What's in a name?

A labour ward is a good place to keep track of name trends. When I was doing delivery duty, I was exposed to a clump of Calebs, a mass of Micaelas, a hefty helping of Heindrichs, some Simons and a very few Felicities.

It was always interesting for me to hear what people were choosing to name their children and why. Some people went for the family name option, giving their brand new offspring a super-concoction of names belonging to various family members from the last 5 generations. I always felt that this was very unfair on the infant. Why such a tiny little person has to carry some ridiculously extensive title is beyond me. 

Can you imagine: "I'm so glad you came to visit. I'd love to introduce you to my son. I hope you don't have anywhere you need to be in the next couple of hours, because it's going to take that long for me to recite his full name. I will have to stop at some point just to check his birth certificate, because I always muddle up the part where Wilhelm Majorus Siegfried follows on to the Peter Gandolfini, or is it the Jean-Claude Renaldi bit? See, I get it wrong every time! Just trying to keep the peace in this politically correct EU family of ours. Ahem. Cuppa tea?"

Then there were the parents who insisted on the New Agey names: "Ja, this is uhm? What do you call that beautiful flower with the thorns? Oh yes, a rose... Rose, what did we decide to call this little bebby? That's right, man, we called him Sunbeam. I thought it was wicked, bru. Yeah it's a bit on the frillsy side, but we actually didn't check if it was a boy or a girl for the first three days, you know... those labour drugs were wild, man! What? What do you mean only she was supposed to have?""

I also have my reservations about New Age names. It might be really cute, Gwenyth Paltrow, to have your little Apple Blossom digging in the sandpit, making snow angels or even starting ballet, but one day, when sweet little Apple Blossom has finished her MBA, please tell me who is actually going to take her seriously when she applies for that fancy position at IBM? (Apple working for IBM? Splendid, I know!)

Or parents who complicate the spelling of their infant's name to make their little dumpling completely unique. "This is Michael,' is what you hear, but what they're saying is, "This is EmYkilL." And the day that poor little EmYkilL has to learn to write his own name, the kid's going to have to go see an educational psychologist just to deal with the fact that his parents couldn't spell!

So when the time came to choose names for my own children, I was quite nervous. Not only about making the right decision, but also about all the criticism that goes along with naming your child (as neatly illustrated in the last four paragraphs).

We consulted name books, in the end, deciding that we favoured giving names with inherently special meanings. We should have only looked at one book, though. The trouble with looking up the meaning of the same name in different books, is that each author donates their own special interpretation to each name, so you'll find that the name you really like could mean "radiant angel" in one book and "lump of clay" in another.

We ended up going with one name meaning "Happy" and one meaning "Bringer of peace". (Side note - we await, perhaps not as patiently as we ought, for happiness and peace to be brought).

Yesterday, on the way home from ballet, "Happiness" was thoughtfully tugging on a stray hair that had escaped the crooked bun pinned off-center at the top of her head.

"Mom," she said, "when I have my daughter one day, I will call her Juliet."

"That's a very beautiful and romantic name," I said.

"What's romantic?" she asked.

"It's, uh, it means lovely and beautiful and special," I grasped at straws.

"Oh." Moments silence. "If I have another girl, I will call her Chloe."

"That's nice too, " I said. "But what if you have a boy?"

No hesitation here: "I'll call him Spiderman."

Hmmm. Seems we may be into a new name trend here...