name_story epitome of incomprehensibility I was thinking about bizarre_first_names and got a little sidetracked, thinking about how I was named. The story as I remember it goes like this: Dad wanted to call me "Naomi." Mom favoured "Kirsten." I was born with dark hair, which looked more Naomi-ish to them, but over my first few days my hair fell out and started coming in blond. This looked more Kirsten-ish, and so I was named Kirsten. 240813 ... raze i was named for a great-grandfather i never knew (i think i wrote about this on given_name a few years back), but it occurs to me now that i have no idea what my name might have been if i'd come into the world with different private parts. would i be a jennie, to carry some seed of the grandmother i didn't know long enough to mark in my memory? or would i be someone else altogether? 240813 ... ovenbird A name is the first gift you give your child. It is the thing they are crowned with upon arriving in the world. The thing they must carry until their eventual leaving. I wanted to get it right. My husband and I rather quickly agreed on a girl’s name, but we struggled to find a boy’s name we both liked. I would present options and my husband would give them a lukewarm reception and then I would go back to the drawing board. When I was about six months pregnant my husband came to me one morning and said, “I had a dream.” My husband is not one to put any stock in dreams. He’s practical, steady, and reliable. He’s a concrete thinker who isn’t moved an inch by confluences, signs, or symbols. He reads for information, never for poetry. His ideal state is one of solid rationality. But he looked ruffled that morning, maybe even amazed. “I had a dream,” he said again and he described seeing a name written in stark block letters floating through his mind. He told me the name. “Do you like it?” he asked. And I did. I liked it immediately and we agreed that if the baby was a boy we would give him the name his father dreamed. When, after eighteen hours of labour, our first child entered the world, the midwives placed him on my chest and announced that he was a boy. My husband cried as he gave his son the dream name that arose from some impossible place of images and magic. My husband has never dreamed in such a way again. He returned easily to living as literally as possible, but I know the dream stays with him and reminds him that some of the most beautiful things don’t make sense at all. 260218 what's it to you? who go blather from