You're gonna name her what??

I have always liked unusual names. I always thought it would be cool to go through school and never meet another person with your same name. So I always assumed I would give my children very unusual names. Then, 25 years ago when we were expecting Luke, I read an article that shifted my view somewhat. The article claimed that while girls who grow up with highly unusual names do just fine, boys struggle. They are often made fun of; they feel like they don't fit in. They have low self-esteem. Yikes! This article was enough to scare me. I'd hate to burden my sons with self-esteem issues just to satisfy my own desires.

With our oldest two children, ultrasonography was not yet routine. We had to wait until they were born to know whether we had a boy or a girl. Consequently, parents went to the hospital with two names in mind. On the way home from the doctor's visit which confirmed we were expecting our first baby, we stopped by a store and purchased a book, 13,000 Unusual Baby Names. From this book, we would attempt to select our "girl's" name. It wasn't hard. I've seen couples labor (no pun intended) over this issue for months, unable to decide or agree. For us, it took about three seconds. Gerald opened the book randomly to the "S" section and declared, "Shulamith! It's Hebrew for peace." My response, "I love it. It's the most beautiful name in the world." I still think that, by the way. It was settled. If we had a girl, she would be Shulamith.

But, as you know, we had a boy first, a wonderful son. At some point during the pregnancy, I thought we ought to have a boy's name picked out, and my favorite soap opera at the time was General Hospital. A dashing young character on the show, wild and daring and romantic, was named Luke Spencer. I decided Luke would be a good name for a boy (since I had been sufficiently scared out of choosing an unusual name and possibly scarring my child for life), and Gerald was good with Luke too. As an aside, I watch GH only very rarely these days, but Luke Spencer is still there, and he's even hotter now than he was 25 years ago. People thought we chose the name Luke because it was Biblical, but no; it was really just from a soap opera.

Only seven months after Luke was born, I was pregnant once again. I expected another boy because it seemed like most people's first two children were the same sex, so I focused on a boy's name. Still afraid to use my unusual name book, we settled on Matthew. We think that's mildly ironic now since Shulamith's husband is named Mathew, not spelled exactly the same, but very close. I didn't dare hope it could be a girl, and I think I was the one most shocked when she was born. My first words: "Is it really a girl??" Gerald's reply: "It's Shulamith!" And so it was.

During both pregnancies, when people asked about names and we told them a girl would be Shulamith, they nearly always responded with something like, "You're gonna name her what??" We would assure them that it's very easy to pronounce and that once they got used to it, they would see that it's the most beautiful name in the world. Because you have to admit, it really is. So long as people don't try to shorten it (Grrrr!). Then it loses all its beauty.

Okay, so you might be wondering what prompted this particular rant today. It was my 1:15 Tues./Thurs section of WRIT 101. This particular course, while available to all, tends to attract mainly pre-nursing students, and that field is still predominantly female. In any given section of this course, I generally have say 18 women and maybe 3 men. In this particular section, that is exactly the case. Since it's early in the semester, I'm still struggling to learn the names of all my students. I have a lot. It takes a while. I'm pretty sure, however, that in this class, I will never succeed. Why? Let me just tell you a few of the names of the students in this class: Misty, Molly, Holly, Kylie, Kaylee, Ashley (2), Lindsey, Shelly, Staci, Lacey, Jamie, Katie, Kristie, and Kelsey. I'm dead serious. Oh yes, there's also a Jessica and a Samantha, and those two names I already know, but the others....it's positively hopeless! We all know that teachers who care learn their students' names. And I care. I really do. But I truly don't think I'm capable in this case. Fortunately, they are all very good-natured people who seem to think my struggle is quite entertaining.

My point is this. You may not want to choose your next daughter's name from the book 13,000 Unusual Baby Names (although I highly recommend it), but you might want to steer away from the names that end in the long-e sound. They have become an epidemic. I'm afraid that once she's past elementary school, your daughter will become one of the masses; no teacher will ever know her name again! Just a friendly warning. The ultimate decision is, of course, yours. And by the way, if I were to do over again, I'd definitely use my wonderful book to find better boys' names for my sons. I have a friend whose sons are named Crispin and Tavnir, and both are happy well-adjusted people with no adverse effects that I can see. I think the article I read was a bunch of nonsense.

Happy baby naming!