If you're a boy, your name's picked. If you're a girl, your mother and I haven't settled. We're keeping the names to ourselves, not revealing it to friends and family until you're born. Mainly because it seems like a bummer when everybody already knows whether you're going to be a boy or a girl, and everybody already knows what your name's going to be, so on the day that you're born there's nothing left to announce except your birth weight. Which isn't terribly exciting unless you're premature or tipping the scales over ten pounds. Barring those two scenarios, giving away your name to everyone before you're born feels positively anticlimactic to us. Aside from the whole we-made-a-baby thing happening that day.
We're also not going to learn about your sex until you're out. Instead of the doctor announcing whether you're a boy or a girl, I'd like to be the one to call it. I don't have a Ph.D., but I think I have an idea of what to look for. And since we're not interested in bombarding you with ultrasounds during your development, we won't have a million pictures of you where we can say, "Oh, uh, yep, it's got a penis," or whatever. We're also not sonically blasting you with ultrasounds because there's about a 95% chance that you're perfectly healthy and there are no problems to monitor whatsoever. Unless a viable medical reason crops up that requires us to outwardly scan and chart every step of your development (to include your mother's health too, of course) then we're not going to. We're keeping you, whatever happens.
It took us years to settle on a name. I'm still sad about some of the names that didn't make the cut, but the one we've picked so far -- if you're a boy -- is pretty sweet. It's not-even-kidding unique, but not unpronounceable to the human tongue, and not hit with a Hollywood stick either. You will not be a Prince Michael II or a Pilot Inspektor. You're welcome. But your first and middle name is poetically assembled, while further complementing the sounds coming from the name "Kalista." Word construction and soundsmithing really came to the forefront, and I'm quite sure it's my finest work to date.
My coworkers started playing name-guessing games the moment I told them we're not telling. Though, again, we still haven't withdrawn your name from the forge yet if you're a girl. But I gave them a couple hints, largely because they were thinking too conventionally. I said that if it's a name that would be in the top 150 names for boys and girls on the planet, then it didn't make the cut. One of them, thinking I dug too deep into my hobby, asked if it's a name from a videogame. No. You won't be a Gordon Freeman, a Legend of Zelda, or a Lara Croft Kalista.
I gave them a couple hints, though, by telling them two names we'd picked that didn't make the cut, but would give them an idea of the unique angles we're investigating for your name.
If you're a boy, you were almost named Atreyu. "Ohhh, good one," my coworkers said. And if you're a girl, you were almost named Alias. And by "almost," I mean that there's no way in heck your mother would ever allow her daughter to be named that. Ever. In my defense, it was a name that struck me long before Jennifer Garner made it to center stage. I tried pretty hard to name you Alias, gave it a real thoroughbred effort (there are more and more boys named Elias, so, while unique, I didn't think Alias originated from Klingon or anything crazy), but mom ain't hearin' that.
In emails between your mom and I, we codenamed you "Riceball." Which has nothing to do with your final name. But when a baby is developing in the womb, there are certain realworld comparisons doctors make to explain how large the little gamete is. "A grain of rice" was one of the earliest size descriptors. We loved it. Even though, at twelve weeks, you've progressed from something the size of a pea, to a raisin, to half a cherry tomato, and soon to that of a small lime. "Riceball" stuck, however. No doubt as a tribute to your one-quarter Filipino makeup.
No comments:
Post a Comment