A Rose by any other name...

Howdy gang,

                Lately I have been getting a lot of questions about what we are going to actually call Elizabeth. I had mentioned in an earlier post that it has become a pretty big area of contention in our home. A commenter even suggested doing poll on the blog, which isn’t a bad idea by any means, but that person doesn’t know how bullheaded my wife or I can truly be. Let me lay it out there for you gang, Elizabeth Rose was named after my mother and grandmother for her first name. The middle name Rose is a long standing tradition in my wife’s family. We wanted to incorporate names that were important to both sides of our family when we named her. We had kicked around the idea of naming her directly after my Ma, so her name would have been Margaret Rose, but the idea of telling a “Little Marge” what to do was just too bizarre for me. We decided that Elizabeth, my mother and grandmother’s middle name would do perfectly. That was pretty much the last thing we agreed on in regards to her name.

                I originally had worked very hard to sneak a nerdy name in. Anyone that knows me and at this point, anyone that has read even a few blog posts, knows that I am a huge nerd. Almost every name that I suggested was promptly shot down. For the record though, I still firmly stand by the name River despite my wife’s strong opposition.  But I digress, I thought I was being sneaky still with the name of Elizabeth. While it isn’t nerdy per se, I just assumed that I would be able to call her Liz after Tina Fey’s character Elizabeth “Liz” Lemon from 30 Rock. How wrong I was. My wife wants to call her Eliza, which is nice, don’t get me wrong, but she just doesn’t seem like an Eliza to me. There are other ways to shorten of course, Beth is really popular one but for quite a few different reasons that I would prefer not to get in to here we shan’t be calling her Beth. Betty is also a shortened version of Elizabeth, which we both kind of like, but kids are dickheads so Ugly Betty is kind of inevitable. Which leads me to my next thought…

                The main thing my wife has against Liz is that it can be turned in to so many different things. Lizzy, Lizard, Blizzard, Liz-bian, etc. As mentioned before, kids are generally dickheads and will be cruel no matter what. Eliza is much more of a challenge, but for all we know by the time she get to high school, Eliza could be slang for a blowjob or something. I know a fellow by the name of Gaylord Johnson. Yes, you read that correctly. This gentleman is in his low 80’s and is a very nice guy, I am sure when he was born “Gaylord” was not slur that 8^th grade boys slung at each other nor was “Johnson” a euphemism for penis. Some times you just can't win. In all reality, Betty might be the safer bet considering by the time she gets old enough, most kids won’t even know the show Ugly Betty.

                It has only become such a thing in our house because daycare asked what we prefer her to be called. My wife overheard one of the daycare teachers call her Lizzy one day (a name we both don’t like) and despite my wife’s best efforts, she crinkled her knows like she was smelling a fart. For now, we told them just to call her Elizabeth as she has enough nicknames at home (Ewok, Da Butt, Little Bit, Gomer, etc.). I don’t recall if I mentioned this in an earlier post, but we did find out that they call her Queen Elizabeth at daycare, not because she is high maintenance, but because she is so well liked and well behaved. We were told that they look forward to her coming in because she is generally so happy-go-lucky and smiley. That was a huge pat on a back as a parent, but really I don’t think we can take credit for it as she has been chill and happy since she was born. Even today when I picked her up to go to the doctor’s office they said she was “a little cranky because of the teething…well…cranky for her”. They’ve told me more than once that her being cranky is still better than several of the other babies there on a good day. We really did luck out I guess.

                I think for the short term, my wife and I plan on just calling her Elizabeth along with our laundry list of nicknames. As she gets older and we see more of her personality form, our hope is that a short will present itself that fits her, even if it is Beth or Lizzy…but let’s hope not. In the meantime, she will be my little Ewok and snuggle buddy.

                Thank you all for reading, I hope to get at least one more post up sometime this week, but we will see how crazy this week can get. Either way, use this time to catch up on past posts and keep checking back. Don’t forget to check out Fatterhood on Facebook too! Prost!