Baby Names ...

We do have friends from church that have a Brooklyn, younger sister of Berkeley. I'm rooting for another pregnancy to see if they go with Boca Raton.

 

Bloomington? Biloxi?

 

I was going to make fun of Rhody for naming his child after one of the athletes we've covered but since I plan on doing that exact thing if I have a daughter (I love the idea of a daughter named Alexandra, or Alex for short,, who is both female and good at sports), I can't really criticize him.

Of course, this has led to my wife questioning it but I told her she can name it if it's a boy ... as long as she doesn't give it my first name. I come from a family of four generations of my first name and that's got to go. (It's a pain in the ass to get my father's mail sent to my house, something that still happens today even though I haven't lived with him since I was 13).

Anyhoo, I sent a text to Rhody and told him he should name the child "Desmond" if it's a boy because, well, that's a great name that's not likely to leave people LOST for words, brother.

 

Ah, baby names. It's amazing how hard it is to agree on anything. It's actually kind of a divisive exercise...okay, you spend 30 minutes suggesting names you like, of which I will hate all but a handful...okay, now my turn.

 

It all depends on your neighbourhood

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/chloe-or-gurleen-baby-names-shaped-by-your-neighbourhood/article1878414/

The top name for both girls and boys in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood is Tenzin.

Why?

The name is Tibetan, and Parkdale boasts a massive Tibetan community -- Tenzin Gyatso is also the religious name of the Dalai Lama.

 

Don't know how many Freakenomics readers are on here but they did a great analysis of baby names.

Basically baby names cascade down from the richer classes until they are too common or low class to use.

 

Late one night after working unloading UPS trucks eons ago, we all went to have breakfast at an old all-night diner on U.S. 90 in Louisiana. The Cajun woman behind the counter was Nazel.

Yes. Parents named her Hazel. Nurse at hospital made a life-altering typo. For whatever reason, they went with it.

She answered to Nazel the rest of her life.

 

I believe that's how Oprah got her name. She was originally Orpha until someone got it wrong.

 

When my wife was pregnant, we didn't want to know if we were having a boy or a girl until he/she came out of the womb.
Fortunately for us it was a boy, because we were easily set on a boy's name. I think up until a week or two before she delivered we were going back and forth on girls' names.
The reason the boy's name was so easy was that both of our fathers had passed away (at the time hers had been dead for 17 years and mine had been dead for 7), so using their names - one as the first, one as the middle - was a no-brainer.

 

Cooper sounds like a dog's name. Colton is still fine.

Dr. J and I have settled on Ashley Catherine and Ian Michael for a while. I'm kind of backtracking on the Ashley part, it's way too boring for us. We're also probably changing Michael to Miles after a grandfather's nickname.

 

first and most important, congrats on the baby-to-be and my most sincere hopes your wife has a smooth ride... as for the name-stealing issue....

our middle son is 'evan james shockey.' (SOUND FAMILIAR, ESTREET?)

mrs. shockey and i agreed on that name soon after his big brother. then we're preggers and find out it's another boy and think, 'great! our work is done!'

then big brother begins pre-school -- and immediately becomes best friends with a kid named -- you guessed it -- 'evan.' mrs. shockey freaks and spends the last months of the pregnancy ticked that 'another kid we're going to be close to for the foreseeable future has that name! how can we stick with 'evan' now? won't we look like copycats?' all that jazz. but i remained strongly behind our choice, and mrs. shockey came around to see it was no big whoop.

now, the two evans immediately became known in our circle of friends as either 'big evan/little evan' or 'evansmith/evanshockey,' and the world didn't explode... and by the time eldest shockey and 'big evan' were seniors in h.s. they weren't traveling in the same circles any longer -- although mrs. shockey does work for 'big evan's' company. but we all 'survived' the name duplication.

my point: your naming your child for LIFE. if you and your wife have agreed on a name already, count your blessings and accept that none of us gets a copyright on names... sheesh, there are, like a half-dozen 'michaels' among the friends of our eldest sons.

whattya gonna do? you guys picked a beautiful name. congrats again!!

p.s. -- mrs. shockey and i, of course, took a nanosecond agreeing on a girl's name, so. natch, we've been blessed with three beautiful boys. but our desire to have a 'sarah elizabeth shockey' in the family was not NEARLY strong enough to have a fourth. it woulda been another boy anyway....

 

So who was born first -- Evan James Shockey or Evan James Springsteen?