A Rose By Any Other Name...

Would still be a Bob.

Now that Bob can HEAR us, (all 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea), Sandy and I have been trying out his possible names on him. We don't want to give him an identity crisis by calling him Bob up until birth and then suddenly expecting him to adjust to having a brand new name.

Sandy got really excited by the whole prospect of naming Bob, and spent many long, (and utterly pointless), hours reading websites like BabyNameWorld.com and AlternativeBabyNames.com out loud and laughing maniacally. Poor Bob nearly wound up being named Mitternacht Ague. But, after a great deal of discussion, some arguing, some tears, me angrily accusing him of not taking the whole thing seriously at all, (this after he discovered a baby name generator that would pair the names of a major city with the name for a piece of weaponry and spent 45 minutes regaling himself with hilarious combinations), we agreed on a name. Tentatively. I wasn't sure I was in love with it - but I did think I could live with it.

So that's what we've been doing. Living with Bob's new name. We both agreed right off the bat that naming him after our respective fathers would be impossible. My father's name was John. Sandy's father's name...was John. And this symmetry would have made our lives very easy except that there was a minor extended family baby boom shortly after our dads both died, and no fewer than three of those babies are named John as either their first or middle names.

We both quite like Sandy's middle name, and wouldn't have minded using it as a middle name for our wee one, but one of San's brothers had swiped it already for his daughter. Uncool! Tossing name ideas around with my mother-in-law, she horrifyingly suggested we use my maiden name as a first name. Raby. Seriously, that's the sort of parental abuse that leads to kids murdering their moms and dads in their sleep, or worse - becoming Republicans.

I suggested Aiden, and was shot down by the mother-in-law. "Too many vowels!!! It's too hard to say combined with our last name!". Right. So I need a name that won't automatically lead to schoolyard bullying, but with fewer vowels. I was an English major!! I can do this!

We talked about naming the baby after Sandy. Only not calling him Sandy because one gender-bending name in the family was quite enough thank you. So. Alexander. It's a nice name. Means "Defender of Man" or similar. Very historical. I can dig it. But I quail before the commonplaceness of "Alex," as a nickname. I need something a little more obscure. We decided to stick with Alexander as his first name, and use his middle name as his given name. (Or call name, for those of you more familiar with AKC naming practices...) So I dug down into my vast store of literary character names and unearthed the name of a cousin from a truly horrifying romance novel I read back in middle school. His name was Rhys.

Look ma (in-law!). No vowels!!! All hail the Welsh, a people who never invited vowels to the party if they could avoid it.

Rhys means fervor, ardor, passion, enthusiasm. One baby website claims it means dragon.

And voilà! Bob had a new name. Alexander Rhys.

Having chosen his name, there was just one problem. We realized it fairly quickly. All together, his initials spell ARM.

We've overcome this obstacle by deciding that it will make for a fabulous tattoo someday. Pretty much anywhere he chooses to put his initials on his body will wind up being hilarious.

Finally, I reserve the right to change my mind at any moment, up to and including after his birth. He might not look like a Rhys. But for the moment, he's a Rhys. Feel free to call him by name if you see him walking around town.