I’m not trying to be intentionally close-mouthed. We really haven’t chosen a name for baby #2, and–though Finn would argue otherwise–I don’t think Lil Pizza will stick.
Before Finn was born, we talked a lot about baby names. Mostly, we talked about girls’ names because, for reasons I can’t quite understand, it just seems a lot easier to generate a quick list of lady names that we love, as opposed to boys’ names, which always strike me as being either BAF (basic AF) or as trying way too hard.
We had a lot of girls’ names we loved: Lucy, Emerson, Hattie, Eloise. (The list goes on. Since we’re 100% confident that this will be our last baby, I don’t mind sharing our list. An Emerson Grey isn’t in our future, clearly.)
We had, comparatively, a very short list of boy names: Henry, Oliver, Liam, and Finn. Spoiler alert: We chose the last one. Spoiler alert #2: We don’t want any of the others for baby #2.
When people ask how we chose Finn’s name, expecting some grand tale in response, I always feel like I’m disappointing them when I admit that, after a process of elimination, we decided it was the one we liked minimally more than the others on our list. That is, we didn’t really feel passionately about any of them.
However, and I can’t really remember when, we decided that we wanted Atlas to be the middle name, and “Finn Atlas Aquiline” just kind of clicked. Everyone now says that he’s SUCH a Finn, and even though I’m not exactly sure what that means, I agree.
Now, faced with having to choose yet another boy’s name, we are in a bit of denial. I’ll be honest with you: we do have 2-3 names that we’ve been bouncing around since before we got pregnant, and there is 1 that is a clear front-runner. We also, like Finn, settled on a meaningful middle name WAY before we started identifying possibly first names. So, 2/3 of the equation is solved.
Still, I don’t think either of us are 100% certain about the name that’s positioned itself at the top of our list. We like it a lot, but do we love it? I don’t know. Our primary hang-up, without letting the proverbial cat out of the bag, is that people would absolutely defer to a shortened version of the name as a nickname, and that nickname is BAF. Thusly, any vintage-y coolness and spunkyness that the name has would likely be lost.
The reality is, also, that Finn Atlas Aquiline is a pretty difficult name to live up to. I mean, we can’t exactly follow that with “Thomas William,” can we?
So, let’s play the name game. We love names that are short and simple. We want something a little offbeat, and we love the now trendy vintage/ageless names. I also, for whatever reason, feel particularly drawn to boys names that start with an “A.” We want something a little unexpected, but we don’t want something that seems completely outside of the box. (Finn was actually on the list of trending boys’ names the year he was born, and the name we have in mind for baby #2 is on lists for this year, too.)
In the end, we know the name is just a name. Sona said we should wait until Lil Pizza arrives. She’s confident that we will look at his scrunched little face, and the perfect name will be divinely inspired. I, on the other hand, want to be a little more prepared.