What's In a Name?

Names. They've fascinated me since I was old enough to read. When I found them listed in the back of my parents' dictionary, I was in heaven. Those pages are now worn out. I took name books out of the library when I was in elementary school, then in junior high, bought my own. After all, a writer needs books of names so she knows how to write her characters.

When I was pregnant for Y-Chromo, TV Stevie and I went through all sorts of craziness trying to choose a boy's name. We agreed almost immediately on a girl's name, but a boy? Oh boy.

For religious reasons, we needed names that began with certain sounds or letters. Neither of us like the same names. There was a lot of "over my dead body" going back and forth. At one point, fueled by hormones, I sobbed, "Why are we going through this? They'll only call him [insert variation of our surname] anyway." TV assured me that one or two people tried to call him that as a teen, but the nickname never stuck.

Then we decided we should try to guarantee this child a college education, and offer to name him after a school in exchange for a scholarship. Brilliant or what? Some of the names floating around: Canisius, Colgate, Cornell, Syracuse, Sienna (altho' we thought the latter two sounded more feminine than masculine).

We did agree on a couple of things: we wanted to name our children names that were definitely masculine for boys, feminine for girls. No Chrises, Pats or Terrys for us. We wanted names that were traditional and Biblical, and that couldn't be skewed with unique/different/whacky spellings. We each have to spell our names for people because there are two common, accepted spellings for our first names. We wanted "real" names, because I'm tired of explaining that yes, while my name is often a nickname, it is my name and not short for anything.

During this time, friends called to let us know their daughter had arrived in the world. The father told me her name, and I said (in all seriousness), "You're kidding, right?" I thought it was a joke, because they had chosen the exact same first and middle names that TV and I had settled on for our potential daughter. We had not discussed this with them, altho' TV might have mentioned it in passing. Our friend was perfectly serious. I handed the phone off to TV. His reaction was the same as mine. Then I heard him ask, "You're spelling Anne with an E, right?" -- because we were using Ann withOUT the E for a middle name. Well, so were they.

It's a good thing Y-Chromo was a Y -- it gave us time to come up with another middle name for our X. When I was pregnant for her, we couldn't come up with a male name we could agree on. A sign, perhaps, that she was an X.

When she was a baby, learning to talk, we stumbled across something quite interesting. She had her very own name for her big brother: Hmmph. She would be in her carrier on the kitchen table at dinner time, and we would talk to her. "Who am I?" Pointing at me. "Ma-ma." "Who's that?" Pointing at TV Stevie. "Da-da." "Who's that?" Pointing at Y-Chromo. "Hmmph." Which we found hysterically funny. (And no, his name ISN'T Humphrey, altho' TV may have suggested it at one point.)

One of my friends had name-choice issues with her husband -- and found a great solution.

What are your naming stories? Your own children, your own name, your characters?