Name dropping

Choosing a name is hard for us. It was the first time, it took months and we ended up simply compounding both our great-grandfathers' names a little out of desperation, even though we weren't specifically looking for an hyphenated one. Some people have names all ready for what seems to be any situation: my sister always had these four names in her head, two for boys, two for girls (all hyphenated), in clear order of preference. As she wanted two children, this covered every eventuality. Right after her sonogram, her son had a name and we started using it right away. I kind of wish we were like that, but we're not.

The ancestors trick will not really work this time: we basically picked the two names that were good, and all the others are just... no. (In the range of Ludger, Napoleon, and Alberta -sorry if I have offended you, deceased family members from both sides). We did have a few names picked for a girl the first time, but for all kinds of reasons, they don't really work anymore.

Here's our criteria. Nothing too popular or fad-like, so the first 35 or so in the database are automatically out. This does not prevent that your name will suddenly pick up in popularity in a huge way (like it happened when my mother-in-law picked my husband's name, and within a year or two it went from rare to the top five), but it puts you in a reasonably safe position. However, the name should not be too "novelty", either, like when it's totally made up, the parents use a weird spelling on purpose, etc. Connotations are big for us; if a beautiful name is suddenly associated with a slutty reality show contestant, well, no (same with, say, a snooty politician). We don't mind rare, but as long as it's not too obscure and recognizable.

We try not to go crazy but still ask ourselves reasonable questions about what having this name could entail. What could be the issues associated with it? Children teasing you in school is one thing, but also, like, could you be taken seriously in your professional life with this name? Could it come with a certain burden? (There's a name we both like for a girl, but it's really overwhelmingly used as a boy name in French, and we're a little afraid it would be a pain always having to explain things and always having everyone expecting a boy to show up). Does it work with M's last name when said out loud?

It can't be too English-sounding because it's both some kind of a faux-pas here and it would simply be butchered by most people, but either a bilingual name or one that "works" in English is definitely a plus (M's name is bilingual, mine doesn't work at all, and LP's, well, is very French in a way but I console myself by saying that he can always use his initials or drop one of his names later if he wants to, which I wouldn't mind at all). Hyphenated is OK, although not a requisite at all, unlike a lot of people seem to assume we would do since we already did. Well, maybe that's also because they know my two sisters and I are all called Marie-something.

So, yeah, we are damn picky folks and totally deserve our months-long anguish over this. When we finally decided on LP's name, it sort of fitted most of our requirements (53 kids were given that name the year he was born, and it ranked at a comfortable 130th place), and looking at him now, it seems like we couldn't have picked one that suited his personality better. So phew.

Which only emphasizes the need to repeat this feat once again. We're not sure we're having a girl so we're not exclusively looking at that, but can't help noticing that the pool of girl names is different. I guess it only shows that the choices are much greater, because in terms of popularity, the number one girl name of last year in Quebec (Léa, with 442 occurrences) really doesn't measure up with the number one boy name (William, with 1,074 occurrences). In absolute numbers, the first girl name is equivalent to the 16th boy name. Whoa!

That's where we're at; lost. I can't wait to know what our baby is, so we can properly focus on this and further direct our search. I will keep you posted about our progress, but after some thought, have decided that I won't reveal the name we choose here. Although I'm not totally paranoid and it's not a top-secret taboo either, I just generally prefer using initials or other monikers for people close to me (just like I won't say exactly where we live). I use my real name in my online social life, and they've have not chosen to appear on this blog, so it's just a little distance I choose to keep for my own personal level of comfort (and out of respect for them). Perhaps it's a misguided delusion, I don't know, but I hope you understand. Bottom line is hopefully, bébé will soon have a beautiful, shiny initial of her/his own.