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Not awful baby names

awful baby names

I don’t love my kids’ names. There, I said it. The most important decision you make for your children and I botched it before ever leaving the hospital. Go me!

Well, I do love Lily’s. Jeff and I wanted something feminine and timeless and pretty and the moment we found it, we knew. It’s more popular than I realized, but that’s alright. She’s fine.

It’s the boys. I mean, their names are fine. Nice, even. Just so much more boring than I ever imagined I’d have.

I always thought I wanted a Gabriel, but with Ben, we owed Jeff’s family a name and he wanted to honor his grandmother by using the middle initial “A.” An A name would have resulted in the initials GAS, which shattered my dreams of a little Gabe. Also topping my list was Oliver and Asher, but the “er” at the end clashed with the “er” at the end of our last name, so those were out. Every other name I loved didn’t work for some reason or another and I was totally stumped. Boy names are just so hard.

I vividly remember the moment a friend suggested Benjamin as I pushed Lily on the swing in her backyard. It’s not awful, I sighed. There was no reason not to use it. I liked it enough. And, with that, my baby had a name.

Evan was going to be my Gabriel. Or my Aiden or Julian or something less common and more beautiful sounding, while still being masculine and cool. (Kind of an impossible feat, right?) But at the hospital, none of those names seemed to fit.

How about Evan, Jeff suggested as I huffed and puffed my third baby out. Evan. It’s not awful, I sighed.

It was never a name we so much as mentioned during the nine months, but suddenly that’s what our baby was called. I remember being rather incredulous the next day that I agreed to it at all. We each accidentally referred to him as Ethan a few times during the early days since that was actually a name we’d discussed beforehand. Whoops.

So, that’s the story of how we named our boys: The least awful names I could think of.

Sorry, kids!

From Scary Mommy and Beyond

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  • Cottage By The Sea

    I just wrote a post called, “What’s In A Name?” With apologies to William Shakespeare.

    You might take a peek. It was a sad day for me when my mom sprung it on me that she never liked my name and didn’t put much thought into choosing it. I hope your boys don’t feel that way when they find out or they might spend the rest of their lives changing their names. Blessings, Tia/Lori/Mitzi/Grace
    (For clearification I am a very upbeat but sarcastically humorous writer, so don’t consider my musings to be completely non fiction.)

    • Amy

      how do I get to your blog? I’d love to check out the name post, however when I click it’s a available domain. help! I’m name obsessed!

  • Paula Stout Burke

    We wanted to name our son after my husband and our fathers. Ironically, both of our fathers have the name “Lester.” It’s a less than beautiful name but we couldn’t ignore the coincidence, right? So “Lester” would be the middle name. My husband wanted our son to have the same initials as my husband and his grandfather.. MLB. I had to draw the line when I realized my son’s name would be M.Lester

    His name is Jake.
    Not short for anything.. just Jake Lester. :)

  • Andrea

    My husband told me what our first child’s gender and name were going to be…much to my chagrin he was in fact right and so Jacob Miley was born. Jacob was my husbands favorite boy name since he was a teen and I like it okay, and Miley is his grandfathers middle name. Our second child’s name was a bit more of a trial, we wanted a matt but not a matthew, or Mathius etc. So I came up with Mattox, not gonna lie I am pretty proud of it and it fits him, his middle name sticking with tradition is my grandfathers middle name dale. So thus I am a proud mama of Jacob Miley, and Mattox Dale.

  • AnneB

    OMIGOD. The fights over what to name a kid!

    With our first, we quickly came up with a girl’s name – Lillian Elizabeth but we could NOT agree on a boy’s name. The only reason I wanted to find out what we were having was so we could stop fighting over names if it was a girl. Of course it was a boy!

    Growing up I always knew I wanted a son named Jacob Matthew. My great-grandfather and 5 generations before him were all named Jacob and no one had used it in the family since. Fast forward to 2008 and Jacob has been the #1 boy’s name for a decade. My DH is Matthew and grew up being one of a million and said he hated the name. We both loved the name Jacob, but were hesitant to saddle our child with the name of the decade. Plus, DH’s family has a name they’ve used for four generations – Daniel – which I’m not crazy over, but Jacob Daniel wasn’t bad. That is, until we mention it to my mother-in-law who says, “Oh, J.D. is a cute name!” Um. NO. Where I’m from, J.D. is Jack Daniels. Not happening! Neither of us would give on our family names. We’re both part Irish and we both loved the name Liam which at the time wasn’t in the top 100 but wasn’t too bizarre either. Two middle names run in my family (my grandfather was John William Robert, great-grandfather was Jacob Dewey Moore, and I kept my maiden name as my middle name) so I suggested we just add Liam to the beginning and we both win. So, Liam Jacob Daniel is his name. Of course, in the last 3 years it’s jumped to something like #15 in popularity.

    Now I’m incubating baby #2. The name Lillian has lost its shine since Lily is now so popular and we can’t agree on an alternate girl’s name. If it’s a boy, his name is Owen. We’re still working on a middle name. How much do you want to bet this one’s a girl? It’s still too early to tell but Murphy likes to fuck with us.

  • politique

    osef de toute facon morsay est le seul président honnete

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