Whats in a Name?

As we take a break from reviewing beer and me feebly trying to get a company to sponsor my running habit, I have been thinking about names for my unborn child. Its probably too early to be thinking about names because, as history repeats itself, we have  changed our mind towards the end for both kids. With our first kid, we had it narrowed down to two names for a girl and 1 name for a boy. the boy name got gobbled up about a week before delivery and one of the girl names was the name of my buddy's dog. So luckily we still had Hannah in the hopper and the rest is history. Similar story with our second, the boy name was taken within weeks of her birth and luckily no one thought Lucy was as cool as we did.

So now we are going down the naming road yet again and we have some strict criteria that a name must get past in order to make the final name table:

1. Name can't be any of our friend's or friends kid's names. This may be more of a girl thing but I'm now under the same believe that if we use a name from this grouping we would either upset someone because they thought we were copying or false inflate someone's ego because they though we like them so much we named our kids after them.


2. The name can't be one of my wife's problem students. My wife is an Occupational Therapist and works in a school setting. She is a saint for doing this type of work. However she has done this for the last 10 years or so, and all of these kids have names. Some of these names she just associates with the extra effort she would have to put in at work.


3. The initials. Andrew Stephen Shepard doesn't work.


4. There will be no substituting a "y" for an "i" for the hell of it. Call me old fashioned but I like my "y's" at the end of my words. Same with names. Nothing against the names that do have them implanted, its just not our prerogatyve.


5. You need to be able to put the word "Grandma" or "Grandpa" in front of it without it sounding strange. Some names today are going to sound hilarious later on in life. Grandma Apple.


6. The name cannot be a Noun, Verb, Adjective, Sacrament, or really anything used in conversation. I know there are many names like Chastity, Destiny, Innocent, or Matt but they just don't make the cut for us. There are a few that I am willing to bypass on this rule. Those are names are Doctor, Commander, Harry, or Def Leppard Shepard.


7. Our Kids probably won't name the baby. Right now my girls insist that the baby is a girl and her name will be Strawberry Shortcake.


8. Finally we don't want to use our own names.

So really that's it. I'm sure as we go down the road we may have more criteria that pop up but this list of 8 really covers most of what's out there.