Name Game

Alisa and I were texting back and forth tonight about names. Actually, she was telling me what her friend(?) Will's favorite names were. Yes, she was talking about names for children....with a boy. That rattled me a little bit. Until I remembered that I used to discuss baby names with every guy I ever spent more than five minutes with. Alisa was asking me about other names I had thought about for my kids. Now if you know the Metcalf Jrs, you know that none of our kids were named without a fair amount of drama involved, which only intensified when Dan finally admitted to me a few years ago that he should have just let me name the kids, because he really didn't care that much, and all those nights we spent arguing about baby names, he was mostly just messing with my head. A word of advice to anyone who might be in the middle of naming a child- this is NOT a good thing to admit to your wife, especially when mostly all you did was VETO some of the very best names on the PLANET, without suggesting any alternatives. Not that I am bitter or anything.

No, I'm mostly happy with the names we picked. But Alisa got me thinking about some of the names we considered and never used. Some of them I am SO GLAD we rejected. Some of them I really wish we had given somebody, somewhere. So even though I am nearly six years out from naming anybody, here are my name lists, both the ones I am happy to say we picked over, and some I still want to hang on somebody. Even though I NEVER will. Unless we adopt that little Haitian orphan I keep thinking about......

I can't believe we ever considered calling anybody:

-Taylor. Oh, I loved Taylor. For either a boy or a girl. Mitch was going to be Taylor for a while. Now there are so many little girl Taylors I think it would be hard to be guy named Taylor.

-Caley. Mitch was also going to be Caley if he was a girl. I had never heard the name before I found it in a book. But now, just like Taylor, there are so many Kaylee-Kailey-Kaylie-etc.s running around, it feels generic. Caley is still the best spelling though. Also the original spelling, from the Gaelic, if anybody cares anymore.

-Nicolas. Will was so close to being Nicolas. Not a fan anymore.

-Ariel. Nobody should be named after a Disney character.

-Harrison. Every one of my boys, at some point, was going to be named Harrison. It's a great middle name. Kind of a nerdy first name. Unless you are Harrison Ford, of course.

Chandler. Sissy name.

And, the names I still love, always wanted, and never used, but still fantasize about putting on a birth certificate:

-Thomas
-Jane
-Julia
-Matilda. I know. MATILDAAAA. But it was my great grandma's name. Matilda Sophia. I was never brave enough to really hang that on a kid, but I love that name.
-Macey

There are probably others, but those five are the ones that I remember thinking about for each kid, that just never seemed to fit for one reason or another.

Oh, and just for fun, Will F.'s fave names:

Boys:

Oliver. Liam. Demetri. Apollo.

And Girls:

Ingrid. Athena. Anne. Jane. Sonya. Lilly. Autumn. Audrey. Violet.

When Alisa was five, she was going to name her kids Blake, Kelly, Daniel, and somebody else I can't remember. Then a few years ago she was favoring Isabella I think. I guess I will have to get an updated list from her. But just to be clear here, I better not be embroidering those names on any little blankies or bibs in the near future.






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