What's in a name...

A lot. Apparently. 

It's really hard naming your future kin. It really is. Making a human-being isn't hard. Naming him is! Because it's for life. It's our entire identity. I was going to be called Shannon and Kerry was actually Bianca for two days until our folks changed it. No one actually calls me Sharon; it's Shaz, Sharrie or Shazza.

And I know our child will need a name that can have a nickname or be abbreviated in some way.  

The upside of my job is that I get to spend a lot of time with all sorts of people from all over the globe. So I've been exposed to a lot of different names. I'm also exposed to a lot of unsolicited advice but one golden nugget came from a gentlemen, who shall remain nameless and in a pretty senior post in our company, upon finding out we are having a boy advised "...just make sure you don't give him some earth-friendly, tree hugging name, like Aspen, people will need to take him seriously one day in 30yrs time when he starts working, so don't make him sound like a prat, unless he does actually end up working for Greenpeace, then he's covered.".

So that's Aspen off the list then. 

I relay this conversation to Ryan about making sure that our future man child needs to have a name that will demonstrate strength of character and command respect. I think that's when the pressure mounted. And obviously we're not capable of making this decision on our own so we enlist the help of family and friends when we see them and gauge their reaction to our short list of baby boy names. This is often met with blank stares, suggestions of their own or sometimes just outright ridicule.

I've become very friendly with another pregnant woman at work and we've had the baby-naming conversation: she and her husband have nailed it "we know what we want to call our son, we're just not telling anyone until he's actually here." kudos to them, that's how we should've played it. 

But alas the baby-naming boat has sailed. 

We acquired some library books in our quest to navigate our way around the task - thanks to Angelique. The last time we ventured into Southfields library was to vote in the Summer of 2012. It's great knowing that we're having a boy as we were able to move through the alphabet in one sitting but while we were in bed, so naturally I fell asleep after ten minutes. By dawn Ryan had a shortlist. Along with some really insightful knowledge; we can't have a complicated first name as our child would go through life having to spell both this and his surname. 

So that's Sebastian, Bartholomew and Zachariah shelved.   

We're lucky that his surname will obviously be Smethurst because we'll never have to worry about creating a social faux pas like Neil Dunn, Justin Case, Rick O'Shea or Willie Seawell. 

So as I head into my 27th week of pregnancy we have around thirteen weeks to shorten our shortlist and test run a couple of names. Ryan and I both agree that we'll also wait until he arrives to see which name suits him best. 

For now he remains Little One.