the naming game
Author: Nathalia
Rating: PG-13
Challenge: Milk Chocolate #26 - ignorance
Extras / Toppings: malt (Easter Eggs: Bella: The best things happen / When you don't try / Or wish on an eyelash / Just open your heart / To a strange thing" -"Dizzy", Amanda Marshall)
Word Count: 1,533
Story: Misfits
Summary: Dennis and Stella discuss baby names.
Notes: I love writing about the times when Dennis and Stella are all tentative and unhappy and full of angst. Here’s a total left turn. I don’t know how long they’ve been together when this happens but I know that it happens and the reason I wrote this was to see if I could find the right name. I did :)
The letters on the page were blurring before Dennis’ eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he had been staring at column after column of names, jotting some he liked on a piece of paper but he hoped that this stopped soon. He had always been assured that he wouldn’t have to put up with much aside from Stella’s mood swings until the baby was born. He had thought that that would be when things got difficult but here he was, trying to find names he liked for the baby and it was turning out to be a lot harder than he had ever imagined it.
Much to his frustration, Stella had been done with her list several days ago and was only waiting for him so they could start their first discussion about what they should name the child. If only he had seen her having as much trouble with it as he was, it would have calmed him down a lot.
“I’m done,” he sighed and Stella looked up from the mission report she was reading.
“You’re done with your list of names?” She asked surprised and Dennis nodded. “Both the girls’ and boys’ names?” He nodded again.
“Great. I’ll go get my list and then we can go over it and see if we find any points of convergence.”
She got up from the couch and Dennis smiled happily when he saw how distinctly she was starting to show through her long-sleeved cotton dress. He knew it was probably pathetic, but he loved touching and kissing her baby bump, at times, when she was already asleep, even whispering sweet nothings to the baby. He still couldn’t believe that he was going to be a father. When Stella had told him, all excited, he hadn’t been sure what to be more happy about: the fact that Stella wasn’t grumpy, trying to get drunk over the news like she had the first time she had been pregnant or the fact that they were going to be parents.
She returned to the living room with a list that Dennis knew was probably a lot more comprehensive than his. It wasn’t fair; she had had a run at this before while he was a complete novice in the field.
“Show me your list,” Stella instructed him, sitting down next to him.
She was all high energy these days and it was hard to believe that this woman had once hated the idea of ever being a mother, saying that there was no way she would enjoy looking after a child. Things had changed a lot since then and while they had never really talked about children, he had never expressed that he never wanted to have any.
“I don’t feel confident about my list,” Dennis admitted. “I never named anything before. Well, other than a couple of hamsters when I was a kid. And missions and projects at work and that’s not exactly the same thing. The hamsters never had to put up with other hamsters possibly teasing them about their names and well, at work, you know how that works. You open the dictionary at a random page and pick a word out and that’s pretty much it.”
“But there have to be names you like that you think would work for a child!”
“But what if the child doesn’t like being called Amaryllis?” Dennis asked exasperated. “I’m trying to keep in mind what the child would think.”
“Don’t worry,” Stella smiled, taking his hand into hers. “At least not when it comes to the name Amaryllis. I can assure you that no child in the world would like that name.”
Dennis rolled his eyes, then he looked at Stella. He had been wondering about something since he had started his list but didn’t really know how to ask. There was no way to not make it strange and uncomfortable, yet he had to know.
“Did you … did you ever name the … the other baby?” He pressed his lips together, feeling relieved that he had finally asked but at the same time unsure if it was right to ask. They had never talked about the other baby. So much so, that Dennis didn’t even know how to refer to it.
“It was going to be called Leighton,” Stella answered quietly. “Leighton West-Barnes.”
“I didn’t know you knew that it was going to be a boy,” Dennis pointed out, knowing that this was the only opportunity he would ever have to ask all he wanted to know.
“I didn’t. Not until … well, not until the baby was dead. He would have been called Leighton even if he had been a girl. I never really got to talk to Joseph about it all that much. We didn’t have lists back then. He wanted me to make a list and I refused and when he got annoyed and told me to just come up with the name I wanted, then, I opted for Leighton. I don’t think we ever got around to discussing that I wanted him or her to have my last name, not just his.”
“It has a nice ring to it,” Dennis muttered, wrapping an arm around Stella.
She shook her head as if to clear her head and then handed Dennis her list. “Look at it, see if you like any or which you absolutely hate. I was thinking we’d skip the whole second name thing. Otherwise it turns long and I don’t really see a need for more than one name.”
“Sounds perfect to me,” Dennis agreed. That meant only having to come up with one name which made things considerably easier.
“And I was thinking no names that start with either L or W or end on -on or -son or -st. To avoid making it sound bad.”
“Example?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. We’re not naming our kid Lyndon West-Lawson or Winfred West-Lawson. And if you have any of the fifty most common names in the world on your list, those aren’t an option either. Your sister’s already an expert at giving her children the most boring, unimaginative names in the world. David, Brad, Jack. Those names.” Stella shuddered.
“You have a lot of rules. You could have mentioned them before,” Dennis sighed, knowing that his list had just shrunk considerably because he had put the common names on it just to be safe, because it was better to go for something common than crazy outlandish spelling and a name that nobody could pronounce. He knew that Stella would have included those in her list of taboo names had she not already known how much Dennis detested them.
He surveyed the list, noticing that Stella hadn’t separated the names into a male and a female column. The names, all male, were written down neatly, one underneath the other.
“You didn’t tell me we were having a boy,” Dennis said dryly. “That would have saved me a lot of work.”
Stella furrowed her brow and Dennis knew that she had no idea what she was talking about. “We agreed that we should wait and be surprised when the baby is born, remember?”
“Then you either forgot to put girl’s names on your list or you have a separate list for them that you forgot to give me.”
Stella took the list from him and pointed to a name towards the middle, Reed. “How is that a boy’s name? Or the one right below it, Devon?”
“Those are manly names. I can’t think of too many men with that name but I know it’s not a girl’s name.”
“It’s a unisex name!” Stella exclaimed in annoyance. “I don’t know how you haven’t picked up on it yet but I like unisex names. They aren’t all that common and I like names that work for both sexes. I think there’s something special about them and lots of them have a really nice ring to them.”
Dennis felt confusion and embarrassment overcome him. Now that she said it so explicitly, he had to admit that she had only ever suggested names that worked for both genders although most of them were more common in the male form. Wasn’t that exactly what she had done with the other baby? Leighton?
He got up. “I think I need to rethink my naming strategy now that I know your preferences. I don’t know any unisex names. All I have on my list are boring names like Ashley and Kim and Darcy and the like.”
“Those are all unisex names, darling,” Stella pointed out with an amused look on her face. “They are just a lot more common than Casey or Brody or whatever else I have written down.” She looked at her list, picked a name at random. “Kennedy, for example. It works for both genders but is used much less than Kim or any of your examples.”
Dennis paused. “Kennedy,” he said slowly, letting the name roll of his tongue. It had a certain ring to it and he really liked it even if he wouldn’t have ever come up with it himself. “Kennedy West-Lawson.” He nodded. “Kennedy. I really like that name.”
The baby turns out to be a girl and I don’t think she ever gets teased because of her name. Dennis and Stella end up having a second child. It, too gets a unisex name. I still need to name it. All the names Stella mentions in this are unisex except for the names of her nephews with the uninventive names ;)