I actually feel decently prepared for this baby to come out. The baby clothes are washed and sorted. Newborn diapers (cloth and disposable) have been added to the diaper bin. My hospital bag is packed (with lots of new snacks - thanks for the suggestions!) and a million pieces of paper have been taped to the back of the apartment door with info for JD and whoever else is here to take care of the fusspot. I even feel decently emotionally prepared.
Or maybe it's just that unlike last time my body is in such a thorough state of deterioration that I actually think I will feel better in a vastly sleep-deprived state postpartum than I do now. Not only do I have severe carpal tunnel, PUPPP all over my stomach and a significant amount of "swelling" (not in the hands or feet, mind you, but somewhere rather more tender. I am in fact still wearing my wedding ring as I type this) but the usual back-ache associated with carrying a 2-year old up and down subway stairs and lugging our groceries home on foot.
Except ... when I woke up last night with cramps and decided to wake JD around 4 am to mention the fact ... he rolled over and mumbled about picking a name immediately. Yeah, we have no name. And as you might notice from the title we now know exactly how much it will cost us to make the same mistake twice. Long-time readers may remember that the fusspot was discharged with no name at all, and it was only thanks to the kindness of a wonderful nurse who "misplaced" our paperwork that she received a first name. However, good, dutiful parents that we are we settled on a middle name this summer and decided to legally add it. Having done this rather recently for JD we figured it would be about $200 total. Not so much anymore. Here's the breakdown:
$60 court fees
$300 public notice of name change (the judge chooses the paper and this judge chose the most expensive one in the big city)
$36 legal copies of name change
$125 fee to change name on passport (Note: a new passport for a child is only $95, but the name change part of it knocks you into the adult-pay scheme. This seems to be manifestly unfair) plus new passport photos
$0 change social security card
$60 change name on birth certificate with Department of Health
Which is all to say that we're motivated to pick a name punctually this time. Except we are having no luck at all.
Here's what I want: A nice, Israeli (not Biblical) name which clearly indicates the bargain baby's religion and hints at his ethnic identity. To give you a sense of names I love: Na.dav, Ak.iv.a, Av.ner, Mei.r.
Here's what JD wants: An easy to spell, dignified, not-too-funny sounding name which happens to be easy to pronounce in Chinese. To give you a sense of names JD finds ok: Emi.l, Mi.lo, Jas.per. He clearly leans towards hipster-ish less common names, but other than that I can't figure out the pattern.
What we agree upon: we would pick the easiest, most straightforward spelling of any name we pick (i.e. if both Emil and Emile or Daniel and Dannniell are options, we'd go for the first one both times). We did not really want to consider any name in the top 20, and we do not want to pick a clearly Christian name (i.e. no apostles, etc.).
The overlap: nil.
Oh, and I am deeply superstitious about even saying the name aloud prior to the formal naming (which happens 8 days postpartum when all goes well).
So here is where we solicit advice:
a. general suggestions based on our completely incoherent ambiguous preferences?
b. how do you feel about the name Jas.per given that it apparently features in the Twilight series and will thus be creeping up the census list, at least to some extent, for the next several years?
c. general advice on how you and your partner did/plan to resolve these issues
d. thoughts on the importance of a name reflecting a person's identity? I find it rather odd when nice little Jewish boys have Irish names, for example, but many people do not (including my husband apparently). And while we have discussed at length using my last name instead of JD's, our current consensus (for many complex reasons) is that we'd like to use his last name for the bargain baby ... so it'll be something stereotypically Chinese, like Lee.
To answer a few basic suggestions, we have 4 Jewish baby name books on the shelf and have thumbed through them multiple times. We have also been through both the U.S. census and NYC list of baby names for the past several years for ideas. Also, while it is traditional to name after a deceased relative in my family, we used the fusspot's middle name to carry on this tradition and plan to do the same for the bargain baby.
