The Name Game
My husband and I didn’t want to name our babies with common names. We pored over every baby name book, list, Web site, you-name-it, and agonized over choosing their names. Nothing too common, nothing too familiar, nothing an ex or a boss or an enemy had been named, nothing “celebrity weird“… what had once been a fun game to play with each other, suggesting silly names or names of towns we might be driving through while on a car ride, suddenly became a chore.
People would ask us, what are you going to name the baby? At first, we hedged a little, saying we weren’t sure yet or that we had a list of names we were considering (both of which were true). Then, as the question became increasingly stale, and the well meaning suggestions more annoying, we started having some fun. Instead of just giving a non-answer, we would say the most off the wall name we could come up with: Satellite if it’s a boy; Galaxy if it’s a girl. Or maybe it was the other way around … Either way, we had no intention of naming our babies those names, or even telling people what we planned to name them once we decided. It became a very personal decision and one that we didn’t want to share with anyone else.
Three days before I would give birth, we sat in a booth at a local burger joint and jotted names down on the paper place mat. From the waitress’s name to the name of the car parked outside of the window, we considered everything. Every name ended up being vetoed – except for two. We hemmed and hawed, debated and reasoned, and it wasn’t until our first born arrived that we finally decided on a name. We had to see her before we knew what we were going to call her. And it ended up being one of those two names
She’s two years old now, and we’re still happy with the name we gave her. She has grown into it and made it her own. Someday she might have the same challenge, trying to name her own baby. I just hope it’s not Galaxy.
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