I’ve told the story here before about how when Tristan was born almost six years ago, although we knew his first name from the time we found out we were having a boy, we had some trouble deciding on what to do for a surname. Beloved and I couldn’t leave the hospital until we completed his health card application, and of course his health card application needed a surname. In the end, we hyphenated our surnames.
This time, when we left the hospital we left behind a health card application that showed the same hyphenated last name that he’ll share with Tristan and Simon, but in the space designated for his first name, we simply put “Baby Boy.” We had a name in mind, had been 60 to 80% settled on it for months, but we just weren’t sure. And for the longest time, we had absolutely no idea about a middle name.
About two weeks ago, we decided on a middle name, and then toyed with that as a first name for a while. Then, yesterday morning when Beloved came to rescue us from the hospital and bring us home, he reintroduced a name we had been toying with a few months ago and I found myself caught between two names I liked very much. We went from no name to too many names!
So we spent the first 40 hours or so calling him Baby and Baby Brother and Little One, and testing out all the name combinations we could think of. After spending the first night in the hospital trying out one and the first night at home trying out the other, we’ve finally (oh how I hope it’s FINALLY) come to a decision. My apologies, Nancy, because he was very nearly Benjamin. I love love love the name Ben, and it’s only the fact that we have a recently deceased and wickedly mean cat named Ben (who really never did stop hating me in the 10 years we lived together) that made us finally decide against the name Ben.
And so, with no further ado (and hopefully, no further changes of heart!) I am actually tearing up just a little bit as I introduce to you the Player Now Named:
(And he already has his own photo album on Flickr!)