I thought we had worked out our names. The girl’s name we decided within the first two weeks of finding out I was pregnant, and the boy’s name we found in a baby names book while standing on the train platform at Tunbridge Wells after visiting friends who’d loaned us the book. When we got home we plugged it into our respective spreadsheets and found that it was one of the very few boy’s names we both liked. Yes, spreadsheets. Colour coded.

Then in the middle of our six hour drive back from Kalgoorlie on Monday night, H tells me he’s gone off the boy’s name. And so here we are again, back to debating, bickering and making snide side swipes at each other.


I never realised, when I was single and had vague baby name ideas in my head, just how difficult this whole process would be.

H’s already hyphenated surname makes a double-barrelled (with my name) solution rather a mouthful, so we’re going to stick with his.

But the double L in his surname effectively rules out Ella, Bella, Isabella and Mariella, or anything with too many L’s in it.

The Italianness of the name also rules out anything that makes the child sound like he belongs in the mafia (Tony, Roman, Dominic) or the boxing ring (Oscar).

Then there’s names from literature. I like Romeo and Juliet myself, but H suggested that if Romeo was ever lost in the shopping centre I’d have to do the yelling as he wouldn’t be caught dead screaming out “Romeo! Romeo!” and there’s already one Jules in the family and it might get confusing. Horatio, Mercutio, Rosencrantz and Macduff would just be mean. Jane’s not really pushing the creativity boundaries, Oliver’s already been taken by friends, and did Mr Darcy/Bingley/Wickham even have first names?


The Olympics always throws open new possibilities too – Leisl and Libby are lovely but thankfully it’s not 2000 and we’re not dealing with the likes of Misty Hymen.

Of course there are hundreds of names ruled out by both parties “because I used to know a guy/girl with that name and he/she was a twat/cow”. And there are numerous other guidelines we self-impose. No exes’ names or names belonging to pets, past or present, or friends. No celebrities, or celebrities’ babies. Nothing too ordinary, nothing too kooky, nothing too Italian, nothing too American. Nothing with weird spelling or stressful pronunciation. Nothing alliterated, as we don’t want the Daffy Duck/Minnie Mouse effect (which isn’t to say alliteration doesn’t work, it just won’t work with H’s surname). Nothing we’ll want to change in six months time (my poor friend has an 18 month old son and says every time she hears his name now it grates on her and she wants to change it but knows everyone is going to think she’s mad). Nothing that’ll become too typical of its era. Nothing that will get shortened to something annoying.

If this baby arrives on time, we have 5 weeks to sort out a solution, lest we end up with a little Barry or Bob. I am desperate. Please help. Or send chocolate (to assist the creative process) (in the absence of wine).