The Name Game

When you find out someone is going to have a baby, what are the first two things that you ask about? Whether the baby is a boy or a girl and what his/her name is going to be, right? The boy/girl question is an obvious, safe play. But the name question? That one's fraught with danger. Allow me to explain (full disclosure: I am just as guilty of taking this risk as everybody else).

When you ask expecting parents what they are going to name their child, you never know what you are going to get in response. If they answer with a "normal" name - Jessica, Charles, Michael, Jennifer, etc. - you're safe. But what if the parents experienced a bout of temporary insanity when they chose a name? What if they momentarily were as clever as some celebrity parents only thought they were (Apple, Kal-el, Tu (as in, Tu Morrow), Jermajesty)? What if they inexplicably pulled the name out of a 100+ year old hat (Horatio, Agatha, Arthur, Beatrice)? What if the name has an apostrophe in it? What if they name the kid after a day of the week, a month, a season? Or a gem? Or picked anything on this list? Or.......well, you get my point. What do you do? You have to try not to immediately scrunch up your face in abject horror, right? Don't you have to hope that you are able to quickly quell your initial reaction while simultaneously scrambling to figure out how you can convincingly say to the parents how wonderful the name is that they have chosen?

Why do we all (myself included) constantly put ourselves in this predicament? Granted, hardly any of us know any silly celebrities, so we can freely shake our heads and laugh from afar, but we never know when a friend/family member/co-worker will decide it's a good idea to subject their soon-to-be-born child to years and years of ridicule. Despite being trained in the art of deception - I am a lawyer, after all - masking my gut reactions to things isn't exactly my strong point. Yet, I still fire away with the baby name question, recklessly endangering whatever relationship I may have with the expectant parents to whom I'm talking.

I've asked a lot of questions and have provided absolutely zero answers (another lawyerly skill). I don't know why we all do this. I guess we're just sheep. At any rate, this concludes this week's PSA. On to something that you readers actually care about....

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As I mentioned in a previous post, Allison has had people ask her about the origins of Ayden's name (and if any of you had negative reactions to his name, how cruel of a person are you to think bad thoughts about a little boy who has a life-threatening heart condition?). Allison has asked me to explain, so here it goes.

Ayden's name originated from either:

A. The name of the first of my ancestors to come to America
B. The name of Allison's favorite literary character
C. The name of the kid in The Ring
D. The name of the room in which he was conceived (i.e., a den)

Give up? Well, it's not B. I don't even know if there a literary character named Ayden, in any spelling, but I do know that if the kid was named after her favorite character, he'd be called "Jean Valjean." Needless to say, I would have vetoed that. Option D is also out (and also not accurate), but how awesome would that have been? That leaves A and C. Since I don't even know where my ancestors came from, let alone the name of the first one to come to the New World, the correct answer is C.

While "Aidan" is the kid's name in The Ring, Ayden is not named after him. It's not my favorite movie, or anything else like that. Instead, the movie is simply how I was introduced to the name, which I liked immediately. That was almost 8 years ago. I filed it away until a few years ago when Allison and I started discussing baby names. As it turned out, she liked it, too. So, that was decided.

Next up was the spelling. Since I have a "y" instead of an "i" in my name (which puts me proudly in the minority), I wanted to do the same with his. Allison agreed. That left us figuring out what the other vowel was going to be. Another "y" would be ridiculous, an "i" just didn't look right, and an "a" would run the risk of it being pronounced "a Dan." Thus, "e" won, essentially by process of elimination.

Ayden's middle name - Avery - is my father's middle name. I tossed it out there as an homage to him and, again, Allison liked it. And we were done.

We picked his name a few years ago, never telling anyone. If not for the circumstances, Allison and I would still be the only ones to know it. But because I felt it appropriate for everyone to be able to pray for him by name, and therefore revealed it, somebody told me what it "means." I had never looked this up because, frankly, the thought had never occurred to me. I've always thought name meanings were kind of silly.

Well, not anymore. As it turns out, his means "little fire." That's exactly what he will need to be if he is to survive.