Names

Once upon a time I was in a rock band. Coming up with a name for the band proved to be much more difficult than writing the songs that eventually became our first album. There were disagreements, arguments and hurt feelings over the band name. In retrospect, it was silly for many reasons, but primarily because of this: there is no such thing as a good band name. Band names are generally pretty stupid and only end up sounding cool because of the band and the music that is associated with it.

My wife has a somewhat unusual name. She is the only person I have ever met with her name. Her name comes from a classic novel that was made into a movie years ago. Her mother liked the book (or movie, I don't know which, actually) and decided to use the name for her daughter. I think it is kinda cool, but my wife hates the name. No one ever pronounces or spells it right and she wishes that her mother had picked something more common.

In three months I will be the father of a little girl. My wife and I have been discussing a name for this child for, well, a long time. To this point there have been no arguments or hurt feelings over the name, but there have been disagreements. Unlike band names, I believe that there is such a thing as a good name for a person. There are names that just roll off the tongue and sound cool no matter what (like Brown Walker, for example) and then there are names that give other impressions. I won't go into to much detail on that fact because inevitably one of the two other people that read this blog will have a close relative that they really love that has the name that I disparage here and then I'd feel bad about it. But I'm sure you know what I mean.

So what's the point? I don't know. We have a name that we have tentatively agreed on, but the discussion still rages on. When the band decided on its name the discussion ended up lasting about two minutes. A name was proposed that no one could (or had the energy to) come up with a strong argument against and so it became the name, even though I would guess that none of us thought it was a great name at the time. As it turned out, I ended up really liking the name, but more because it represents the band and that period of time. But maybe that's how all names are decided upon: the default of argument fatigue.