Nom de Ginger

This fantastically weird image is not, as some had thought, a rhizome of ginger. Look closer.

That is Cletus the Fetus at 31 weeks, inside Jo-Elle's belly. Its the most recent sonogram. Congrats to us, he has a face! Pretty serious-looking, huh?

What do you see when you look at that face? What name comes to mind?

That's the discussion that Jo-Elle and I am embroiled in right now. And its a doozy. Think about it. Are there more consequential decisions? Sure, people can move beyond a bad name---have you heard about the Marijuana Pepsi Foundation? But its a pretty big deal.

Many of you have heard about the epic negotiation sessions that Jo-Elle and I went through before we were married. We are both folks who think that identity matters---and, well, we've got pretty different identities. We figured it best not to leave many questions up to chance or the emotional vagaries of last-second debates around the birth of a child. One of the agreements that we came to was that our offspring would be taking my last name and therefore, she should be able to choose the first name. Reasonable, especially since her friends all forced her to allow me the power to reject anything weird after Jo-Elle jokingly (or not) floated a couple of suspect naming concepts.

Given our disparate backgrounds and my somewhat difficult last name, there are plenty of perfectly good names that just won't work. Ideally, we will find something that reflects both my Jewish and her African American heritage. Since I'm an Old Testament kinda guy, I have been advocating for Isaac, Isaiah, and Elijah. I've got a longer, and weirder, list of names that might be cool middle names (not first names!), like Seneca---which I think is cool, would honor grandparents on both sides of my family with the letter S and would also be a tip of the hat to the Native American part of Jo-Elle's family.

Jo has a much bigger list of names---almost two dozen---on her list. Recently, I went through the list and eliminated a few that are probably not appropriate as they are the kids of first cousins. I also gave her feedback in terms of up, down, or sideways arrows on my thoughts. All the names I had on my short first name list are on hers (though some of my middle name selections like Seneca I think are long gone).

She won’t really go into where her head is, but I am hoping that Elijah and Isaiah are still towards the top of her list. In a preview of how this is going to go, we had a fascinating talk about the other name on my list...Isaac. Sadly, she said that she’s not liking Isaac of late because it “could go either way” as a name for either “a great poet or a great gangbanger.” That’s why I like the name, frankly. And I hope the chances of our son being a gangbanger would be low, despite the prevalence in our current neighborhood. Still, if he is a gangbanger, he should excel and be a great gangbanger, right? But alas, these are the issues that all couples must work through...well...maybe not all...

In looking more closely, her list is fascinating. Lots of great stuff, but she does have a bunch that I think are, frankly, horrible. This won't come as a surprise and I hope she isn't bugged by me writing about it. But I just don't think that this is the time for a black Jewish kid to get strongly Arabic-sounding names like Omari, Shafir, or Nadaav. I know that they are Hebraic in origin, but man, this kid is already going to have to work a bit to figure out who he is---why throw a WTF layer on top, eh? Still, some others are out of left field but interesting like Joachim, Xavier, and Laden. And there's some hard-core Old Testament names like Ezekiel (yikes, I know, but Zeke is pretty cool) and Zachary.

So, everyone wants to know, when will we have the name worked out. Well, if you look at the image above, it is clear that Cletus needs more time to cook---and we need more time to make this momentous decision, but hopefully those processes will coincide. In the meantime, let's hear your feedback. Leave comments with your suggestions. Milo came up in conversation last night...who knows!