One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name.

I have always had a bit of a thing for names, their history, meanings, and variations. I own at least half a dozen baby names books, most of which I acquired BEFORE I had my children. Like Anne of Green Gables, who thought her name distressingly plain and wished it was Cordelia, I hated my name and always wished it were different. My mother’s other top choices (and reason they didn’t win) were Leslie (gender ambiguous), Samantha (name of our cat), and Tamar (Biblical woman raped by her half-brother), all of which I prefer to my actual name.

My mother’s very top choice was Jennifer. There are many things I am, but a Jennifer is NOT one of them. (Besides, there were four other Jennifers in my graduating class.) Family legend has it that right before I was born, the movie “Love Story” came out, and a wave of Jennifers washed over the maternity wards. My mother used to tell the story that the nurse was so sure I would also be a Jennifer that she already had the form filled out and had to write up a new one when my mother gave her my actual name. “You were the only girl baby in the maternity ward NOT named Jennifer!” my mother declared proudly. Now that I have given birth, I realize that a maternity ward might hold, tops, six babies at a time, so that’s not quite the feat she made it sound; also, I only recently discovered that “Love Story” was released in December 1970; I had been born the previous April. Good story, Mom, but no dice.

I have always liked the Jewish tradition of using the initials or meaning of a name of a deceased relative as a jumping-off point for your child’s name; you get to be original, but you also honor your family. A name should have some resonance. My chief complaint about my first name is that it has none, my mom just liked it. My middle name is my maternal grandmother’s, and I would much prefer to go by that.

I guess it should not be a surprise that the meaning of a name wasn’t quite so important to either of my parents. Another family legend (this one corroborated by my mother’s best friend, my aunt) was that my mother told my dad he had to shorten his last name as it wouldn’t fit on her Saks charge card. This is so very typical of something my mother would say and expect, that it rings true. At any rate, true or not, my father Anglicized and shortened his very Eastern European name very soon after my parents were married. (The fact that his parents disowned him upon marrying my mother probably also contributed to the bastardization of his surname.)

My children, all three, have very traditional names. So traditional, in fact, that many people think we are devoutly religious. (We are not.) And despite our stereotypically Irish surname, my children are not named Connor, Brendan, Liam, or Seamus.

My oldest son is named for my father, and his (my son’s) father. I always thought we would nickname him, but it never worked out that way; his (two-syllable) full name suited him so much more. It’s uncommon, but not freakishly so; it’s a dignified, very English-sounding name, and it suits him perfectly.

My middle son is named in honor of an iconic musician H idolizes, and has his father’s middle name as his middle name. He also has a third name, because we weren’t sure if we were done having children or not, and if we were, we wanted to get my father-in-law’s name in there as well. Seg’s name has since grown more popular, due mainly to a certain skeevy English film actor who rose to stardom about the year my darling boy was born.

When Terzo appeared, we named him for my father-in-law (same as Seg’s third name). His middle name is a classic name that, I am somewhat ashamed to admit, is also the name of a title character in one of Primo’s very favorite children’s books. Yes, we let our then-four-year-old middle-name his new baby brother. Of course, we loved the name, and so does everyone who hears it; it’s turned into a nickname used by, mostly, H’s musician friends since it is also the name of the lead guitarist of an Australian rock band which shall remain unnamed. Our family nickname for him is an androgynous derivation of his first name that I happen to think is adorable, but it’s not so far off its original that it will obliterate his real name.

We had girl names picked out for each pregnancy. After Primo was born, we revisited our girl choices as the name we had picked got very popular, and thank God Primo was not a girl or he’d have been one of a dozen Sophias. The girl name we picked for baby-that-was-Seg and baby-that-was-Terzo was a classic, as well as being my mother’s middle name. (She threatened to come back from the grave and haunt me if I ever named a child her first name (think Borden Milk.)) The middle name is a derivation of my mother-in-law’s name. The poor woman has eleven grandchildren, ten of whom are boys and one of whom has a wildly popular Irish name with a cutesy spelling, and whose middle name is made-up.
Who knows, perhaps at some point we’ll even have reason to use a girl name. Or not, as the case may be.

What prompted all this name musing was this article in the Wall Street Journal about name consultants. Prospective parents are paying consultants to help them pick out names for their newborn babies. I think this is one of the craziest things I have ever heard of, paying a stranger good money to name your child.

The stupidest thing about this phenomenon is that these gullible parents think they are getting unique names for their babies, and yet just about every name is trendy as all get out.

Last fall, John Bentham, 36, a Las Vegas theater producer, and his wife, Shannon, 29, who runs a nonprofit foundation, says they felt "enormous pressure" to find a strong-sounding boy name. "I wanted a name that would look good on a marquee or a political banner," Mrs. Bentham says. Though they had agreed on the letter "j," none of the names they came up with -- Jude, Julian, Jake, Jason, or John Jr. -- seemed original enough. They hired Ms. Walker and Mr. Reyes, who produced an 11-page list of possibilities, including Jackson. In March, the Benthams welcomed little Jackson Dean into the world.

Do you know how many Jacksons I personally know? Off the top of my head, three children, one teenager, and a grown man. That’s FIVE Jacksons, just in my personal realm. It’s a fine name which I actually like quite a bit, but it’s not especially unique. It’s TRENDY. And I don’t live in a hotbed of trendiness, either, my friends.

In the end, choosing a name for your baby should only have a couple hard-and-fast rules:
1. Check the initials.
They should not spell anything rude, vulgar, or stupid. (Or trendy. Sheesh.) A friend of mine switched the first choice for her son’s middle name, changing his potential initials from APE to ACE. Wise choice.

2. No matter what you name your baby, it can be twisted or tweaked into something that can be made fun of, or used to tease him. But for God’s sake, try to not make this typical childhood process moronically simple. I don’t care how cute Gwyneth and Chris thought the moniker Apple was, they don’t have to live with it or get through grade school with it; poor little Apple does.

3. NEVER give twins, or any of your children for that matter, rhyming names, or names that could be rhymed. Because the lowest common denominator will prevail. As Theresa Bloomingdale points out in her hilarious I Should Have Seen It Coming When the Rabbit Died, Dirk and Eric will not become Derek and Eric, they will become Dirk and Erk. Ann and Dan, or Jim and Tim, just result in confusion among your kids when you call. They're going to ignore you anyway; no point in giving them an excuse.

4. If you spend more than five minutes conjuring up a unique spelling for your child’s name, change your name choice. If it takes you that long to figure out how to spell it, just think how long it’ll take your little one to get the hell out of kindergarten. Not to mention spending her life having her name’s pronunciation mangled by all and sundry.
I have a friend who named his daughter a unique and actually quite lovely Gaelic name; but the spelling contained so many extraneous consonants that the unfortunate child spent her entire kindergarten year being called something quite the opposite of what her parents intended, and it was even misspelled in the yearbook. Not worth it.

5. Do NOT name your child after any type of consumer product. EVER. The urban legend of Lemonjello and Orangejello are the obvious no-no example here. But seriously, folks, children should never be named after cars, alcohol, tourist destinations, or sports arenas. That means that an acquaintance’s daughter Tallie (Talledaga) should just have been called Mary!


I have probably ranted about this before, but if I save even one little girl from being named Nevaeh, I will have done some good in this world.