On Naming One's Kid

I have about two months until I have my next kid, so we are thinking about names.

When we were getting ready to have The Squeaker, I had two male names picked out, complete with middle names and everything, but when we actually saw The Squeaker's face for the first time, we knew we had to look at other options. The names we chose just didn't fit. So we spent my entire recovery time frantically looking through lists of names from the Bible and from our family history.

We don't want to be quite so frantic this time, so we are compiling a longer list of names from which to draw.

It's a good thing I am having my kids when I am in my 20s, because when I was 18 and 19 I had daydreams of naming my children names from The Lord of the Rings, like Eowyn, Theoden, Olorin, etc. They are nice names and everything, but if you name your kid Eowyn, you might as well hang a neon around her neck that says, "My mother is an incurable nerd."

We will probably end up using something very traditional that everyone knows how to spell, but I find that there is still a part of me that longs to defy convention once again and go with some names that are so ancient that you would never know how to pronounce them unless you had a degree in Medieval literature:

Eagdyth (Edith)
Aisling (Ashley)
Mechthilde (Matilda)
Ruaidhri (Rory)

And as a Middle Eastern Studies major, there are quite a few Arabic names I am quite in love with. However, unless you are Muslim or have some other legitimate tie to Middle Eastern culture, it just doesn't work to name a blond-haired blue-eyed white kid Abd Ar-Rahman. Other Arabic names I like are:

Salah Ad-Din (Saladin)
Ibrahim (Abraham)
Yussef (Joseph) - Tangent on this one: Joseph was a name I had originally picked out for the Squeaker, but then I realized that I kind of hated the name Joseph, and really I just wanted to have a kid named Yussef.

Nesma (A gentle breeze)
Besma (Smile)
Maryam (Miriam/ Mary)

Yeah, we'll probably end up going with something like Peter or Susan. Ok, maybe not Susan. (Did I mention we don't know if we're having a male or a female child? We will find out in a couple months.)