Baby Name Choice: Second thoughts on Laszlo?

By Joel Stein, columnist, Time magazine

We’ve had second thoughts. Specifically, my lovely wife Cassandra has had second thoughts that were my first thought. Levi, which she thought was trending too close to popularity and therefore rejected to my great disappointment, didn’t become so popular and she thinks it might have been better than Laszlo, which is our son’s name.

 He does seem like a certain type of Laszlo, but he seems perhaps more like a Levi. He didn’t turn out to be the Judah I pushed for – he’s fair and lanky and un-Macabee-like. He’s cautious and sensitive and pretty Levi-like.

Laszlo, however, is pretty happy with Laszlo.  We run other options by him every so often.  He hated most of Cassandra‘s choices that I also hated–Sigmund, Gunther, Solomon, Ezra.  He equally dislikes mine, though he thinks Whiskey or Edison would have been okay.  But he does greatly prefer Axl, which Cassandra liked and I thought was way too Brooklyn, Ramones-onesie.

The important thing, though, was that he made a decision before he could talk.  Because I can’t imagine getting three people to agree on a name.

Joel Stein writes a weekly column for Time magazine and is the author of Man-Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity.