When you read up on pregnancy in all the dad books (even the really terrible “A’wight mate, you’re having a little sprog too yer know, cor blimey let’s all have a beer” ones) there’s a section on helping your partner through their mood swings. ‘Oh yeah’ you think. ‘We’ve both got our heads screwed on. We’re pragmatic. We know there’s things to think about but we’ll keep it in perspective’. Why I thought this I don’t know – I used to lie awake at night stressing about schoolwork, late library books, remembering my PE kit, being late for assembly…all sorts.
I thought I’d left that all behind twenty years in the past. ‘I’m chilled out now.’ Oh how wrong I was. Never mind the rational insecurities of becoming a parent (which I’ll be boring you with in future posts I’m sure) it’s the irrationals that are getting to us now. The 1 in 1 million chances, the neuroses, the paranoia, the festering thoughts.
And the weird thing is, the last person you want to tell is you other half. Because you’re being stupid. And you don’t want to make hem think of the stupid, unlikely scenario you’re playing out in your head. It would only worry them and make them think of it too. So why do that to them?
Except of course, they’re thinking it too. And how do you find out? When you’re both tired and snappy and can’t communicate quite right. Of course you’re both panicked about how life’s going to change. That doesn’t mean you’re not excited – it means you’re human. It means you’re having a very natural reaction. And it means you need to stick together…and talk.
One of the really fun bits of having our first child, we thought, would be the name. It says so much in two, three or maybe slightly more small words. It says things about them (how many times has a name evoked what someone will be like before you’ve met them?) and about you…your influences, tastes, heroes and heroines. It is one of the few things you actually feel in control of about the whole thing. It’s also a really lovely time – sitting down and picking out the name that perfectly sums up you and your partners shared view of the world – how you want to the fruits of your relationship to be labelled.
And there’s a lot to think about…we wanted something you could shorten (for the perverse reason that we could then lengthen it for moments of authority), one that was safe from classmate japes, didn’t rhyme with anything insulting, wasn’t going to be shared by twenty others in the class, wasn’t going to wear it’s influence on its’ sleeve etc etc.
So it was with some excitement and a strong sense of duty that we started thinking about names. We’d already decided we didn’t want to know the gender of our baby (a strangely easy decision for us both…perhaps we just thought we had enough to worry about!!) so we knew we needed to draw up options for boys’ and for girls’ names. We also decided we wanted a forename and middle name which gave us more scope to reach agreement.
Neither of us are particular planners. We’re organized and fairly sensible in most ways, but we’ve never had a ‘plan’ as such, so it actually struck me as pretty impressive how early we started to think about names. Part of it I’m sure was down to bringing the little bean more alive in our minds…something you tend to do with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, the more superstitious amongst us genuinely fearful of putting a jinx on things.
But yes, we thought, a name is a good thing to start thinking about. And what sort of absurd decision might be made without that sort of forward planning? A spontaneous naming. What would we base it on. A song on the radio? The name of the nurse (we’ve all seen ‘Meet the Parents’)? The curry we had in a bid to finally coax them out? Or if not a rush decision then worse – a prolonged discussion with at least one of us drugged up to the eyeballs and no name for a few hours as you hum and ha and then feel you’ve reached a totally inadequate decision in your sleep deprived state.
So no, spontaneous wasn’t going to be us for this one. (In fact, although we’re not meticulous planners, we’re not overly spontaneous either…and that seems to have seen us right so far…so why change now?!!).
It was therefore time to call upon probably the most ridiculous concept in all this baby malarkey thus far – the themed name book. Now I clearly understand that there are a lot of names out there. And that a book of names is probably useful – at least as inspiration. Though it does seem to me that perhaps any name you feel you like enough to pass on to your offspring maybe shouldn’t be one you found on page 357 of the Big Book of Baby Names…or at least that wasn’t the only reason for choosing it.
But the really scary one I was first presented with (Celtic Names I believe) really was one of the funniest books I ever read. Much as I’m a fan of epic poetry, ‘Beowulf’ really ain’t for me, ‘Myfannwy’ has been rendered unusable by Little Britain…but the list didn’t get any better. So maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.
The next thing we had to think about was the fact that my wife has some names on her side that are traditional within the family. A nice touch but one that immediately raises issues – are they unisex? Should we also consider taking something from my side (name of a grandparent perhaps…but which one, why not the other three etc etc). And if we do all that, plus a little of our own influence, will two forenames become six or twelve or twenty-four. The poor thing wouldn’t have enough room on their biometric ID card to fit it all and would never be able to leave their home for fear of being stopped without it.
We also started to think about how it would sound in the variety of regions it would be visiting on a fairly regular basis. Hampshire, Merseyside, Manchester. Then there was London, Cornwall, Newcastle…and we wanted a name that would sound okay in at least the main three.
Ultimately of course, and something we’re determined not to lose sight of, we want a name that sounds nice. Sometimes in all the other bluster I think that can get missed. But surely the best thing about a name is how it sounds when it’s spoken. Something that tingles on the tongue or rolls out of the mouth in a pleasing way. Something that isn’t stumbled over, something that can be shouted out with pride, something that you hear and makes you you. Something that your loved ones say with affection, something that you spend hours perfecting in a signature, something that works.
I don’t know if we’ll get it 100% right. I think we will for us, I really hope we will for them – we certainly haven’t omitted that from what we’ve decided. And I really love the names we have in our shortlist. I hope when you hear them you will too. For now, they remain a shared little secret between us as parents to be…getting ready to launch the names and the person they accompany on the world.