Some girls talk about how they dreamed about their wedding when they were little and know exactly what they want when the time comes to plan one. I also know many women who claim to have the names of their children picked out before they even meet the future father of said children. I was never one of those girls... didn't think about my wedding once before I got engaged and changed my mind about the baby names I liked every year or so. Even if I had been that kind of girl, that's SO not how my relationship with PJO works. He is very involved and we make almost every decision together, which I love ... most of the time.
I never thought it would be so difficult to come up with names! If anything, I thought couples fight for their "favorites" and eventually compromise or one side caves in. I'm sure some people actually both agree and love the same name without a fight, but I can't really picture that. We can't even come up with a name we would both like, much less love.
PJO and I come from pretty different backgrounds... I grew up in southern California in a family whose ancestors have been in the United States for about 200 years. PJO grew up in New Jersey, 2nd generation Italian (with some Irish thrown in there). I think that explains a little bit ... names like Salvatore, Gennaro, and Frank are common (and frequently re-used). Those sound like crabby, old man names to me. Names like Tyler and Blake sound like hippy, new-age California names to him. We have no family names in common. Basically, we're starting from scratch.
Our first plan was to each go through (on our own) the top 500 (yes, FIVE HUNDRED) list of boy names and each cross out the names we wanted to eliminate. Then we compared the lists to see if there were any common names left. I think we had 10. I thought that was enough to work with and we would be picking one from there. Since that night about 2 months ago, we (mostly PJO) have withdrawn some of those names, and it has dwindled to about 3. While I could be happy with any of the three, PJO can barely restrain himself from grimacing when I say them, and I think they're only still on the list because he doesn't have any alternatives to suggest. He definitely is not willing to concede that we might choose one of those as THE name.
I'm pretty sure that we won't agree until shortly before we're discharged from the hospital. Part of me wants to wait until I see UNO to decide anyway, but the type-A planner in me is going crazy not knowing how we're going to decide what to name our first child. I'm pretty sure there aren't any magical, previously undiscovered, names lurking in baby books or on the internet that we'll both instantly agree to, and neither of us are the type to settle or change our mind without a fight. So at this point, Uno will remain Uno. PJO's joke about leaving it up to the internet at namemybaby.com or selling naming rights (think WALter MARTin or Starbucks Pepsi) will remain jokes.
2 comments:
For my son, we had three names we were ok with: one was my husband's real first name that he doesn't go by because its a kind of formal stuffy name; one was a name we both liked as name itself but also happened to be my father's name which made my husband like it less; the third was just a name I loved and he kinda liked. We decided to wait til he was born. My first thought when he was born was "name 2" but before I said it, my husband said "name 3." I agreed immediately and haven't regretted it.
You'll know it when you see it. I was one of those girls that had names picked out before I met my hubby. LOL. Luckily he liked the girl's name I picked out. (Otherwise I may have given his proposal a second thought ~ smile) Before having our ultrasound and finding out we were having a girl, we were going through boy names. We both perked up on a couple of the names, so I'm confident you and your hubby will have a similar experience when you come across the right name(s). Good luck!
BTW, I think "Uno" is such a cute nickname.
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