Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Name Game: Benjamin

When we found out about 3 years ago that we were going to have a son, the whole name procedure began again. But this time it was harder, since I haven't been obsessing about boys' names since 7th grade. Also, even MORE boys in our families have Biblical names: for instance, one of Aaron's sisters has 2 girls and 2 boys. The girls? Meghan and Catharine (Katie). No problem there. The boys? Yep - Seth and Daniel.

We were left to going straight through a baby name book. I considered EVERY name, and threw a few at Aaron. When I got to "Benjamin", I was surprised. Why had we not considered this name before?! No relatives, no close friends' kids (at the time, anyway!) good Biblical character, means "son of my right hand", ...it had merely slipped through the cracks.

Also on the short list was "Adam", but I never could get used to that one. It's probably because of my love of the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The seven brothers all have alphabetical Biblical names (Adam, Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephram, Frankincense (Frank!) and Gideon. Adam is the oldest of course, and the one that gives his brothers the bright idea of kidnapping their gals from town and carrying them up the mountain to their house in order to convince them to marry the boys. Except they avalanche the pass shut (and forgot the minister!) so the girls are stuck there till it melts. Adam's wife Milly kicks the boys out to the barn, the girls take over, and highjinks proceed. Of course, by spring they are all in love. But in the meantime, Milly and Adam argue about the kidnapping and he leaves to spend the rest of the winter at his trapping cabin. Never much liked him after that.

Anyway, Ben didn't end up with a name for at least 24 hours. We had pretty much settled on "Benjamin", but the middle name was more of an issue. We wanted another family name, and since Leah got "Elizabeth" from my side, it was only fair that Ben's come from Aaron's side.

Only problem? A string of rather unfortunate choices: Clarence (already two of them!), Marlen (already three!), Arne, and Elmer. Sorry to all the fellas out there with those names, but Ben wasn't getting any of them.

So we took the easy route and went with "Aaron". What? That's family! Um, yeah, it's also MY family - my brother's name. Oh well. It's still great!

This next baby? Well, we'll start things off tomorrow when we (hopefully!) find out the gender. Goodness knows we'll need the time...to research, argue, debate, and scour the family tree.

7 comments:

Noel said...

The reference to "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" means I'll need to hack into Netflix views and associated movie ratings or else local video store rental records to see what Lyz has seen and liked, use the titles as an index into internet movie database (imdb.com)to get ranked character names. Divide the number of stars Lyz gave the movie by the rank of the name in the cast list times the character likeability factor to yield the Movie Character Name Score.

So let's see....

A boy will be "James Tiberius"
A girl will be "Janice Rand"

Piece - of - cake .

nydampress said...

We can't wait to find out! Be sure to give us a jing-a-ling tonight if you do!

Aaron said...

Luke.

I'm telling you, it's a winner. It's biblical, and then you have the Ben-Luke-Leah combo that will make you the hit of all the parties.

Noel said...

And for twin boys, Luke and Hans....

Crystal said...

Or Noel- hans and franz te-he!

Lyz said...

OMG. You all are too geeky for me.

Luke is a great name (even tho personally it's the name of the greatest black lab EVAH) that unfortunately about half of our friends seem to have used already. It is currently experienceing a resurrgence in the church-going set- a lot like Noah did a few years ago.

Janice Rand? No. And no.:)

. said...

anything wrong with gideon? he was the squeaky one, right? nothin wrong with a squeaky baby.

whatever you do, don't name him norman. that's MY baby name.