Girl/Boy Vegas
We settled on a girl’s name for Vegas several months back. No, I’m not telling you. No, seriously. I mean, I love you and all, and, as always, I appreciate your input, but no. We still lie to people, though, when they ask about names. We have a variety of lines from, “Oh, you know – we’re just going to wait and see what he or she looks like!” to “OMG, we have no idea!” The truth is, if Vegas is a girl, we have every idea. Girl Vegas is as named as named can be.
Boy Vegas, on the other hand, is surprisingly up in the air. We’ve gone from being completely set to completely not set and back and forth and back and forth. We have some family names to work with, but none which seem 100% right. This one is too Top 10, Top 50, Top 100. That one has a terrible nickname. This one would be terrible if he had a lisp. That one is too long, or can be spelled wrong too easily. This one is too average – there are, like, 600 of that first name plus my last name on Facebook. All the people named that on Facebook look like douchebags. That one is too stuffy. Dammit – we wasted that great name on the dog/cat. This one would be OK if we didn’t live in the South. Do we want him to be able to get a key chain with his name on it at Disneyland? I like that combination of First/Middle/Last, but it gives him unflattering or offensive initials. I knew a guy named that in high school, and he was an asshole. No. That name? No. I think we’d honestly name him Vegas (and we still reserve the right to) if I had a common last name – Smith, Johnson, Williams. But I don’t. And no, I’m not telling you. God, internet, leave me SOME sense of anonymity.
A lady we work with knew she was having a boy, yet they took until the third day they were home with him to name him. It drove the hospital (and everyone else) crazy, she said. I don’t put it past us to be the same way. We might not be lying when we tell people we’d have to get a good look at him first. We’d also be lying if we didn’t admit that we’re hopeful it’s a girl so that we don’t leave the hospital with an unnamed baby.
Posted on May 18, 2010, in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
butch... and pregnant 
We had a list that we brought with us and chose from, but then, we knew she was a girl. Even so, we didn’t know what the name would be. J asked at one point, “what if we can’t decide before we leave the birthing center?” (note that we would’ve only been at the birthing center ~6 hours, instead of the 3 days we were at the hospital.) I told her we were picking before we left the birthing center, because if we didn’t, we had to file her birth certificate paperwork ourselves and we never would and she would forever be “baby girl [lastname].”
I’m stoked that you aren’t sharing the name! I had a friend who shared her choice of “Grace” and so many people made fun of it or made other nasty remarks that she named her kid Jessica, even though Grace had been her girl choice for almost 10 years. Name it whatever you’re going to call it. I was born with a ‘real’ name and lived for 31 years with a nickname other than the first day of school and the doctor’s office when my ‘real’ name was used. I changed it officially in 2007. It’s awesome to have an ID, college diplomas, and paperwork all with one name and no explanation!
I’m in the “don’t tell everyone your choice(s) ahead of time” camp as well. People I know dropped their top choice entirely when someone pointed out a potential stupid nickname, and I really don’t want to have to deal with that. After the kid is named, they can bad mouth us behind our backs all they want; I don’t really care. But I don’t want to hear about it from them beforehand, which I think a lot of people feel is just fine. I am working on bringing my wife into this camp, although somewhat belatedly, as she told a bunch of people names we liked well before we conceived.
Also, I really am a fan of not deciding for sure until you see the kid. What if s/he’s born and is just completely *not* a “Eucharista Hortense” or whatever you’d decided on? (Please note: if that is your actually choice of names, I totally back your call.)
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