Names

When Jane and I were considering names for our daughter, in the months before her birth, we settled happily on Hannah.  Neither of us had known a Hannah growing up, so didn’t have any of those unpleasant associations (paste-eater, nose-picker) that we had with some of the names of our childhood peers.  In fact, we thought we were wildly original, only discovering after the fact that our wildly original name was actually the fourth most popular choice for baby girls that year.

Apparently other gay and lesbian parents are more creative, according to a new list of the top “gayby” names recently released by Goodkin.com.  Based on a survey of hundreds of gay and lesbian parents, the top names for babies born into our families are, by and large, not the same as the top baby names overall.

How are they different?  Think less Jane Austen, more Harper Lee (Harper, in fact, rings in at number 5 for girl names).   Parents overall (which means mostly straight) are still opting for Emma, Abigail, Isabel, Jacob and Ethan.  Not so the gay dads and lesbian moms.  The top names for boys raised by gay/lesbian parents include Atticus, Charlie, Milo and Dashiel.  Girl names include Vivienne, Charlotte, Billie and Scarlett.  Remarkably, only 3 names – Alex/Alexander and Noah for boys and Ava for girls – showed up on the top ten lists for both gay and straight parents.

Maybe gay and lesbian parents (other than, apparently, Jane and me) are bigger risk-takers or more out-of-the-box thinkers when naming their kids.  It’s possible that gay parents feel they have more leeway to be creative given the fact that our families are already different.  Or maybe gay parents are at the front end of the next trend.  Who knows?  A couple of years from now, little Atticus’ may just be showing up in nurseries everywhere.

I feel compelled to add, though, that Jane and I might have been more daring than it seems.  Hannah’s middle name is Elisabeth.  With an s.

Moe

So here I am in Fort Worth, Texas, Gateway to the West, surrounded by public radio fundraisers and pictures of steers.  I come back to my hotel room to do some work and my cell phone rings.  It’s Jane.  “We need to talk,” she says.

“What’s wrong?”  I immediately feel my body lurch into the red zone.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says.  “It’s just . . . we have a cat situation.”

A cat situation?  Did one of our cats get sick?  Get lost?  Kill a raccoon?

The next voice I hear is Hannah’s.

“Hi, Mama,” she says.  “We’re at the Humane Society.”

Oh, good lord.  I go away to Texas where I cannot nix the idea and they run off to the Humane Society.

“There’s the cutest kitten here and his name is Moe,” she continues.

No, I think, his name is Ours.

“Put Mommy back on the phone,” I say.

I hear Jane’s voice.

“What, exactly, were you thinking?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.  “We just kind of ended up here and he really is adorable.”

Jane is barely capable of driving by the Humane Society without a cat springing into the back seat of the car.  As Jane tells it, she took Hannah to lunch in our old neighborhood and, on the way, they drove by the road that leads to the Humane Society.  Apparently, the magnetic pull was too much.

“He’s black and white and has a little star above his nose,” Jane says.  “But I wanted to talk to you first,” she adds.  Which, honestly, is very sweet, although the deed is so, so done.

Oddly, I’m not upset, although it would not be my first choice to live with three cats.  My first choice would have been the puppy.  That we do not have.  But there are two girls in my life who are sappy for cats and they’re standing in the Humane Society in Minnesota holding fluffy little Moe while I’m standing in a hotel room in Texas.  Moe might as well move in and make his bed on my pillow.

“It’s fine,” I say.

“He really is cute,” Jane says.

Hannah gets back on the phone.

“And there’s this other little kitty named Burt, and he’s Moe’s brother, and do you want to hear him mew?”  I hear a sound that is disturbingly like a dog toy being squeezed.

“Put Mommy back on the phone, Hannah!”

“Burt???????”

This may have been part of the wily plan, but when I find out that Burt is not, in fact, part of the adoption package, I feel as though I have dodged a furball.  Suddenly having three cats will not be bad at all because, hey, it’s not four.  Lucky me.