The name game

Some couples discuss names for their future children while they are still dating. Or engaged, or just married, or while they're trying to conceive.

Unfortunately, we are not that couple.

We're entering the home stretch of my pregnancy, but we still don't have a name for this baby! We have a few front-runners (see polls to the right), but we probably won't decide on the final name until we actually meet the baby. For some reason, I keep thinking that it's wrong to give someone something as important as a name before you've even seen them in person. What if we settle on Andrew, and it doesn't suit him at all, and he looks like a Ben? (Disclaimer: I do realize that brand-new newborns all look like they should be named something along the lines of... Conehead. Or, Gremlin. Monkeyface. Okay, I'm stopping.)

Tyler has decided that the perfect name for a little girl is Baena, pronounced Bay-nuh. Yes, you read that correctly, no need to go back and read it again. It's after this genus of prehistoric turtle that he studies (Eubaena). I have nothing to say to this except: no, over my dead body, not in a billion years, no. I don't do made-up names, and either way, we are not naming our potential daughter after a dead lizard. However, he has stubbornly referred to the baby in utero as "Baena" for so long that now I think of it as Baena too. Here's hoping that the nickname doesn't still stick once the baby joins us in the outside world.

So, it seems that for now we're going to stay with Caroline Anne or Elisabeth Anne, and Benjamin Ranse or Andrew Ranse. Then we can make the final decision when the baby comes. For what it's worth, my favorites are actually the poll winners-- Caroline and Benjamin (although Andrew is Tyler's grandfather's name, and his health is poor, so we might end up going with Andrew for that reason if it's a boy). It's so hard to pick a name for a baby, though. Names are so huge... what if he or she hates the name later on? I guess you can only do your best and try not to get all crazy and trendy. I've always loved my name, and I want to do the same for my baby! I suspect that naming it "Baena" is not really the way to achieve that goal, though...