I wrote this post a while ago, over six months ago in fact when Mike and I were trying to decide what to name Emma. I just went back and re-read it and got a kick out of it, so I thought I would share it with you, my three readers. What is interesting now is that even once we decided on “Emma” for our daughter (a good seven hours after her birth mind you) in the back of my mind I had an image of the kind of person who would be attached to that name - very proper and very Victorian. Needless to say, proper and Victorian do not describe my Emma at all - but lots of other words do - determined, charming, focused, engaged, earnest, tenacious, resolute, sweet and oh so affectionate. In the end, of course, her name has little to do with the person she is becoming. I have to say though, that I am glad she isn’t that original Emma I had in mind.

Naming someone you have never met, and in fact won’t really know for a while after you meet them, is a very daunting task. Does a name make a person what they are, does it carry implications about personality, or is a persona created for a name by the person who carries it. I don’t know the answers to these questions, but they have been swirling around in my head for a while.

As much as I don’t consider myself trendy, for better or for worse, most of the names I have picked out recently for our impending bundle of joy were in the “top ten” of popular baby names in 2005. How frustrating. Mike and I both grew up as one of a few Mikes or Jennifers in our classes, which was annoying, but I guess we survived. Are we, as parents, dooming our child to ordinariness by giving her a name that thousands of other children have, or will she be able to make it her own in a way that separates her from others with the same name? Does it even matter?

According to the Social Security Administration, “Mary” was either the number one or number two girl’s name from 1893-1965. “Michael” has been number one or number two since 1954. Check out this cool site to find out how your name has ranked over the years. Why do popular names stay popular? And in the end, what is the bigger curse - having a name that is common, or a name that is unique? And if you are choosing between two or three names, is a name’s over-popularity a reason to knock it out of the running? Or maybe the goal is to find a name in between “popular” and “weird” that you like, and hope that your kid likes it too…