No Adam or Mark or John for Us

Picking a name for our son has been excruciatingly difficult. We just can’t agree on anything.

Really, we can agree. But then Brooke runs it by her family or her friends and if she gets any negative reaction, it is back to the drawing board. Essentially, she is crowdsourcing our name to her family and friends. When can you ever get agreement like that?

(Since she is going that route, I think I will, too. Read to the end to learn our current list of finalists and then cast your vote.)

Picking a name for Sydney was rather easy. Once we got passed the whole stripper argument, we settled on a few final candidates, talked it out and came to fairly quick agreement. With this one, we have narrowed it to a few candidates, talked it out, came to blows, slept in different rooms, threatened divorce and are still trying to come to agreement.

Names are important. We are the type who like something a bit different than the norm, but not weird. I don’t want something so unique they make fun of him, yet I don’t want say, the traditional Biblical names either.

I have friends who name their kids Jack and Mary and Charlie and Sally and I am OK with that. I also have friends who name their kids Sundance and Petunia (not really, but I don’t want to give an actual name here to avoid breaking up a friendship). I’m not ok with that.

Picking a really unique name can lead to a lot of teasing on the playground. Sure, your kid can turn it into a positive and become resilient and tough and a leader and literally turn the name into a synonym for “cool.” But he could also crumble like stale bread and spend the rest of his life on a psychiatrist’s couch wondering why his mom and dad thought Arsehole Gregg had a nice ring to it.

I’m also not necessarily enamored with names that can be shortened to something that I don’t consider equal to the given name. For example, Brooke likes Jackson. I think Jackson is cool, but I have a feeling everyone will call him Jack. Then he is just another of 22 million Jacks in this country. (Actually, according to howmanyofme.com, there are 498,107 Jacks in this country. It is only the 115^th most popular name. But John -- the name from which Jack is often derived -- is #2 with more than 5 million!)

And, of course, on the playground, he will be Jack Off, or, worse, Jack MeOff.

I also don’t want my kid named after me or anyone in our families. I want him to have his own identity and not have the burden of carrying any legacy. Brian is a cool name (the 29^th most popular in the U.S.!) as far as I am concerned, but one is enough.

Brooke likes a lot of sissy names. I won’t repeat them here, in case your kid has one of those names. But some names just conjure up prep school wimps more than others. Names like Chauncey and Kip and Grayson. I don’t want my kid to carry that burden.

Being a teacher, Brooke rules out a lot of cool names because she has encountered a student at some time whom carried that name and pissed her off in some way. Yeah, elementary school teachers can carry a grudge, too. Somewhere out there is a teacher who hates you because you put a tack on her seat as a devious little sixth grader. 

So let me run through our latest list of candidates. I will give you the pros and cons, but try not to bias you in any way. Nor will I release which is my favorite or which is Brooke’s favorite. The truth is, we are still entertaining new names; this is just the current list.

You can cast your vote in the comments section. Of course, it will hold no sway in our decision whatsoever (unless you pick my favorite – then I am marching the results right to Brooke!) But it will be fun.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Braeden: Pro: I like the “Br” sound, as in Brian and Brooke. Con: Sydney would be left out of the “Br” game.

Tyson: Pro: Even the shortened Ty is cool. Con: Tyson’s chicken.

Kellen: Pro: Rather unique, without being crazy. Con: Keenan and Kel?

Tate: Pro: Sounds manly. Tate Gregg. Con: It is rather unique, but is it crazy?

Max: Pro: Manly. And has an X, which is just cool. Con: Certainly the most common name on our list.

Jax: Pro: Again, it has an X. Con: Will it be mistaken for Jack? Is it too prep-schoolish? Is it crazy?

That’s it for now. I am interested in your opinion. Crowd sourcing is always a good idea, right?

Strippers Are Daughters Too

My first attempt at naming our daughter did not go over well.  

I was at my in-laws' house drinking beer with my brother-in-law in the basement. Lucky for me, her family likes to drink beer. They live in Wisconsin, after all. You know how it is going to the in-laws. You have to be on your best behavior; you can never relax. Beer makes the time go by a little easier.

So her brother keeps talking about this friend who might be coming over. After about 12 beers and hearing the name a few times, I sprint upstairs and announce to Brooke and her mom that I have found the perfect name for our daughter.

“Blair has a friend with the name Sequin. I think that would be a great name for the baby.”

Silence.

My wife looks at me with that “How did I ever let this person impregnate me?” look.

Her mom looks at me with that “I KNEW this guy was not the right guy for my daughter” look.

“We will NOT name our daughter that,” Brooke says. “She will not be a stripper.”

“Blair doesn’t have a friend named Sequin,” her mom advises. “He has a friend named Seekman.”

In my drunkenness, I had apparently mistaken this guy’s last name for Sequin. My wife takes my beer from me and says it would be a good idea for me to stay upstairs with her for awhile.

Thus began my quest to name our daughter. I want something unusual and pretty. I don’t want her to be one of six Emmas or Madisons in her class.

Sequins are pretty and that name is unusual. She’d be the only girl in the school with that name.

But nooo, my wife, who has never been to a strip club in her life, thinks it sounds like a stripper name. She thought the same of some of my other choices, such as Tiffany and Layla.

Look, babies aren’t pre-destined by their names. You name a boy Mason, he isn’t necessarily going to lay bricks for a living. Jordans aren’t all going to play basketball. LeBrons…well, yeah, he’ll probably be a jerk and crap all over his hometown.

My point is, you can’t rule a name out because someone has chosen it as her stage name as she shakes her ta-tas to pay her way through college.

But that is what we do. My wife is a teacher. The name of ANY bad or obnoxious student she has ever encountered was immediately ruled out. I ruled out the names of stalker women from my past. Some of you are probably reading this post right now. THE COURT ORDER IS STILL IN  EFFECT!

Picking a name is more a process of elimination than anything.

I wanted our kid to have a BR name. Brian, Brooke and…? Moreover, both Brooke and I now have the same middle and last initials. We could all be BGG.

Brooke doesn’t like it. “You are boxing me in. Then we’d have to name our next child like that, too.”

And that’s a problem because…? Alliteration is clearly not a priority for her.

Brooke liked names that seemed old fashioned to me, like Annabelle and Clara. I liked hip names, like Roxy and Diamond and Sapphire and Kardashian.

You know, I probably haven’t been to a strip club in 15 years. I swear on my grandma’s grave.

In the end, we decided on a middle name first. Grace. Very classy. Never met a Grace I didn’t like.

First names were narrowed down to a few favorites. Claire, Chloe, Rosalee, Cecilly, Adrienne, Sydney. I didn’t really like Adrienne. I just let me wife put it on the list because, by this point, she was very short-tempered with me. When she gets upset and wants me to do something, she plays the labor card. “Do you know how hard it is going to be to push this baby out? It is the equivalent of you trying to pass a bowling ball.” OUUUCH.

I don’t know Brooke’s reasoning behind picking Sydney, but I had sound thinking behind mine. I was a huge fan of the television show Alias and fell in love with Jennifer Garner. She played an international spy named Sydney. In my mind, “Sydney” is associated with a super-hot chick who dresses in costumes to take down bad men and make the world around her a better place.

Sort of like a stripper.