What's in a name?

Coming up with our son's name has proven to be more difficult than I ever thought it would be. It's a lot of responsibility; it's your child's identity, their brand. It could affect the way people perceive them, first impressions, and whether they get a second call or not. It's important. And everybody has an opinion - whether you want to hear it or not. And each new parent seems to have their own tactic for choosing the right name for their child.

There are family names, which makes it easy, because it's pretty much done for you.

Or, if your best buddy lost an eye to shrapnel saving you from an explosion; again, the name has been chosen for you.

Otherwise, people set parameters. Some people want a traditional or biblical name. Some people want to emulate a celebrity or one of their heroes. Others prefer something cool or trendy. Victoria and I wanted a name that was uncommon, but not unusual. Unique, but not weird. Not traditional and not trendy. Whatever it turned out to be, we would spell it correctly. Those were our parameters. I'll give you some examples of what I'm talking about. We considered several names including Sawyer, Reid, Finn, and Lincoln, but ultimately chose Holden. We feel that it's a strong name, masculine; uncommon but not unusual. People will remember it, remember him.

It's unique in that it's a name that is familiar to people because they've heard it before, but few people know anyone personally with that as their first name. People know of William Holden, but the most famous person with the first name of Holden is a fictional character - Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salinger's, Catcher in the Rye. I won't get into a character critique or psychoanalysis of Holden Caulfield right now; our Holden was not named after him, he's simply the most notable person who bears that as a first name.

Then there's the middle name!

Once you've chosen a name, you look at all of it's possible variations; what nickname would people use, how can it be made fun of, what do the initials spell, would it work while he's young and as an adult, etc., etc.

The funny thing is, once the baby is born, people stop sharing their negative opinions, because now they're not insulting a choice you made, their insulting your kid. And that's just not nice.