1) Our future children have been named for years. Even before I was convinced that we would actually have children. Back when I was still in my “early” twenties and children seemed decades away.
The girl name that I picked out when I was a 5th grader is Ava, but then everyone else in the world got the same idea as me, so it cooled me on the idea quite a bit, but the nail in that coffin was when my super-nosey, everything-I-do-is-the-best-and-I-can’t-listen-to-a-story-without-one-upping-it-and-my-children-shit-gold-bricks co-worker had a granddaughter named Ava. As long as I have this job, and that name hovers near the top of the popular names list, I won’t be having a daughter named Ava.
BUT NOT TO WORRY since Potato has a penis (Apparently. I’m still awaiting official confirmation), and the other name, the boy name, is the special name that Baker has had in her head for-ev-er, and when she told it to me, I fell in love with it too. The problem is, we are starting to chicken out about our name. This “name” won’t show up in any baby name book since it probably has never before been used as a name, and it has a very specific meaning (and not some Earth-mother, tree-hugging, gentle name like Sequoia either (no offense to you Earth-loving, tree-hugging, gentle types)) but a name that basically means “mayhem”. Even though the meaning of the word has long left us, and it is purely a name to us now, I can’t imagine what it will be like for him for the rest of his life. Obviously, if we go with this name, his future is predestined for him to be a rock-star or pro skateboarder or surfer or something awesome.
Buuuuuuutttt……. I don’t know. What if he doesn’t want to be a skater, and he wants to be lawyer, or some other grown-up type of job? What if my little baby is going to be serious and studious? I don’t know……. and I am afraid to even mention the name on here, for one of two reasons:
- When he grows up and is famous, you will know exactly who it is, and will hunt him down and blackmail him with all of the embarrassing things his mom said while he was still cooking, and
- What if you hate the name, and then you tell me you hate it? I wouldn’t like that. We might still go with it.
2.) Last names. You have probably heard that I will not be getting married today. Stupid Ninth Circuit Court (and yes, I am willing to eat those words in December when they uphold Judge Walker’s ruling on Prop 8.) And while I am completely bummed and heartbroken, this has actually given my little family a reprieve. You see, in California you can change your name when you get married, but you can only change it to your spouse’s current last name, the last name they were given at birth, a hyphenated version of the two of your names, or a mish-mash of your two last names. We want to have family solidarity, so we want to all have the same last name. Here’s where the issue comes in:
I like my last name. Always have. But it would seem weird if Baker took my last name. Just too weird. Baker doesn’t have a strong connection to her last name, there isn’t family history there, it’s her dad’s last name, which was an adopted name. When we mish-mash the the two names, nothing really speaks to us, and hyphens seem like a pain in the ass.
So last week, when I thought I would be getting married today, I was putting the pressure on Baker: We have to figure out what our last name is going to be. It was a little stressful. When we found out that we would have a few months to get the last name sorted out, I felt a tiny bit of relief. You see, we have a last name that we have picked. It’s a made-up name that has no connection to either of our current last names, but it feels like our family name. We have been talking about it for a few years, and Baker even had that as her name on Facebook for awhile. I don’t want to arbitrarily change my last name, I want it to be an event, a life-changing moment. The current plan is to have Baker change her last name to the new name, and then by the time December rolls around, she will be legally named this, and I can take her name. Just like I have always wanted. Win-win. And then when baby comes in January, he automatically gets the family name, and he’s automatically connected to Baker. Yay!
How did you handle family names? It’s tricky right?
