Ichabod Grace or Xena?

If you’ve been in my company lately, you’ve probably heard me talking about names. Not names in general, for characters in a story I’m writing or as part of some academic conversation, but baby names, for a future child o’ mine. Unfortunately for David, he’s the one in my company most of the time, so he hears about them a lot. Of course, I won’t write about which names I like here, for fear that someone reading might not like them and actually say so. That would be much more devastating than it should be.

My sister-in-law Christa has the same affliction. We are both 28 (I keep forgetting that I’ve actually been 29 for over a week), and we both hope to start having children soon. I guess our clocks (to be ugly and cliché) are in sync. David and his brother Ben have had it with name talk. “Why do we have to decide now?,” they ask, as if they don’t understand the nature of obsession. Besides, we aren’t actually trying to finalize decisions. (I’m not at least. I can’t speak for Christa.) We’re entertaining ourselves at their expense.

They both come up with their own “favorite” names in hopes of throwing us off the fit. The best so far has come from Ben—Verbal, after the guy from The Usual Suspects. Neither Ben nor David wants to use either part of his own name, so at least we have that cleared up. Although, I think Christa is disappointed.

David and I have settled on a boy’s name, at least for now, and we have a short list of girl’s names we will have to narrow one day. He’d prefer to wait until I’m actually pregnant and the decision is at hand. I prefer to keep talking. He’s a patient husband.