And for those of you who have waded this far, a good JD story to end the evening post. JD has an officemate. He spends 60-70 hours a week in his office, so even if his officemate is working slightly different hours they spend at least 5o hours a week in the same small room. I think that I said something about how this poor guy must be looking forward to JD's leave so that he won't have to listen to our rather inane conversations during the day (frequently about what to buy at the grocery store) and JD replies ... that he hasn't told his officemate that I'm pregnant yet. Yeah. Someone tell me that my husband is not the only one who would fail to mention to the guy he sits next to all day long that his wife is 38 weeks pregnant? JD's only response to my baffled look being "it just hasn't come up yet."
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9 comments:
*Long time lurker, first time commenter. Hard to leave posts on blogger, so I usually just read.
Good luck with the naming. We went for a family name in the end (easier than agreeing from our lists). Middle name hints at his ethnic identity that is not reflected in his last name (last name German, middle name Spanish).
My husband actually did not tell anyone but his boss that I was pregnant. They were all very surprised when he sent pictures afterwards. I think it's kind of like your superstition about the name. He didn't want to jinx it until everything turned out well.
First- good luck!We had epic debates with Pumpkin and surprisingly decided on a boy's name long before we ever got pregnant. The girls names were infinitely harder. My one grandfathers middle name was Emil (so I am partial to it!) & Emilia was our runner up. As it is we decided over brunch the day after we found out Pumpkin was a girl with a complex discussion of nicknames & initials that could spell out words. Pumpkin's name is an ode to her Irish heritage with a very Italian last name. Her middle name is a family name. 2.0 had a much easier time deciding on his name. ironically- the boy's name we had decided on (& loved to pieces) 4 years ago just doesn't sound right with Pumpkin's name. We instead went with the extremely traditional combination of my other Grandfather's name and my husband & father-in-law's name for the middle name. They are both very classic names and neither one is Irish or Italian!
Is there any way to decide on 2 or 3 names beforehand & then when you meet him make your final decision? Pumpkin looked like her name when she came out- I couldn't imagine her as an Emilia after meeting her.
That is funny about JD & his coworker. I think the hub made a general announcement to all our neighbors far in advance of me ever telling my own job. But I kept it a secret for a good long while. I think everyone just has a different way of talking about their family!
The Jewish baby name books probably aren't going to help if you want a non-Biblical Israeli name. At least, that was our experience. Those books are all either Biblical + Yiddish, or way out of date with names that would be laughed at by modern Israelis. (We considered some Israeli names, too.)
While many Israeli names are awkward for English-speakers, there are plenty of more straightforward ones that might fit JD's criteria of being easy to spell and not funny-sounding. (I'll admit to knowing very little about what is easy to pronounce in Chinese.) Lev? Dov? Zev? Ayal? (Hm... lots of animal names....) I adore the name Lior, and we would have used it for LL if it didn't sound so hideous with our last name. Or names like Ari or Yigal or Eitan that are a bit more common in the US but still strongly identifiable as Jewish?
I get a little bit of your struggle. We weren't as bent on having a distinctively ethnic sounding name for our guys, but we definitely wanted the name to be easily pronounceable and recognizable in his native language. And yeah, we didn't want top 20 names, either, but of course, depending on your source, the two names we chose are absurdly popular, one of them actually coming in as high as #7 on several sources. BUT, when we were deciding, the most recent data available was for 2009, and no, at that point, neither name we chose was in the top 20 on any of the several sources we perused. Oh, well.
And so, in response:
a. I'm the wrong person to ask for suggestions... I seriously didn't even know that Judaism was all that different from Christianity until I was in high school, and suddenly, my three new best friends all went to temple together and argued over whether Kraft cheese was kosher or not. It just didn't occur to me, in the same way it doesn't occur to most people that Texas could really be considered North Mexico in many ways...
b. Jas.per isn't my favorite, but not because of anything having to do with twilight (though I bet your future jas.per would get plenty of 'oh, your mom liked twilight, huh?' comments from teachers or whatever), but more because I worked at Chuck E. Che.ese for a couple of years, and one of the animatronic robot characters is a hick dog named Jasp.er. But excepting my personal associations and twilight associations, it has potential, I think.
c. H and I resolved it by going through a baby name book and marking all the names we liked (I in black, he in red). There were plenty of moments where I would take the book from him and review a recent choice, with a hearty, 'Are you SERIOUS? We are NOT naming them that.' And he laughed at plenty of mine. There was not much overlapping, either. Except, of course, with girl names.
