Exploiting My Baby

I decide to contact a baby name expert, Pamela Redmond Satran (the developer of the addictive site Nameberry.com and the coauthor of Beyond Ava & Aiden: The Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby). As far as I can tell, she is the baby name maven, and better yet, she seems opinionated. None of this, “The name that feels right to you and your family is the name that’s right for you” crap.

Pamela turns out to be a big James fan. As I scribble notes with my phone on speaker and my name expert on blast, she says, “For me, James is really good. And it doesn’t have to be Jim, though I actually like Jim. I have a Joe who has never, ever been called Joey, at least by anyone who lived to tell about it. There are lots of Jameses—but not in your neighborhood. Unless they’re girls. I really don’t think the girls are taking it over, though, not en masse outside the hipster ghetto.”

Most of the comments on my Web site are pro-James, but several warn me that I will spend a lifetime being the mom who corrects people. “It’s James.” I need to be annoying in other ways.

I’m thinking Mickey.

One word: Rocky. You know, “Cut me, Mick.” Burgess Meredith, who played Rocky’s grizzled old trainer, was iconic as Mickey, and instead of showing my boy Casablanca, I can show him another of my favorite films. I also love Denis Leary’s sponsor/cousin/former priest, Mickey, from the cable hit Rescue Me. Mickey has a solid Irish feel that I love juxtaposed against my husband’s super-Polish surname. Mickey loans you money. Mickey plays pool but won’t shark you. Mickey knows more than he lets on. Mickey won’t sucker punch you, but if you push him too far, he’ll break the top off his bottle and threaten you with it just to keep you from acting like a bully. However, does Mickey sound too much like Nicky? And does one have to start with the name Michael to get to Mickey? Will there be lots of Mickey Mouse teasing—you know, M-I-C-K-E-Y? Why? Because your parents chose the wrong name.

After I run this one by my name expert, there is silence on the line for a moment.

“You want to know what I really think? You can’t name a kid Mickey. Yes, there’s the mouse, Mickey Rourke, and I dunno, do you really want a son who’s the movie sidekick, too good for his own good? Plus, what if he wants to be a bond trader—you’re a writer; this could be a good thing—except they won’t let him into business school because he’s got such an infantile name. I repeat: You can’t name a kid Mickey.”

This is what happens when you seek advice. Your name gets the axe, or a permanent blemish you can’t remove, or a “no” so emphatic you can’t pretend you didn’t hear it. For every person who loves a name, there is someone who was dumped or fired by someone with that name.

If you’ve ever loathed a man, you can never again enjoy the smell of that man’s cologne. No matter who’s wearing it, the scent will make you sick. That’s what it’s like with names, and maybe my name expert knew some idiot named Mickey and couldn’t get the stink off her brain.

My readers bombard me with alternative “M” names like Max, Miles, Milo and Mitchell, all great, but none for me.

I’m thinking Finnegan.

This is the only really quirky name on my short list. Again, I like the mixed ethnicity thing. And the book Finnegans Wake took about seventeen years to write, and I like the idea of someone slaving over a book most people can neither read nor understand. And I love the nickname Finn. Is this getting too Aiden/Jaden/Caden? Is Finn trying too hard? Are girls co-opting this one, too?

I’m nervous what Pamela will have to say about this one.

“Finnegan,” she repeats. “I actually think Finn is really the better name. Finn McCool is the greatest hero of Irish mythology. Why does everyone think they have to pick Finnegan or Finnian or Fin-lay and then call their kid Finn? It’s not like Jim. Okay, that rant is over. Yes, it is getting too common. It is very easy to like, and that’s its problem.”

Are there alternatives to Finnegan? I pose the question to the name guru.

“You mean Irish surname-y names? Are you Irish? Do you have any in your family? I do kind of like the Maguire/O’Brien thing, but I think the name’s got to be real to pull it off.”

Well, my husband is half Irish, so I guess that qualifies us, I tell her, but just barely.

“Here’s an Irish name that’s totally undiscovered: Piran, patron saint of miners,” she adds.

Piran sounds too much like a brand of cookware and now I’m questioning our low level of Irishness.

Plus, there are probably going to be a few Finns in every elementary school class, if the name lady is right, all with parents who thought they were being original. Other Irish names, such as Gavin, Ian, Colm, Dylan, and Rowan, are all either taken by the children of Daniel’s Irish relatives or too fancy.

Other quirky names my readers like include Hoagy, Balthazar, Cabot, Miller, Lazare, Kyd, Spider, Stosh, Zeno and Taytum. All are too “Hollywood” for my husband.

I’m still thinking Shane.

The Mister has all but closed the swinging saloon door on this one, but I like it because Shanes are always hot. And he could introduce himself with a joke about how he sounds like a Polish cowboy, and it’s nice to have a built-in introductory joke.

My name expert is not ambivalent on this one, either.

“Absolutely no. You’re birthing him, not dating him.”

Good point. But I hope someone will be dating him, and perhaps the name Shane will help.

A guy named Shane posts on my blog: “My parents named me Shane and I hated it. I remember being two years old and hating my name. I’ve never stopped hating it. Also, I’m sad to report that not all boys named Shane are attractive.”

