By Ali Price
We’ve got another dad diary for you this week – where second-time, expectant parent Ali shares his dilemma.
Do him and his wife stick to a family tradition they inadvertently entered with their first-born? A Kardashian-esque, family naming theme of giving your child a name beginning with ‘M’.
Read on to hear his thoughts…
You know when you tell your wife to stop moping about because she is hungover and then she says “I am not hungover, I am PREGNANT!” Yeah? Of course, you do. Well, that is how I found out I was to be a dad for the second time. How cliché.
Happy news
Needless to say, I was over the moon. We had been hoping for a second for a while and our daughter was desperate for a sibling. Well, a sister, she did NOT want a brother. And attention quickly turned to names…
With our first, we didn’t find out the sex beforehand, so had a boys and girls name lined up. We ended up having a girl, which meant, in theory, we had a boy’s name banked for the future. But when we started discussing boys names this time around, we decided we didn’t like the name we had. Back to square one.
Names with connotations
It is funny how quickly you go off a name. Often, I will read a name and think, ‘yes that’s the one’, but then you think back to people you know with that name, who you may not particularly like, who you just associated with that name. It is hard to shake off. There is also the background check you need to do on an unusual name on google. Just to make sure there wasn’t a mass murderer with the same name etc…
I have always liked the idea of naming your child after someone who means a lot to you, in their honour, so to speak. In the case of a boy’s name that would have been ‘Alexander’ after my wife’s granddad who had a hugely positive impact on her life, particularly when she was growing up. But we couldn’t decide if Alexander would be the first name or the middle name.
It’s a girl!
At our 20 week scan, we decided we wanted to find out the sex. Another girl. Our daughter nearly exploded with excitement, but it also meant the much-debated boy’s name was now redundant. All focus turned to girls’ names.
I personally find choosing a girl’s name more fun but more difficult. There are so many names we both like. There are also lots of names I like and my wife doesn’t and vice-versa. But there is another dilemma we are confronted with…
Names beginning with ‘M’
Inadvertently when we named our eldest daughter ‘Megan’, we were entering into a new family tradition, giving your child a name beginning with ‘M’. My cousin’s son is called Max, my Wife’s cousin is called Macie and subsequently, our nephew and niece have been named Magnus and Mabel. But do we follow suit with the new arrival? There are lots of great ‘M’ names still available but is it too predictable to go with one of them? And if we don’t, will the new arrival grow up feeling left out, resent us forever and be a tearaway. Let’s wait and see.
We have tried to get our daughter involved in choosing a name too and right from the start of the pregnancy she has referred to the baby as ‘Evie’. Even before we knew we were having a girl. We have no idea where she has got that from (I suspect one of her friends at school has a baby sister called Evie). It will be interesting to see if she adopts the name we decide on or just call her sister Evie forever out of spite.
But as I write this, we are at week 29 and are nowhere near deciding on a name. I suspect we won’t agree on one until the 11th hour.
Will it be an M-name or not? Watch this space…
Read more ‘Diary of’ naming stories in our popular blog.
