Since today is my oldest child and only daughter’s birthday, I can’t help but think back on the process of choosing her name.
It was easy, totally easy. My husband and I agreed absolutely: She was going to be named Henry, and called Hank, after Hank Aaron, one of my husband’s favorite baseball players. We were sure she was going to be a boy because….well, mainly because we couldn’t find a name we both liked for a girl.
Surely that was a sign? Fate wouldn’t let us bring a daughter into the world when we found it so impossible to find a name for her, would it?
Just in case, when my pregnancy went one week past my due date, and then two, we spent hour upon hour scribbling down girls’ names and then just as quickly crossing them out. Our early favorite, Flora, was so roundly ridiculed by all our friends and relatives that we’d removed it from consideration, which I still regret. My mother, whose name was Margaret, came up with a dizzying array of varieties of Margaret. My mother-in-law campaigned for Rose, HER mother-in-law’s name, except my husband had dated a Rose — along with girls who seemed to possess every single other name I liked.
One of my favorite names, Eliza, reminded my husband of Liza Minnelli, an association he could not shake. Another of my favorites, Susannah, he ruled out because he had a cousin named Susie. But I found the girls’ names he preferred — Molly, Melissa — just a little too mild for my taste.
Is it any wonder that, in desperation, I turned to the boys’ section of the 1953-vintage baby naming dictionary we owned? It was there I hit upon Rory, an Irish boys’ name that I remembered dimly had been used for the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy who was born after his assassination. I wanted an energetic, Irish name, and the fact that Rory meant red, which related to my maiden name Redmond, made it all the more appealing.
When our baby was finally born and the doctor cried, “It’s a girl!,” I said, “Are you sure?” The fact that our newborn daughter weighed over nine pounds, had long dark hair and a rousing voice convinced my husband that she was more of a Rory than a Molly.
If I had known, back then, that she would be our only daughter, I might have chosen a more frankly feminine name. I thought that, in the years to come, I’d have other chances to choose Carolina or Georgia, to debate the merits of Lily vs. Daisy. But we knew early in my subsequent two pregnancies that we would be having boys.
What I learned from that first real-life baby-naming experience:
DON’T LET ANYONE TALK YOU OUT OF A NAME YOU LOVE. Flora would have been a perfect choice, and I wish I’d trusted our taste over everyone else’s.
THERE’S A REAL ADVANTAGE IN KNOWING YOUR BABY‘S GENDER AHEAD OF TIME. With an extra six months to come up with a girl’s name, we might have ended up with the same choice, but could have made it more calmly.
NOT HAVING THE RIGHT NAME IS NO SURE SIGN OF ANYTHING. Before I knew the gender of my two sons, I was more sure of a girls’ names for them (JOSEPHINE, called JOSIE for the older one, MARGARET, called DAISY, for the younger) and so guessed they would be girls. You would think I would have learned this lesson the first time around.
What about you, dear readers who are already parents? Did you have a name for a baby of one sex but not the other….and did that have anything to do with what gender baby you actually had? How would you choose your names differently if you knew then what you know now?
Tags: baby girl name Rory, Irish names for girls, name disagreements, no name for baby
This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 at 10:28 pm and is filed under Irish baby names, boys' names, gender and names, girls' names, name ideas . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:08 am
I have to mostly agree. My first baby, we found out at 20 weeks that he was a he. It helped to focus on boy names, and we finally found one we both loved when I was around 35 weeks (Ronan!). Our second baby, we didn’t find out the gender.
(Although, I have to digress — my husband kind of wanted to know and I wanted to wait. As luck would have it, on the morning of the “big” ultrasound, our 2 y.o. was sick. So I had to go it alone. I had the doctor write the gender and put it in an envelope. I did convince hubby to wait. After my daughter was born I opened the envelope, and sure enough, it says, “Congratulations, it’s a girl!” I have it saved for her baby book. If I ever get around to making a baby book….)
Okay, back to topic! I found it much more difficult to focus on names when I didn’t know the sex. We had a couple we liked for each gender, but we did find it more difficult to commit.
I totally agree with the first two tenants above. I would even change the first to: Don’t discuss names with your family! We only discussed potential names on online forums and a very few select friends.
In the end, my husband lobbied hard for Beatrix (Bea) for our newly born daughter, which was one on our list. It fits her well, although if it were up to me, she would have been Elizabeth (Betsy).
For me, though, I don’t think I would have given up the surprise (”It’s a girl!”) just for the naming ease. Although I do understand that point of view as well.