We are only months away from our second little girl making an appearance and the time is fast approaching when we will have to name our bundle of joy. With our first daughter Mabel, I remember it being a piece of cake, there may be a touch of narrative fallacy here, but like a troubled second album we are having difficulties. A self inflicted pressure is applied that we have to give our daughter a name that will suit the person she will become, and a purely selfish motivation that we need to get the same comments “ Oh what a lovely name” that we received when Mabel was announced. Although I am sure people say this to everyone and I need to get some perspective.
Doug might think in his eyes it was easy naming our first daughter but for me I found it incredibly difficult. Even now going through the process again I feel frustrated. It is time consuming to find a name that is right. There is a book on the shelf that I have gone through over and over again. A baby name book. By the time I have got to the end of the D’s I have given up, so this is where I would randomly suggest names, such as Skye, Willow, Meadow, Isabella, Arrabella, even to go as far as to suggest Katniss (from the Hunger Games).
How much does a name influence a child's developments, is an unanswerable question which I honestly haven’t directly pondered, but I have considered what names that are in the frame rhyme with, hoping to reduce the school chants and alike. I also go off on tangents and think about how it will sound on the graduation, wedding day or if the mood take me when being announced at a court hearing.
When naming our first child Mabel Frances Goodland it had always been a recurring joke name as my dad and Doug use to go for a drink in London in Mabel’s Tavern. After going through endless lists of names that neither of us could agree on, we would always come back to Mabel. As it is an old fashioned name we thought it was about time to bring it back. Frances was picked by randomly coming across a friend with that middle name on Facebook, and putting it together with Mabel it sounded right. (I am pretty sure it was only a week or 2 before she was here that we finally agreed on it).
Trial and Error is the best method I have found to parenting but this doesn’t work for the big decisions and so when we do venture into the discussions on the subject there can be a lot of frustration as this is purely an emotional decision. When names are rejected there can be no specific reason for it, and this can cause frustration on my part. Both times we have started this process I have felt a pang of personal rejection when a name has been blocked and I’m not sure why, but I think it is because of the value I put in this decision. This is the first gift you bestow on your child and it will be one of only a few things that she will keep for the rest of her life. With Mabel we had the name Skye signed off but for some reason we felt that the image in our heads of a “Skye” would be blond haired and blue eyed, and the chances Mabel being this way was slim. You may disagree with this image but like word association, an image appears in your ahead as soon as someone says a name. Social media adds to this, as old friends or acquaintances who surprisingly all have names adds to the mental image for suggested names, and these are just images, they have depth, comments and opinions. All this makes the Web of names and connections even more complicated.
So here we are in this stressful but amazing position, and yet again I feel disheartened that I can’t agree with Doug on a name. A few have been thrown about but then you have the problem of deciding on a modern but unusual name, or choosing another old fashioned name. Doug likes to make lots of suggestions but I shoot them down one after the other. I don’t know what it is so I can never give an answer to ‘Why?’, which I think makes him frustrated, but everyone has different tastes, and I just don’t want to call my child that. I however know that in the end a name will be picked that we both agree on and love, I just wished that it was easier for me to decide.
In my youth I use to say that I would number my kids until they were old enough to understand and I could use the threat of a terrible name to keep them in line. "1 stop hitting 3 or you'll be called Ovula" Maybe not the best approach to parenting!
In the end we will name our second daughter, I can promise you that and although I can't predict if it will have an adverse effect on her development, what I can say is that it will be a name given to her by two loving parents and that surely is all that matters, that the name we choose for all it's meanings will be indicative of Nichole and I, the two people who will raise her and influence her development. Instead of it being the first gift it is more the first marker of the love and care that we will continue to provide over the coming months, years and Decades.
D & N
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