What's In a Name?

I have vowed (to myself, anyway) that this blog will not become one about pregnancy, babies, and motherhood. After all, that's not the only thing going on in my life, and that's not why I started this blog in the first place. That doesn't mean that I'll never mention any of those subjects (kind of hard not to right now, especially when they have an effect on other things in my life), but I don't want to follow in the footsteps that people sometimes do, traipsing down the path to Babyville, never to be heard from again. Being pregnant and a mom is part of who I am and who I'll be, but it doesn't singularly define me. On the other hand, I once heard a popular YA author speak about her writing process, and she told the audience that one of the best things she ever did was hire a sitter outside of her home, so once she dropped her baby off she had her apartment to herself and could work in quiet without distractions. That really turned me off to her, and (maybe not so coincidentally) I haven't read any of her books since. I'd like to think that I'll find a happy medium between baby time and writing time--or am I being too idealistic??

Anyway, people have been asking me lately if my husband and I have chosen a name for our baby yet. We haven't (though even if we have, we already decided we're not telling anyone beforehand--more to avoid prejudgement ("eww, you're naming your baby THAT?") than superstition), but sometimes it can feel a bit daunting. Yes, I know it seems I'm contradicting what I said in the previous paragraph, as all this is about babies and has not much to do with writing. Well, I'm getting to that. See, while picking a name for a character isn't always easy, it seems much simpler than choosing a name for a real, live person. I have a list of potential character names on index cards that I've had for years, and whenever I hear or think of an interesting name, onto the card it goes. When I create a new character, sometimes names come first, and sometimes I have to try a few out before it seems "right" to me. I can make the name fit the character, or vice-versa. I can give a school nerd a cringe-worthy name, I can give the hunky captain of the swim team a sigh-worthy name, or I can give the villain of the book the name of someone who was mean to me in school. And I can match it up with any last name I want. Then, if it doesn't work, I can change it in the next draft (especially thanks to Ctrl + f!). However, it's a bit more complicated for a real person. First of all, the last name is already set, so I have to pick a first name that fits nicely with it. Then, I want to pick a name that's hopefully going to fit as a baby as well as an older person (someday, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have a generation of seniors named Tiffani--no offense to any Tiffanis out there, btw). Then, it should be a name that both my husband and I like and will not get tired of saying, and on top of all that, it can't be one that is associated with anyone in my or my husband's life whom we don't like. Oh yeah, and it can't be the name of anyone's pet we know (there's a name I like, but someone we know has a cat with that name--it would be a bit awkward when that person asked us what our child's name was and we said "the same as your cat"), and we're trying to give the baby a name that no one in either of our families already has (as opposed to purposely naming a child after a relative, which right now we're not planning to do except in Hebrew after my mother, and how often would our kid be called by the Hebrew name?). Whew!

Compared to all this, picking a name for a character is kind of fun. Now, picking a book title is a whole other matter altogether...