On the Naming of Birds
When we discussed naming Birdie, I myself was a big proponent of following the Jewish tradition (well, *a* Jewish tradition since 2 Jews, 3 Opinions is a real thing) that using the name of a living relative was a bad idea, which I was happy to extend to living friends. The reason for this tradition is that supposedly if you gave a baby the name of a living relative, the Angel of Death might get confused and take the baby first. Or so they say; if you told me some rabbi gave somebody an ironclad reason to avoid family drama by ruling out naming people after living relatives I wouldn't be all that surprised.
My other naming considerations were twofold:
- I had a mild desire for a three initial combo which sounded neat, since all of my immediate family signs email and a lot of other correspondence with their three letter initial.
- I wanted the baby to have my last name, which since M didn't change her name was by no means guaranteed.
M has a piece of scratch paper from when she was in grad school with a list of names she likes on it. Since we opted to find out the gender of our baby ahead of time and fully half of the names on her list were unambiguously boys names, we were able to rule them out.
Holden
Ezra
Gidion
Liam
This worked out for me as I only like one of those names. Of the girls names, two were already used my one of my cousins for his daughters, and another is the name of a dear friend, so those were ruled out.
Helen
Hannah
Hazel
That left two names on her list. One was:
Ramona
To M's dismay, I hated that name. Fortunately, the final name on the list was M's absolute favorite and ultimately became our daughter's official Middle Name.
Official Middle Name
The name in question was the name of a little girl her mother used to babysit for a long time ago. M had told people that was her favorite name for a girl for years, and since I really liked it as well it was the main contender for Birdie's name even before we knew Birdie was on her way.
As for me, while I lacked a written list, I certainly had a few names in mind and thought of a couple more. First, there were the literary names
Cordelia - after Countess Vorkosigan, of course
This was my number one choice for a girl's name. M actually liked that name somewhat too, because she likes Anne of Green Gables and Cordelia is famously what Anne asks if she might be called early in the book. However, it was used by two of my good friends for their daughter, and I was more or less invested in having something unique to my circle of friends.
Continuing the literary names, we had:
Elena - from another Vorkosigan saga character. M didn't care for this one at all.
Diana - aka, Anne's best friend. M disliked this one.
Artemis - I proposed this for a middle name off of Diana, but M said it was a boy's name, contradicting 3000 years of history (thank you Artemis Fowl
Luna - which as a Harry Potter fan M kind of liked, but we ruled against.
Arwen - which would have totally broken the family name rules since it's my sister's middle name, but my whole family is into LotR and if you're going to break a rule, break it for the best possible member of the family is what I say.
I'd also long said half-jokingly that clearly I'd have to name any daughter
Kim - after Kim Deal
but M dislikes that name, apparently due to having unfond memories of someone with that name.
Then there were the names I just liked:
Pilar
Veronica
Vanessa
Gwen
Gloria
The first four M just didn't care for, the last one she kind of liked but thought was a little too overtly Christian for a Jewish baby. Note that concern did not come up when talking about Artemis or Diana, which are literal goddess names.
We did spend some time considering flower names (hey, it worked for Tulip) but most were disposed of relatively quickly. We did spend some serious time thinking about
Magnolia
as a middle name, and for a while Magnolia was a preferred option, paired with Official Middle Name as a first name. Since Magnolia was the street of my fraternity house I thought it would obliquely be naming her after all my fraternity brothers, which I could get behind.
Those of you who actually know Birdie's real name will note that Birdie's Official First Name hasn't come up yet. It was actually a rather late addition to the contender list, inspired somewhat by the first letter of some of the names above, which M did like.
Official First Name
As it happens, I do have a good friend from college with this name, so it violated the rule a bit. On the other hand, we both really liked it, and M was the one who was pregnant for nine months so it was her call. About a day after Birdie was born, M decided that long-time favorite was going to be the Official Middle Name, Magnolia was dropped, and the Official First Name was put in front with my last name tagged on the end. Everybody is happy.
On a fun note, my friend who shares Birdie's first name has a twin sister (who also went to college with us) who shares my sister's name. When she amusingly noted that she liked the name, I noted that my family already had her sister's name and we needed to complete the set, which I thought was pretty funny.
Of course, some people are already referring to our daughter as Birdie in real life, which will work until she's old enough to tell us what she prefers. Certainly she could use either her first name or her middle name, or Birdie, or any several derivations of her first name, or of course something else altogether.
I don't want to imply that these were the only names that got considered, as many others were tossed out along the way. These are the only ones that made it as far as being written down by one of us, so they have a bit more heft in the considerations. A few of the other names we brought up are now being actively considered as choices for Birdie's Hebrew name, which will come along in a few months.