Ultimately, our method of resolution involved trapping ourselves in the car on the way home from IKEA in Charlotte, going round and round with names until we settled on something that sounded right that we could both agree on. Originally, our two separate names were going to be one first/middle name combo, but after realizing that there just weren't many other options that we both liked that matched somewhat stylistically (also important for us, given that we were naming two...), we gave in and chose those as separate first names and cheated out on the middle names by using family surnames (which actually ended up denoting ethnicity far more than their first names, F.leury from my french-cajun side, and Sc.heerer from H's side).
d. Given that the babies have H's last name, and given that it's an extremely uncommon last name in the US, I figured that they already had a clear tie to that side of their heritage (so much so that I almost insisted that we choose both of their middle names from my side of the family, but in the end, he had already discussed it with his mother, who would be upset to have been left out, I think). It was important that both names be pronounceable in his native language, but I *really* didn't want names that were decidedly German. That really is the problem, that most German names are nothing BUT german. There's just no two ways about it that Helmut is German, and a completely unused name in America.
Oh, and I just relayed the JD story to H, who thought it was hilarious. I asked him if he could even imagine telling one of his colleagues that I was going to give birth in around two weeks, and he just laughed. (By the by, is it weird that when I relay stories from your blog to H, I switch back and forth between real names and pseudonyms, often even within the same sentence? Confuses the heck out of H, but somehow, when I read stories on the blog, I associate them with 'Rachel' and 'JD', so I find it hard to swap to appropriate names, but then, of course, H doesn't read here, so he's all, "Rachel? JD? Fusspot? Who are these people???")
Ahem.
And also, I cannot wait to hear what you end up deciding. For the record, I think E.mil is a sweet name for a boy. I also like Mil.o, too, I think. In our case, I'm still a little heartbroken that we weren't able to use Jamie or August (two of my favorites for boys) because we just couldn't find acceptable names that matched stylistically with either of them. Of course, I'm also heartbroken that we had several extremely perfect girl names picked out, none of which we got to use. Maybe next time... (HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah. Next life, maybe!)
Okay, I am no help on Jewish or Israeli names. The only thing I can offer is that someone I know locally is Jewish and has two grandsons (ages 4 and 1) and they are named "Zev" and "Dov" - which I think are references to animals?!
I like Milo. And I really like Jasper, especially given where you live, you can get away with more hipster names, as you put it. Jasper would not work so well where I am, LOL.
Can I put in a vote for Simon? And Alec? Our "boy name" was Kevin, followed by Alec. I'm into the meaning of a name, not it's ethnic origin, though. We chose a Japanese spelling for our eldest's name, over the Gaelic one. What's funny is that she is Chinese, of course.
My husband and I actually chose our names on one of our first dates after discussing how we both wanted children.
Ronald/Ronnie was a big name amongst the large group of Jewish friends I had in middle school - there were 3 in my grade 7 class.
Try playing around on a couple of websites:
www.babynamewizard.com
www.nymbler.com
Good luck !!
I think if the babies last name is going to be lee, you want to avoid any names that seem like double first names (Jasper Lee seems like a bit of a deliverance type of thing.)
Are you ready? I came with a big long list. These were names we (ok, ok, I alone considered):
Asa
Abe
Ben
Ephraim
Adem
Tovi
Zev
Asher
As for the Jasper thing. I unwittingly named one of my twin sons a Twilight name. Someone stopped me at the park to say that he is the oldest kid she has ever heard of with that name. He is three. So there can only be more to come...
Good luck! Best to you for a healthy delivery!
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