The name game

The Banana clan is set to expand early next month, so it’s time to think of baby names again and it seems to get harder each time. It’s not hard to think of names that we like; the hard part is thinking of names that my wife and I can agree on. Girls’ names aren’t a problem, but there's always the chance that it could be a boy and we can't seem to settle on a boys’ name. If I had my way it would be Elvis. My wife would rather just about anything other than Elvis.

I once heard a stand-up comic say “G’day, my name’s Brian. At least I think that’s my name, although sometimes I wonder if my parents just made that up.”

Whenever the kids ask what we're going to call the new baby, I tell them that we will just wait until the baby is born and then ask it what its name is.

For the last few weeks we have been referring to the new baby as Epponnee-Rae, but that’s mostly for the kids’ amusement. We can’t really call it that, especially if it’s a boy. Our older son refuses to call it Epponnee-Rae because he wants it to be a boy, so he calls it Seamus. Strangely enough, our son wants it to be a boy while our girls all want it to be a girl. The logical consideration that we already have more girls than boys and that another boy would balance the ledger, while another girl would make us further lopsided, doesn’t seem to enter their thought processes.

Our youngest son has no opinion – he is completely unaware of the impending arrival of a new sibling, so he’s going to get a big surprise.

So if you have any good baby names lying around, particularly boys' names, feel free to toss them my way, but beware: any suggestion of a name that is predominantly used as a surname in our society (e.g. Taylor, and variant spellings thereof) will be met with a cocktail tirade of brimstone and bile.

Go.