Kara and I are now a month away from our due date for the birth of our first
child, and we couldn’t be more excited.
The biggest question — after “When are you due?” — is, “Do you know what you’re having?”
The answer is: “No, we are going to be surprised.”
That in and of itself is surprising coming from two reporters, whose business it is to know everything … yesterday!
The nurse who taught our childbirth classes said about half the couples choose to find out the gender during an ultrasound. In our class, that number amounted to only about 20 percent — most wanted to be surprised.
Decisions, Decisions
Not knowing the gender means we have to pick out two names. We have two
finalists, but we’re not telling anybody — not even family.
We eliminated some names right off the bat, including Maxwell, White, Summer, Dog. Also, any names of people we dated before we got married got nixed.
We also eliminated Kara and Dennis. My dad’s name is Dennis and I found it
confusing growing up. My name was supposed to be Paul, after my mother’s grandfather Paolo, but as soon I was born, my dad wanted his first-born child named after him. So, Paul became my middle name.
I’m not a junior, which made it even more frustrating. I was always called Little Den, Young Den, Dennis Junior, Dennis Paul, etc.
To this day, some paperwork still gets mixed up.
There’s nothing against naming your child after living people, but we’re not doing
it. Our child will have his or her own name.
Kara and I also explored our family trees for possible names. We’ve traced the House line back to 1475, so we have 16 generations of names to choose from, including Thomas, Philip, John, Samuel, Caleb, Job, Horatio, Melvin, and Arnold.
Melvin and Horatio don’t really work as baby names, for us, anyway! My brother’s son, who will be our baby’s cousin, was born four weeks ago. Chris and my sister-in-law, Jodi, chose the name “Thomas” after the guy from 1475 back in England.
My mother’s father name was “Cresenzo,” a great name reflecting my Italian heritage, but it doesn’t go with House. It sounds like a pizza joint.
Kara’s Sundlun heritage has traced back to Lithuania in the 1800s when
the name was Zundelevitch. Among the names on that side that we could choose from include Moses, Morris, Isaac, Walter, and Bruce.
For girl names, we have three generations of Phoebe on my mother’s side, along with a Frances, Ida, Jeannette and Evelyn on Kara’s side.
Some couples combine names and create a new one. If we combined our fathers’ names, we would have Brennis or Deuce. I don’t think so. So forth with our mothers’ names, we’d have Judalyn or Marilyth. Not.
Kara and I have our fair share of baby-name books and we consulted the Social Security Administration’s Web site for the most popular names. The most popular boy name right now is Jacob. For the girls, it’s Emily.
Here in Connecticut, the most popular name for boys is Ryan, and for girls, Olivia.
We can tell you the names we have chosen do not appear in our family trees, they do not appear on the most popular lists and we didn’t make them up.
That’s all I’ll say … for now.
Feel free to let me know your favorite names and your baby name stories, just click on the “reply” link below.
