The Perfect Name!

The other day, as I was driving to work at oh-dark-thirty, my favorite morning DJs were talking about Baby Center’s annual collections of popular, rising, and unusual names. Because it was a morning radio show, they naturally focused on what the DJs called the “worst” baby names of 2012.

And man, were there some doozies.

Later, I decided to go look up the original list myself. The DJs had cherry-picked the absolute best from the “Unusual Baby Names of 2012” list, which is compiled only of names that were given to U.S. children BY MORE THAN ONE SET OF PARENTS. Your one-shot naming aberration doesn’t make this list; in order to get on this list, that name has to have been given to at least two children within the space of a year. This really makes one wonder what sort of unusual drugs and/or networking takes place to lead to more than one American child being named Haven’T, Sanity, or Ball.

That being said, if a person has grown bored with all of the traditional, classic baby names out there… this list certainly provided some alternatives. And as we went through the list, wondering what sort of parent names their baby boy Hippo, we found THE NAME.

The perfect name.

The sort of name that you give your child if you want him to be able to grow up to be anything. Why, with this name, this child could be a professional wrestler or a star meteorologist! A used car salesman or a motivational speaker! This is the sort of name that makes history!

And so it is with great pleasure that I announce our intention to name our firstborn son…

(drum roll please)

HURRICANE BAKER

Oh, I see your dubious looks. I can sense them right through the WiFi. But hear me out! Just say that name a few times. Let it roll around in your mouth, in your mind. Isn’t it wonderful? Doesn’t it have a great ring to it?

And just think of all the great moments in parental punning.

See — what’d I tell you? Perfect.

And if the little guy ever wants to shorten it to something a little… dryer… he could certainly be Ric.

Hurricane Baker. That’s the name of a kid who would change the world.

If you’re not sure we picked the right name from the list, you can take a look for yourself and tell me your favorites… 🙂

 

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This post is dedicated to everyone who thinks that we should name the baby Stormageddon.

 

More Naming Shenanigans

We still have a few weeks before we find out the gender (unless we do as our friend E did, and go to a private ultrasound place for an early peek — congrats on expecting a son!) and so our talk about names still hasn’t gotten very serious. (Although a friend posted this article on my Facebook, and I was disappointed to see several of my favorites on the list! Not sure how much creedence to give it….)

There is a famous (for all the tastiest reasons) pizza joint in town called Flying Pie, and every day they pick a person’s name or occupation/hobby and put it up on their outside billboard. If it’s you up there, it’s “Your Day” and you can make your own free pizza. They keep a website, too, so that you can see if your name is coming up in the near future. Well, Ryan had the excellent idea of just waiting to see what the name of the day was when our baby was born, and naming him/her that! So, basically, if our baby were to be born on 11/23, s/he would be named Marley (which at least is fairly unisex). Born on 11/26, and he (hopefully) would be David. And if s/he were born on 11/28, s/he would get to go through life as Sing Opera Baker. I think the idea has promise….

I like Irish-y names, but not necessarily the challenging spelling-pronunciation mismatches. The other day, I had an epiphany. If you take the girl’s name Shannon (which is the Anglicized form of the Irish name, Seanán) and the boy’s name Flanagan (also Irish) and put them in a blender, you come up with the perfect baby name.

Shannon + Flanagan +  = Shenanigan Baker!!!

 

This is my new favorite. I am officially lobbying for this. Haters gonna hate.

In the meantime, Ryan and I have asked our students to offer their ideas. There have been many perfectly nice suggestions, which I’m tallying up, but there have also been many goofy/strange/wonderful/silly suggestions. And because we’re all Web 2.0 and stuff (do people still say “Web 2.0”?) I made a Tumblr of all the crazy things our students want us to name our baby. You really have to check this shiznit out.

Some of the wonderfulness you will encounter therein:

There are already several pages worth of fantasmic suggestions; I highly encourage you to take a look. (Let me know which your favorites are!)