Aside from the launch of our awesome new customizable coloring book, the boys at MJM Books all have very important duties to attend to… preparing for the arrival of our babies! That’s right, all three of our wives are “knocked up” and only Matt knows what he’s doing… kind of.
For Mike and me, this is our first and we are beginning the long process of feathering our nests and coming up with a list of baby names.
As an author, I’ve don’t agonize over my characters names. If I decide I like one better down the line, Microsoft Word has a great feature called “Find and Replace” which will find every instance of “Jerry” in your novel and change it to “Johnny”. There isn’t such flexibility with naming your child. Within hours or even minutes of birth, a name is written on the birth certificate and the name is fixed for life.
Books with terrifying names like How to Name Baby Without Handicapping It for Life certainly don’t help to take the pressure off.
How do you choose a baby name? Do you buy one of those books at the supermarket and go through the whole thing with highlighter and a sharpie? Do you research your genealogy and find a name suitable for your family tradition? Do you just throw out names to your spouse as they come to you and see which one “rings”. Or do you take the Homer Simpson approach and eliminate any name that can be rhymed comically (ironically ending up with Bartholomew)?
Being scientifically minded, I’ve been doing some research into the names given to children. I discovered something that I had been subconsciously aware of was backed up with statistics. Not only are boy names less varied than girl names (the top twenty boy’s names are given to a higher percentage of boys than the top twenty girls names) but they are also more “stable”, meaning that the list of top 20 boys names changes less frequently than the top 20 for girls.
This means that girl’s names are more susceptible to “fashion” while boys’ names remain more rooted in tradition. This is why when my wife proposes a trendy boy name like “Aden” because it sounds cool, I reply, “But what does it mean?” “Where does that name come from?” And when she proposes a girl name like “Ava”, I am less opposed. I guess I’m not the feminist I thought I was.
There are so many things to consider when choosing a name:
Have I ever met someone with this name that I didn’t like? Ex-girlfriends and boyfriends are O-U-T.
If someone in my family or circle of friends has that name already, will they be honored? More honored than they deserve, perhaps?
Does my favorite name fit with my last name? Shame upon the parents of Harry Harrison and William McWilliams…
What historical and etymological context does the name have? “You were named after a brutal dictator…. we were going for a ‘strong’ name.”
Will people be able to pronounce the name? Will the child be unable to spell it until third grade? If you want people to pronounce Anastasia “Ah-nah-stah-zi-ah”, you’d better just choose another name.
Unfortunately, my quest to achieve better baby naming through science is at yet incomplete, I hope to keep at it and arrive at the PERFECT NAME, or at the very least, one that will not “Handicap them for Life”!
