Name That Baby!

As is usual for us, we haven't yet officially settled on a name for this baby, and we've got about 4 weeks to make up our minds! One night we were discussing names, and Enoch had me laughing so hard it was almost cathartic. I hadn't laughed that hard in a while, and I warned him not to send me into early labor. As is our usual practice, I come up with a list of names I like, then he gets to cross off whichever ones he doesn't like, and circle ones he does. From that, we mix it up until we come up with a name we both agree on.

We have some "rules" when it comes to naming our children.

Rule #1, no family names. It's just our first rule, that's all there is to it.

Rule #2, no trendy or overly traditional names (No Apple or River Stevenson, and no Jennifer or Jeffrey Stevenson). The somewhat exception to this rule is for middle names, when a Biblical name may be chosen.

Rule #3, the first name should end with n, at least in it's pronunciation. (Rosalind's name ends with a d, but doesn't usually get pronounced.) {We've thought about adding a rule here about the preceding vowel before the n, since we have -en, -an, and -in(d), but we didn't want to inadvertently place the undue pressure to produce an -on, -un, and -yn to complete the "set" as it were.}

Rule #4 is a rule I realized we had been following without knowing: the "meter" has to match. Although I was an English major and learned the correct terminology for what I mean, basically, the EM-ph-A-sis has to be on the corr-ECT part of the syll-A-ble. All of our names in our family stress the first syllable. E-noch, MER-rilee, JU-lien, TRIS-tan, ROS-alind. While I like names like JusTINE and ChrisTINE, they just didn't seem to sound right to me, if you get my drift.

So, even though the privilege and responsibility to name this child falls to us, the parents, I thought it might be fun to at least post a list of the names we've narrowed it down to, just for others to enjoy. Please feel free to comment if there are any name combinations you love or think sound good, and if you're related, please let us know if there are any relatives' names here that we were unaware of that might need to be disqualified. (See rule #1 above)

BOYS FIRST NAMES

Adrian
Brendan
Calvin
Dorian

BOYS MIDDLE NAMES

Joel
Nathaniel

GIRLS FIRST NAMES

Adrienne
Evelyn
Jacqueline

GIRLS MIDDLE NAMES

Camille
Colette
Janet
Margaret
Ruth