Addendum 3/23
M notes that her paper list was from before grad school, and she didn't keep it so much as it was shoved in a book and found again many years later. She did not intentionally keep it, and in fact she says that she dislikes most of the boys names on it at this point.
My other naming considerations were twofold:
- I had a mild desire for a three initial combo which sounded neat, since all of my immediate family signs email and a lot of other correspondence with their three letter initial.
- I wanted the baby to have my last name, which since M didn't change her name was by no means guaranteed.
M has a piece of scratch paper from when she was in grad school with a list of names she likes on it. Since we opted to find out the gender of our baby ahead of time and fully half of the names on her list were unambiguously boys names, we were able to rule them out.
Holden
Ezra
Gidion
Liam
This worked out for me as I only like one of those names. Of the girls names, two were already used my one of my cousins for his daughters, and another is the name of a dear friend, so those were ruled out.
Helen
Hannah
Hazel
That left two names on her list. One was:
Ramona
To M's dismay, I hated that name. Fortunately, the final name on the list was M's absolute favorite and ultimately became our daughter's official Middle Name.
Official Middle Name
The name in question was the name of a little girl her mother used to babysit for a long time ago. M had told people that was her favorite name for a girl for years, and since I really liked it as well it was the main contender for Birdie's name even before we knew Birdie was on her way.
As for me, while I lacked a written list, I certainly had a few names in mind and thought of a couple more. First, there were the literary names
Cordelia - after Countess Vorkosigan, of course
This was my number one choice for a girl's name. M actually liked that name somewhat too, because she likes Anne of Green Gables and Cordelia is famously what Anne asks if she might be called early in the book. However, it was used by two of my good friends for their daughter, and I was more or less invested in having something unique to my circle of friends.
Continuing the literary names, we had:
Elena - from another Vorkosigan saga character. M didn't care for this one at all.
Diana - aka, Anne's best friend. M disliked this one.
Artemis - I proposed this for a middle name off of Diana, but M said it was a boy's name, contradicting 3000 years of history (thank you Artemis Fowl
Luna - which as a Harry Potter fan M kind of liked, but we ruled against.
Arwen - which would have totally broken the family name rules since it's my sister's middle name, but my whole family is into LotR and if you're going to break a rule, break it for the best possible member of the family is what I say.
I'd also long said half-jokingly that clearly I'd have to name any daughter
Kim - after Kim Deal
but M dislikes that name, apparently due to having unfond memories of someone with that name.
Then there were the names I just liked:
Pilar
Veronica
Vanessa
Gwen
Gloria
The first four M just didn't care for, the last one she kind of liked but thought was a little too overtly Christian for a Jewish baby. Note that concern did not come up when talking about Artemis or Diana, which are literal goddess names.
We did spend some time considering flower names (hey, it worked for Tulip) but most were disposed of relatively quickly. We did spend some serious time thinking about
Magnolia
as a middle name, and for a while Magnolia was a preferred option, paired with Official Middle Name as a first name. Since Magnolia was the street of my fraternity house I thought it would obliquely be naming her after all my fraternity brothers, which I could get behind.
Those of you who actually know Birdie's real name will note that Birdie's Official First Name hasn't come up yet. It was actually a rather late addition to the contender list, inspired somewhat by the first letter of some of the names above, which M did like.
Official First Name
As it happens, I do have a good friend from college with this name, so it violated the rule a bit. On the other hand, we both really liked it, and M was the one who was pregnant for nine months so it was her call. About a day after Birdie was born, M decided that long-time favorite was going to be the Official Middle Name, Magnolia was dropped, and the Official First Name was put in front with my last name tagged on the end. Everybody is happy.
On a fun note, my friend who shares Birdie's first name has a twin sister (who also went to college with us) who shares my sister's name. When she amusingly noted that she liked the name, I noted that my family already had her sister's name and we needed to complete the set, which I thought was pretty funny.
Of course, some people are already referring to our daughter as Birdie in real life, which will work until she's old enough to tell us what she prefers. Certainly she could use either her first name or her middle name, or Birdie, or any several derivations of her first name, or of course something else altogether.
I don't want to imply that these were the only names that got considered, as many others were tossed out along the way. These are the only ones that made it as far as being written down by one of us, so they have a bit more heft in the considerations. A few of the other names we brought up are now being actively considered as choices for Birdie's Hebrew name, which will come along in a few months.
Addendum 3/23
M notes that her paper list was from before grad school, and she didn't keep it so much as it was shoved in a book and found again many years later. She did not intentionally keep it, and in fact she says that she dislikes most of the boys names on it at this point.