Rejected Baby Names

As Ace just noted earlier, my wife Janis and I are expecting our first child in April. She's been bugging me to help her pick out a name, but I've been putting it off. Why? I don't know. Picking a name is a big thing, and I want to take it slow & do it properly. What I have done is make up a short list of what NOT to name our firstborn. We've made a decision that we don't want to know the sex of the baby until he/she is born, so my list is unisex.

1. Any names from the Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings movies and books are right out. Just because there will be a legion of emptyheaded modern day hippies naming their kids Arwyn or Hagrid or even Frodo, and I don't want to be associated with them.

2. I've also eliminated any Girl's names that come from Disney movies. Jasmine? Ariel? Belle? Did they get these names from the "starting lineup" at the Spearmint Rhino? It's hard enough to keep a daughter from getting pornified in today's culture, I don't see why I should give her a stripper name to push her down that road prematurely.

3. Barak. We're too pasty to get away with that one, plus the politics are all wrong.

4. I might be tempted to give "junior" my first name (HINT: My first name isn't Russ, because I go by my middle name), but only as a middle name. Just to keep with continuity.

5. We're not going to name our kid for a sports figure. I've joked with my wife that we'll name our kid "Ellis" for Ellis Hobbs III, the starting cornerback for the Patriots who played at ISU (where Janis & I both went to school), but I hope she understands that it's just a joke. Don't get me wrong, if I HAD to name a boy after Ellis Hobbs, it would be the best athlete role model I could choose, but naming your kid after an athlete, unless he's related to you distantly, is pretty pathetic, IMHO.

6. There are a few boys names that would set you up for daily beatings after PE class. For example, back in high school I met a guy named "Sasha" at the American Legion Boy's State weeklong campout, and all I could think was "Dude, your parents named you after a Russian Duck!" Any boy's name we choose will definitely be pre-reviewed to eliminate any obvious ridicule.

7. There are a few names that I associate with a-holes from my past, both male & female. It's selfish, but I'm not going to use a name from someone that I don't have at least neutral feeling about. That's just the way I roll.

One interesting fact that you don't know about me yet: My ancestor left the Amish community four generations ago, (great, great grandfather), so I've got a whole bunch of Old Testament names to choose from that come from my actual ancestors. My current favorite Amish name? Moses. It just sounds so "pimp" to have a youngun named after the guy who dropped frogs on his enemies and parted the Red Sea. The downside: unless Baby from Winterset grows up to play Power Forward, the name might not fit him properly. But Hey! I've got generations & generations of Amish names to sort through, so we might incorporate one of those with a family name from Janis' side.

posted by Russ from Winterset at 05:01 PM

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