What's in a name?

The kids are starting a study of Shakespeare on Monday. Romeo and Juliet, to be exact. Remember the line in the play? "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." That's so true.

We had a heck of a time naming our babies. Had a girl name picked, but couldn't decide between two boy names for the oldest, so hubby posted a ballot sheet next to the time clock at his job, and let his employees pick it. Yep, my kid was named by a bunch of teenagers at McDonald's.

For dd, we had a boy name, but not a girl name. When I went into labor, we had kind of settled on Hillary. When she came out, she turned into Valerie. Hubby called everyone we knew to tell them that little Valerie was here. Three hours later, they wheeled me out to my room, where hubby was half asleep on the couch. He looked up and said, "I think her name should be Jillian." "OK," I said, "who said they didn't like the name?" (A friend of mine had told me at one point during my pregnancy that Valerie equated with vomit in her book. Thaaaaanks.) Anyway, he denied that anyone had persuaded him, saying that the oldest would've been named Jillian, so that's what we should do. Didn't matter to me, cause I liked them both, so, right as I agreed to it, my boss came running in the room (I delivered at the hospital where dh and I worked). She said that Valerie, a nurse I worked with, was so excited because she'd never seen a baby named Valerie, and was coming right over.

Hubby and I looked at each other and said "uh oh." He said that maybe we should change it back. I just asked him for a quarter. Ended up tossing a coin, and she became Jillian. Not Gillian, as I wanted, cause the hub thought people would call her Gilligan. Whatever.

When I was pregnant with ds12, we had a horrible time coming up with a name. Finally, a friend at work suggested, on a really slow night, that we read baby books. She liked the name Seth, so I suggested that to the hubby. "Oh, I like that," he said. "What would her middle name be?" I gave him the look. "What? Oh, is it a boy name," he asked. "Then I don't like it." ::sigh:: Back to the drawing board.

Three days later, he came up and said, "his name should be Seth Daniel," and it stuck. Of course, I mentioned that maybe we should pick a girl name, just in case. Hubby scoffed, cause, as he said "it's not like I don't know what I gave you."

I'd laugh, except he was right, with all three kids. Maybe he really DID know.