still got four months to screw around. Besides, we’re only up to the ‘R’s.

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