Guest blogger Teresa Strasser, a comedy writer whose new blog is called Exploiting My Baby, is desperate for one good boys’ name for her son, due in October. How far will she go to find it?
I know from that stupidly catchy viral “Pregnant Women are Smug” song that pregnant women don’t usually share the names they’ve chosen for their babies.
That may be a smug choice, sure, but I think I get it now. You let the name cat out of the bag, and everyone judges the cat, they swing the cat around by the tail, they project their own issues onto the cat and now you want to put the whole incident in your emotional litter box and bury it so you can still like the cat as much as you used to.
And of course there is the danger of getting name napped. My friends just had a baby boy and named it Laszlo, and I am madly in love with that name. It’s Hungarian, as am I. Victor Laszlo is a character in the movie “Casablanca,” and my surname is also featured in that film. Who doesn’t remember the line, “Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects?” Okay, that Strasser dude was a Nazi, but I still enjoy the classic movie name tie-in, and when you’re looking for magical name signs, anything seems to scream, “This is the one.”
Still, you don’t nap a name.
So we had to let Laszlo go, like Bogey did. And now I have four more months to come up with something.
The first dozen people we told we were thinking of the name “James” were dazzled. “It’s classy and simple,” they said, “It’s not like one of these new fangled Jayden, Aiden, Caden names,” they added. So James shot to the top of the list, but if you tell enough people, someone is going to hate on your name, which is what happened when a former colleague told me that anyone named James would become Jim, and there was nothing I could do about it. Jim. Jims are nice people, they coach girls’ soccer without inappropriately touching anyone, they do your taxes without massaging the numbers too much, they walk your dog when you have to leave town suddenly. I like Jims. I just don’t want one.
The “Jim hater” loved our only other name option so far: Shane.
After we got pregnant, we happened to go to the cell phone store and the guy who helped us had a shiny blue nametag with that moniker. And it seemed right with my husband’s crazy long, consonant rich Polish name. Shane would ride into kindergarten like a Polish cowboy. And all Shanes are hot. But so are Gabes. And Nates. And most Erics.
Once you rule out any names of ex-boyfriends, or names you would be napping from your immediate circle, or names recently used by celebrity moms or names you associate with high school bullies or former evil bosses, the well runs a bit dry. Trust me, when it comes to girl names, the well of adorably androgynous designations bubbles over, but this boy thing is tough.
I’ve been thinking that most parents have a few names in the running before choosing the one. What happens to those perfectly good runner-up names? Can I have them? If you loved your second choice but didn’t use it and feel it shouldn’t go to waste, or if you thought of it only after you screwed your kid with an average name, help a mom-to-be out with a name-me-down you no longer need.
In the most recent list of Most Popular Boys ‘ Names, all five of the top five names came from the Good Book, accounting for well over 100,000 of the boy babies born in the US. Obviously, many parents–whether for religious reasons or not–continue to be attracted to names with this strong traditional base. But why, we ask, be limited to the same relatively small group of biblical choices, when there are loads of other more unusual options out there? Why not Joab or Joah instead of Noah? Beniah rather than Benjamin? Jemuel in place of Samuel?
When we talk about vintage names, we’re usually harking back to the 
