No Such Thing as the "Perfect Name"
by Nicole Huppenthal
I found out I was pregnant a few days after Thanksgiving, so my husband and I shared the news with our families on Christmas. Of course, many of the first questions were “are you going to find out what you’re having?” and “have you thought of any names?” Of course, we didn’t have the answers to any of those questions. We were first time parents still processing the fact that our family of two was going to drastically change in the next year. This would be our last Christmas, last New Year’s, last everything as just husband and wife.
Quite naturally we avoided the topic of baby names for the first few months. We didn’t know what we were having so there was no need to start the intense conversation of the topic of names so soon. As we progressed through the pregnancy, we also decided to not find out the sex of the baby until birth. This also made the task of naming baby slightly more complicated. We were not going to only consider one gender, we had to seriously think about both. So where do you start with such a task? Here is what we did.
For a couple of months – yes MONTHS – my husband J and I would sit together in the evenings with our TV shows on and peruse different baby name websites and blog article. As names popped up that interested us, we would add them to an ever-growing note on my phone. In the middle of the hockey game, J would pipe up from across the room and say, “what about Abigail?” And if I liked the name well enough, it was added to the list. If we both didn’t like the name, it was forgotten. We continued adding names like this for some time, until the list for each gender had surpassed 20 names each.
“Now what?” we thought. At this point we had already decided on the middle names we would use for each gender. Many of the women in my family, including me, had the middle name Ann. So, I wanted to share this middle name if I had a daughter. If we were blessed with a little boy, his middle name would be John. This was also easy for us, because J’s father’s name was John, and it was also my father’s middle name. What an easy was to honor both grandfathers in the process.
But back to these huge lists for our baby’s first name. We were clueless as to how to narrow down these lists to something more manageable. One day while we were sitting in the living room (when you’re pregnant during the summer you do a lot of sitting), I printed out two copies of both of these lists and handed one set to J. I said, “circle your ten favorite names from each list, and I’ll do the same.” We took our lists and separately considered each name on it, working to find our favorites without influence from the other. As I worked through my lists, I considered the middle names we had chosen, and what first names would pair nicely with it. When we were finished, we decided that only the names that were on both of our top lists would make it to the second round. Considering both lists, we ended with a boy and girl list of only 9 and 10 names left on it.
9 and 10 is still a long list when you consider that you can only choose one name. We decided that in a couple weeks we would revisit these lists and repeat the process again. So, nearing my ninth month of pregnancy, we sat down again with two separate lists and narrowed the options down. At this point, I had exhausted myself reading every baby name blog article imaginable, and I reminded J that we needed names with good initials, names that wouldn’t be too cumbersome with our lengthy last name, and names that would be respectable in our child’s professional future. From the second-round list, we chose our top 5 names, and compared our choices. Finally! We had gotten our list down to 4 names each. Still too many.
During the final weeks of pregnancy, we turned back to the internet to help us with our decision. We considered the origin and meaning behind each remaining name and simply had conversations with one another. We had narrowed the lists down to a solid 3 names each, and decided that we would take three names for each gender with us to the hospital, and choose the name after meeting our bundle of joy.
Now here’s the fun part. The day my son was born, he remained nameless for a few hours. How could that be? We had spent hours going through baby names to find the “perfect names” and we had three solid names to choose from for him! As it turns out, none of those names “worked.” They just didn’t fit the beautiful little boy I held in my arms. We spent some time with him and talking, and we ended up deciding on one of the runner’s up from the previous lists. But, this just goes to show, there is NO SUCH THING as a “perfect” name. Good luck!
