Boys Are Pretty Much Impossible to Name

My wife and I are expecting our third child in October--which kind of took us by surprise, so it was a while before my wife got in for her first checkup. For a couple reasons, the doctor couldn't give us a due date on this one without an ultrasound, so we got to see our new baby at the very first appointment. Exciting! But since we assumed it was still too early in the pregnancy, we weren't expecting much.

We were wrong.

"Would you like to know the baby's gender?" the ultrasound technician asked.

"Wait . . . what?" we both responded.

"Do you want to know the gender?"

"Yes! We just didn't think we could find out this soon." 

"You're farther along than we thought. And he's pretty obviously a boy."

At this my wife and I just laughed. It wasn't quite the kind of laugh you'd give a hilarious joke; more like excitement mixed with resignation. Kind of like the laugh you hear before someone goes psychotic, I guess. 

"Were you . . . hoping for something else?" the tech asked.

"Not necessarily," I said. "It's just we're already out of boys' names!"

The truth is, as much as we want to have a girl, we're elated that a third boy is joining our family. At this point we're pretty good at boys. And it helps that we don't have to buy new clothes! 

But names are so hard. We can't name another boy. We struggled enough just naming our first one. The day he was born, it was hours before I sent out the birth announcement because it took us that long to settle on what we should call him. His immunization card just says Baby Boy Cunningham (which we might actually use with baby number three). 

Our second child wasn't easy, either. Luckily we had the list narrowed down to two names by the time my wife went into labor: one name was for a light-haired (or no-haired) baby, while the other was for a dark-haired baby. Our little boy came out with a nice, dark head of hair, so we gave him the dark-haired name. Now, not even a year later, we get comments on how very blonde he is. 

We just can't win.

Our first two children started a pattern of vowel names, so we're kind of trying to stick with that in naming the next one. Do you know how few good boy names start with a vowel and don't remind my schoolteacher wife of students she's had? Sure, we could do the crazy Utah thing and go all Frankenstein on spellings, but we're not like that. Like, at all. 

We've looked to literature for inspiration, too, since our first two names are kind of literary. Tolkien's been a nice source lately. We both like the name Elrond, but my wife doesn't like the D at the end and I think it sounds dumb without it. So we're at an impasse there. My wife won't let me name our child Gothmog, but it doesn't fit with the vowel thing anyway. Azog the Defiler is on the maybe list, though.

Imagine the baby blessing!
Image credit: LOTR Wiki

Our toddler has been helpful in suggesting names: Percy, Skarloey, Rheneas, Peter Sam. They're all just engines from Thomas and Friends. We like the name Edward, though, and it's so cute when our two-year-old says it. But then we remember that people are either going to shorten it to "Ed," or they'll assume we're Twilight fans. Neither of those outcomes is acceptable. 

I do like the name Icarus, but I want to save it just in case we ever have twins (Heaven forbid). Then we can name the other one Apollo . . . because, you know, they'll be close.

Too soon?
Image credit: thinglink.com

Thankfully we still have a couple months before we really have to worry about names. But we're kind of freaking out already because we're at such a total loss. Hopefully our next baby will be a girl, because I just don't know if we can handle naming one more boy.

Once again, Seinfeld understands the struggle: