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.

About the Author

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz

Linda Rosenkrantz is the co-founder of Nameberry, and co-author with Pamela Redmond of the ten baby naming books acknowledged to have revolutionized American baby naming. You can follow her personally at InstagramTwitter and Facebook. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed New York Review Books Classics novel Talk and a number of other books.

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Introducing the Nameberry App

Nameberry App
Find your perfect baby name together with our new mobile app.
  • Swipe through thousands of names with your partner
  • Names you match on are saved to your shared list
  • Get personalized recommendations that learn based on your and your partner's preferences
  • Partner with friends and family to find names you all love
  • Backed by Nameberry's 20 years of data around name preferences.
Sign up to be notified when the app launches and to receive a discount on full access.
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