Naming boys is hard. We had this struggle with Connor too – we each had a list (you might remember some of the spectacular names on my husband’s list, which is how we came to refer to this fetus as Hector) but the number of real contenders was few. When he was born, it took us three days and literally going through every name in the baby name book to settle on Connor (which was our first choice all along, but one needs to be sure about these things, you know…).
I again have a list, this time on my iPad. Some of the names have carried over from the last list, but mostly not. My list is fairly long — 23 names as of today — yet none of them feels like the right one. My husband has a list too and every once in a while we sit down and compare.
Our conversations tend to go like this:
Me: “How about this name?”
Him: “That name sounds like someone from the days of yore.”
Me: “What? What kind of a criticism is that? Oh, fine…”
Him: “How about Cicero?”
Me: [Sigh.]
Or like this:
Him: “What about this ‘E’ name?”
Me: “If we used that name his initials would spell ERF.”
Him: “Yarif? Why would you want to name a baby Yarif?!”
Me: “Not Yarif! ERF. You know – E.R.F.”
Him: “Oh good! I thought you were suggesting a name that sounds like barf.”
You can see why we don’t have these conversations very often.
Aside from the obvious communication problems, part of our trouble is that we have so many criteria when choosing a boy name:
- It can’t be one syllable. (Rich, despite having chosen to go by that name, hates having a short first name and a short last name.)
- It can’t start with F. (A first name and last name that both start with F just sounds too…cute.)
- It can’t start with R. (This one is possibly flexible, but with a Rich and a Robin already it seems like another R name would be overdoing it.)
- It can’t be a name in any way linked to any pop culture reference ever in the history of time. (This is my husband’s rule – “That’s too X-Men.” “That makes me think of Logan’s Run.” If I’d known it would be this much of an issue I’d have prohibited him from watching movies when we first got together 14 years ago.)
Those criteria limit the possibilities quite significantly, but then we run into issues with our last name. With a name like Farr, any name that relates to distance or travelling or similar becomes quite twee.
Walker Farr. Parker Farr. Miles Farr. Hunter Farr.
Sigh. Nope.
(The only good thing about this is that my husband jokes about wanting to name a child Hijk (pronounced Hike) but Hike Farr doesn’t work either, thank goodness.)
Then there’s anything that rhymes with fart. Carter would inevitably become Carter Farter.
Names that echo the sound of our last name don’t really work for a similar reason.
Archer… Farrcher. Hardy…Farrdy.
You just know it’s going to happen.
We’re now three weeks (give or take) from having to figure this out, but no pressure, right?
Maybe Connor is right and we are going to name him Hector after all.
