Picking names for your soon-to-be-born child is not easy. It is made twice as difficult by the fact that you don’t know the sex of your bundle of joy. With a month left till full term we have not chosen a name yet.
This is not due to lack of ideas. The problem is that every nice name you can think of comes with too much baggage for one of the parents; “it’s and exes name,” “I had a nasty coworker with that name,” “That’s my friends kids name,” or some other conflict. I suspect that none of these issue will be relevant for the objecting party after a few days of it being the name of your child, all other references will vanish until you are reminded of them by someone.
On top of all this we can add the interesting angle of Ang Moh (white people) names and Chinese names. Seems there are some sort of strange rituals involved with picking Chinese names here in Singapore but since the child will be half white and half Chinese I think it would be cool to give them both names. The fact that I know about five words in Chinese (mostly related to ordering food or expletives) and the fact that they are in Mandarin not Cantonese means I can only say “hey this word sounds cool, what does it mean?” And then I get the inevitable “it means ‘stupid white man who does not understand Chinese ask stupid questions.” This does not make a very auspicious Chinese name.
Of course anyone who has known me for long knows that I have always intended to name my child “Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Fertile Crescent” buy my wife objects to this. I could pull a Major Major and just put it on the birth certificate but I don’t want to pay for the therapy later.
On the other hand I’m not above accepting bribes. Currently Lord Jim I of Sol is offering:
- 6000 head of cattle
- 3000 goats
- 2000 veggie dogs
- 1788 pastries of your choosing
- 1-16 rat(s) (tame)
- 3 Cheetos
Anyone got a better offer?