Heat's Editor-In-Chief Lucie Cave takes us through her journey of having a baby...
I thought picking the name would be the easy part of pregnancy. Compared to the swollen feet, back ache and 24hr desperation for a wee - surely this would be fun bit? Way before I had a bun-in-the-oven, Ben and I used to joke about the sort of names we could give our future child with our surname being ‘Lunt’. And once we started, the list came thick and fast...
Noncha Lunt
Equiva Lunt
Ambiva Lunt
Flatu Lunt
Turbu Lunt
Vio Lunt
Si Lunt
The possibilities were endless! I even said, 'If we have a boy we could call him Excel Lunt'.
Oh how we laughed.
Then came the reality. After our first couple of scans we were asked if we wanted to know the sex of the baby. Er, yes! Sod waiting for a surprise. In our mind, the fact we were going to have to look after a small human was surprise enough. Besides, that way it would narrow down our discussion of what to call him or her. We were told it was a boy and immediately Ben wanted proof. 'Where's his willy?' he asked the Doctor (we now have a scan dedicated to that part of our future son's anatomy; the doctor obligingly captioned it 'willy pic'. That’s one for the family album)
We were so happy when we found out – although we didn't have a preference whether it was a boy or a girl, knowing the sex just made it more real and exciting somehow (friends have also reliably informed me that boys love their mums best so I’m going with that). And while initially Ben got very excited about the prospect of being able to dress his son up in identical clothes to him and his twin Joe so they could ‘Wow everyone around town with our aura,’ he’s now panicking, 'Shit, what if he does all the things I used to do?!'
So for the last six months we have been discussing names. We knew we didn't want anything normal (although the thought of bringing back ‘Barry’ has crossed our minds) but equally we didn't want it to be so leftfield that the poor fella would have trouble ever making friends. At one stage we wanted alliteration and convinced ourselves he might be able to carry off 'Lucky Lunt' until my mum said 'That sounds like a horse!' and a friend who works as a director in a finance company informed us that if he ever saw a CV with a name like 'Lucky Lunt' originating from Liverpool he'd tear it up on the spot. So we realised we do have to consider a few things like 'getting a job'. Another mate advised, 'When you're thinking of names, try and imagine yourself shouting it out in the playground' (which immediately ruled out ‘Ulysses’ – another of Ben’s suggestions). We’ve bought so many bloody books about what to call your child that we could open a library. But no matter how many we seem to go through we just can't agree (or rather Ben says to me, 'You can decide but I need to approve it' which just means I shout names at him and he shakes his head and pulls a face).
I found a good website called www.hellomynamespabst which is ‘Baby names for non conformist, indie, geeky, DIY, hipster and alterna-parents of every kind’ and for a minute I thought I'd struck gold when I saw kids called ‘Dryden Trail and ‘Bowie’ (but they were not ‘approved’) The great thing about the website is that it tells you that if you want to open your world of suggestion up you should stop looking in traditional surroundings ‘for a truly unusual name, you might just not be looking in the right places—the so-obvious-it-hadn’t-crossed-your-mind-places. For example, look up from your computer screen right now and there could be a baby name staring right at you. Are you at home? Balcony, Atlas, Pepper, Vizio. Or are you reading this on your smartphone in the train station? How about Exit, Track, Zoom, Tix. At the office? Try Key, Excel, Fax, Mac. Or maybe you’re taking one last road trip while you still can? Roam, Yield, Esso, Armadillo. Basically, you can find pretty amazing names everywhere you look’ - which is why I found myself looking at hand driers in Mcdonalds and shrieking 'What about Fury?' (The drier was actually called Air Fury so it could have been worse). This clearly sounded like a WWF wrestler.
The list has gone on and on....
Lazarus
Buddy
Thor
Zeus
Ben and his twin Joe have always wanted to change their names to something more maverick (which was another possibility until I remembered that was Tom Cruise in Top Gun) – Ben says he wanted to be called ‘Trent Steel’ (spelt like the metal but meaning ‘steal’ as in ‘He’ll steal your bird’) while Joe has gone one further and actually changed his name on Facebook and Twitter to ‘Wolfgang’ because he thinks it sounds ‘primal’. He’s also Google-mapped his home address as ‘the wolf lair’. No joke.
At one point we toyed with ‘Fox’ but as Ben's family are from Liverpool when it’s pronounced with their accent it changes the meaning somewhat. Plus, as a friend of mine pointed out I only liked the idea because I wanted to dress him in fox clothes. Which wouldn't be fair on an 18 year-old-teen.
To be honest we probably made the mistake of involving way too many people - because everyone has an opinion and it's impossible to find a name that they all like. I even met a cab driver the other day and he told me he has a son called Adam but his middle name is ‘danger’… just so he can tell people ‘danger is my middle name’. And obviously as soon as I told Ben – he wants it for our son.
Of course we could just go with the name our friend’s daughter suggested the other day: 'Stephen Hamster'.
To be continued….
** @luciecave**