The names game

... I’ve heard some rumors of an office pool on the gender of our baby, the due date and what we might be naming him/her. So with Kates at 38 weeks now and the countdown started, this is a good time to revisit the names game, and offer some insight …

After agreeing pretty easily that we didn’t want to learn the gender of the baby, somehow Kates and I also decided pretty easily -- and pretty early on -- on the names we wanted to give our girl/boy … In fact, we had barely made the whole pregnancy thing public before we had the names picked. And, it’s also kind of interesting that we haven’t wavered on our decisions either …

While eating dinner at a café one night last August, Kates pulled out a slip of paper and we started brainstorming …

I liked the name Claire. But Kates didn’t -- something about a line in “The Breakfast Club” and a reference to it being a fat girl’s name.

Kates liked Lily and Nellie. But I declined those, particularly Nellie. Too old.

Also nixed from the list of proposed girl names were Jenna, Caroline, Ashley, Alison, Carly, Margaret, Elizabeth and Ellen. And as much as we liked Sara or Madeline or Emily, we ruled against those names because they seemed to be too popular right now. It also would take two hands for us to count all of the friends and relatives we have named Sara or Emily …

Actually, the name we’ve picked for a daughter was the first one we wrote on the list …

It’s one Kates and I had discussed in passing long ago. It’s a name that stems from her family, it’s a biblical name (from the New Testament, actually), and it’s a name we never would have imagined using five years ago. You also could say it’s a name known in pop culture … Regardless, we fell in love with it instantly for its charm and uniqueness, and -- when combined with the middle name that we’ve chosen for her -- its nickname possibilities …

But lately, we're growing more sure that we're having a son ...

For the boy’s name, Kates and I had a tougher time agreeing -- but even then, the debate lasted barely a few weeks. And with a little endorsement from a police colleague of mine, Kates took a liking to it …

We liked Matthew, Ryan and Elliott -- but decided against putting any of those names on our list because they’re already tried and true names on my side of the family. I have three cousins named Ryan …

Further illustrating how much tougher it was to come up with a boy’s name, that side of our list was barely half as long as the girl’s side …

Out were Jacob (because it’s way to popular and common) and Eli (because no matter how much we loved this name, we couldn’t possibly use it knowing it was the name of Kates’s family’s beloved dog).

Kates nixed Cole or Corbin. And we ultimately decided against Benjamin, Henry, Joseph, John and William. Though we had a good time laughing about the idea of naming a son William Henry and then calling him “Billy Hank.”

And no, we're not naming our son Orville. Or any crazy names like the ones noted here.

The boy’s name we have chosen was, once again, the first one we wrote on our list. Though only the middle name is derived from my family, both the first and middle names are taken from the Bible -- the Old Testament, actually. The name does appear to be rising in popularity lately, but not so popular that we’re shying away from it …

So after all that, what names are you placing your bets on now?