I’m thinking Edward.

This is racing toward the top for me. Eddie and Ed are cute nicknames. Edward was my grandfather. Sure, he was manic-depressive, but he always had a refrigerator full of Hires root beer and he once made me feel like a genius for getting the word “mauve” in a game of Boggle when I was eight. He told that story until I went to college. Eddie Strasser was my biggest fan.

Is Edward too boring? Will there be too many Edwards in his world? Sometimes my husband test-drives this one by saying “Edward” very sternly to my belly.

I have no idea what Pamela will make of this, the last name on my list. As I’m scrawling notes, I throw this one out at her and hold my breath for a second.

“This is what we wanted to name our second son, now sixteen. We were going to call him Ned. We loved it, and I still do. But our older kids, aged ten and four, said it was a nerd name and they would hate him if we called him Ned, so we didn’t do it. And now he thanks us. But I still have regrets and think the Twilight Edward has substantially increased the hotness factor. I love this name and definitely think it’s the best on your list.”

This is a promising endorsement. I wrap up the call and thank her, saying the name Edward to myself over and over as I chew on the moniker and a large pretzel. The only problem is that the name is so strongly linked to my grandfather.

When Grandpa Eddie was in a manic phase, he would bike ride with his grandchildren for miles, take us to the movies, teach us how to sneak in candy we bought beforehand, haul us to the natural history museum and take us to a second movie, all in a single day. On the way home, he would ask my cousins and me what we thought of the film, and if we had nothing to say he would shout, “Stupid! You have to have an opinion. Start talking.”

He would often let me sit on his lap while driving and allow me to hold the steering wheel of his beloved powder blue Oldsmobile. The car was striking on the outside, shiny and iridescent like drugstore eye shadow, but suffered numerous intractable engine problems, prompting my grandfather to compare the vehicle to “a Swedish whoooore” (Bronx accent, pronounced like “poor”). “Beautiful on the outside, rotting on the inside.”

Because my mom was underwhelmed by the joy of parenthood, my grandparents took me for long stretches during summers and school holidays.

Grandpa Eddie, who called me Butterball when I was chubby, which was most of the time, was about as much fun as a manic grandfather could be. At his funeral, I confided to my brother and cousins that he once pulled me aside and told me that I was his favorite grandchild, because I wasn’t quiet and submissive like my female cousins who ran to do dishes after dinner while I pretended I needed to take a shower and hid in the bathroom reading. He loved us all, but had to admit he loved me the most. Turns out, Gramps had similar conversations with all of us, who all thought we were his favorite. Despite this, in my heart, I believe it truly was me, because I was the most broken and had the most to say about the movies we saw.

The downside of being manic-depressive is obviously the depressive part, and when that hit my grandfather a couple times a year, he would take to his bed for weeks at a time, leaning against one of those giant pillows with armrests while staring at the wall.

It was the best of times, it was the most bipolar of times.

As Grandpa Edward’s brain chemistry did to his mood, the name pulls me in two directions. There are great memories and painful ones, and maybe I just want a clean slate with my child, a name with no baggage.

Now when I see movies, I not only think about the reviews my grandfather would demand, I not only listen for character names that might work, I also scour the closing credits for baby names. Maybe a gaffer has a name I like. At the bookstore, I stare at spines for authors’ first names. I spend hours on baby name Web sites. Every new male I meet is just a name I’m trying on for size. This is my moment, my time to come up with something special but not too special, sentimental but not too closely associated with a specific person, creative but not Apple or Audio Science or Moxie, masculine but not butch, cool but not too easily mocked. Yeah, taking folic acid and not shooting up, those were critical maternal decisions, but this, this feels like the biggy.

I wait. I wait and I hope the baby gives me a clue.

You know how your car stops making the noise the second you take it to the mechanic? That’s what my Baby No Name does with his kicking.

The second I put my husband’s hand on my stomach, the little guy just stops moving. Today, though, the boy gives a good kick to the palm of my husband’s hand for the first time. We’re sitting in bed watching Dateline as I try breathlessly to get comfortable on seven pillows.

“I felt it. I felt the baby,” he says. There it is, our first shared physical experience of our child. I want to get out the camera and videotape it, but grainy footage of happy moments always reminds me of what they show on Dateline when someone dies, to reinforce how happy the deceased used to be before being cruelly ripped from this life by a guy they met in a chat room or a drunk driver. I’m too superstitious to tape it, but I try to be still inside myself so I can remember the feeling.

I warn Daniel that I might start crying, which I do.

And it is so sappy and nauseating I’m glad I’ve already taken a Zantac. I see myself from the outside and think, Who am I? I make fun of people who get choked up by things like the miracle of life. I feel superior to people who take this stuff so seriously that they cast plaster molds of their pregnant bellies. I mean, I know it’s serious, but these hormones are making me lose my edge, the edge that’s probably a fake and carefully constructed defense mechanism to begin with, but it’s mine now and I hate to see it crumble.

Struggling to regain it, I stare down at my hand resting on my stomach and blurt, “Quit kicking me, buster!”

“Buster,” says my husband. “I like it. Buster.”

Until we come up with a real name, Buster it is.