What's in a Name?

Well, we’ve come to that point in the pregnancy… what shall we name our baby girl? While we have months left to decide, everyone who knows me knows how much I hate making big decisions. When a decision involves other people, I am even more careful before deciding, afraid that I might step on someone’s toes or have someone look down on me for not choosing differently. We all learn to cope with this though.

 In choosing a baby name, people go about it in different ways. Some have had a name picked out since they were five while others bring their baby home from the hospital still nameless. Some people keep their baby’s name a secret up until the day he/she is born while others find themselves changing their minds once the baby is born, thinking that they don’t look like a “Joe” or a “Mary”.

 When we were naming Parker, every name we liked we threw out to other people to gauge their reactions. I was pleased when people seemed to like Parker so readily. After all, it was my first time naming a baby and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Convinced it was a good choice and their weren’t too many things to make fun of (although we found out later his name spelled backwards is Rekrap), we decided on that name as long as he came out looking like a Parker. You know the rest.

 However, with this baby, our current name choice is Devri Leanne. At this point, if you’re anything like most of the people we’ve told, your initial response is, “Devri… I’ve never heard that name before…” Some people stop right there, which leads you to think that they’ve decided it’s a weird name. Other people say they like it after that (whether it’s the truth or whether they’re trying to spare my feelings, I’ll never know). There is even the occasional person that tells me they hate the name (my brother, David, for example). With the myriad of responses, Greg and I are left wondering why the name seems so strange to everyone. We understand it is not a common name, but we think it’s cute and normal enough not to get made fun of. I mean, it’s not like we’re naming her DaMyrl, Dianarea, or Desdedididawn, which I kid you not, were actual names found on a baby name website. Although we are not decided on Devri yet, we have yet to find something else we like as much, but I find it refreshing that for the first time, I am not offended by peoples’ dislike of Devri… I guess I just like it so much that it doesn’t matter to me. Oh, the one thing that will get me in big trouble if we change our minds is Parker… if you ask him where Devri is, he will say, “Devi!” (he doesn’t say the “r”) and point at my belly. He even tells her hi and gives my belly kisses. I sure hope we don’t end up confusing the poor kid.

 I guess the point of this whole blog entry is that not everyone likes the same name. After all, “what’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Our baby girl will be our baby girl no matter what her name is!