When I was eight years old, I won an unfortunate goldfish from a school fair. I named him Zucchini. I could be mistaken, but I strongly suspect there was a severe misunderstanding of what, exactly, a zucchini was. However, if I'm remembering my eight-year-old self accurately, then I probably thought Zucchini was the name of an Italian plumber with a really bad accent. Why I thought this would be a good name for a goldfish is another story.
So when the opportunity arose to name another human being (hello pregnancy!) I was a bit wary of my naming instincts. This is why we now own every baby name book ever published. Lining our shelves are: The Baby Name Wizard, Baby Names Made Easy, Cool Names for Babies, The Baby Name Survey Book, What to Expect to Name Your Baby When You're Expecting a Baby, and, The Most Important Thing You Will Ever Do In Your Entire Life So Don't Mess It Up: A Guide to Naming Your Baby.
From these tomes we gleaned three important things. The first is that you should really avoid naming your child after a venereal disease. Apparently, no matter how nicely Gonorrhea sounds with your last name, your daughter will tire of everyone clapping whenever the teacher calls on her in class. Along these same lines, I also learned that Smegma isn't the long form of Meg (which explains why my sophomore year roommate stopped talking to me).
The second important thing these baby books taught us is that we should probably steer clear of naming our daughter something she won't have to change should she ever become a stripper. For this reason, we put every name we thought of to the "Stripper or Supreme Court Justice?" test.
Eleanor? Supreme Court Justice.
Desiree? Stripper.
Margaret? Supreme Court Justice.
Tiffany? Stripper.
Alice? Supreme Court Justice.
Prudence? Ironic stripper.
Finally, from these books we learned that all children are the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and will think up excruciatingly terrible and scarring nicknames for their classmates in vain attempts to gain control of the playground. Therefore, we dissected every name we thought of trying to foresee an ill-fated schoolyard chant.
Anelise? Anal Ease.
Astrid? Ass Turd
Gladys? Glad Ass
(Apparently, children are also quite obsessed with butts.)
When we found ourselves at crossroads, we took the advice of several of these books and wrote our ten favorite names down on a piece of paper. We exchanged them and crossed off nine of the other person's choices. The problem with this method is that it presupposes you and your partner have at least one name in common. My husband and I ended up with Felicity and Fiona, so unless we wanted to name our daughter Fiolecita, we'd have to try something else.
Another suggestion is to narrow down your choices to four, and for the next month call the baby by one name on the list for a week. The idea behind this is to see if you and your partner really like the name and can imaging yourselves using it for the rest of your lives. So instead of saying, "Honey, the baby is demanding you go out and get her ice cream." I should be saying, "Honey, Mary is demanding you go out and get her ice cream."
Unfortunately, we could never remember which name we had chosen to use that week so we ended up calling her by different names. Knowing our baby could now hear my voice, and terrified of giving her an identity crisis in utero, we stopped doing this.
So as it stands right now our baby girl is nameless, and we have a little over six weeks to make a really important decision. You can rest assured however that we won't be naming her Zucchini. It's clearly the name of a fish, and that would just be silly.
