What's In a Name?

*Updated at bottom*

The Pumpkin has named her first toy. It is one she has recently become attached too--a stuffed, terrycloth bath duck, which has a robe with hood and little ducky slippers on it's feet. We kept it in the bathroom for a long time, although never put it in the bath. She pulled it out one day and left it in our room. Then, all of sudden, she decides that it's THE TOY. She has to have it to go to sleep, she has to tote it around when she gets up and comes in our room in the night or morning. She leaves it in her room during the day, but always looks for it at bedtime.

And, she named it. She hasn't named any other stuffed animal, baby doll or toy. We call her baby dolls "baby doll" and her stuffed animals by the name of the toy ("Where's your lion?"). But one night, early in this new infatuation, she called the duck "Mister Quack." (At least, we are 90% sure that's what she said.) It's cute, so we are going with it. We all call him Mister Quack.

I thought to see if the Pumpkin would branch out in the naming department. I asked her one night what her baby doll's name was. She called it by her name (and she also called it baby doll). But it didn't stick. I think she was just pretending it was her because we were rocking the baby doll with us in the rocking chair trying to get the Pumpkin and baby doll to sleep.

I asked her one day recently if she had any ideas for names for the Baby Brudda. She did not seem to get it. As I have said before, she doesn't always seem to get new concepts, although my guess is she internalizes the concept for a while to figure it out, since she often seems to get it later (although we do continue to talk about it). So, she had no good ideas for names.

Londo and I do have ideas and opinions for the baby boy's name. Unfortunately, we have very different tastes in names. Londo tends to prefer classical, strong names, like Alexander and Christopher (I forget the girl name equivalents because it's been so long since we picked out the Pumpkin's name). I prefer names from romance novels or soap operas, like Hunter or Dare (short for Darius), for boys and hippy-ish names for girls, like River or Sienna.

I'm sure you can imagine how hard it is for us to find names we both can agree on, considering how different our tastes are. I know I can't name a child something as "out there" as I'd really like, and he knows that the name can't be too common or "normal" (in my opinion). We really lucked out on finding and agreeing to the Pumpkin's name, as it is traditional in nature, not way out there, not super common, sounds lovely and has some great nicknames. (We love nicknames.)

So far for the boy's name, we have ruled out Londo's top couple of names and my top couple of names. The top runner is a name that is becoming more common, but it's still different enough that I would be really happy with it. Londo has a good association with the name, and I just think it's cool. Unfortunately, no good nicknames for it, but you can't have everything.

Still, we haven't settled on it because I insist that we have to look through the boy's half of the names in the book with over 5000 names that I bought when we were choosing the Pumpkin's name. Londo is sure that our current top runner will be the one. He reminded me of his favorite example of how he knows right off when something is The One. When we went to pick out wedding china, he glanced around, pointed one set and said, "That one." I said, "Oh, no no no. We have to go through ALL of the books. Every page. We need to look at ALL our options before we pick one."

And after going through every last page of every since book of china in the store? I looked at him and said, "You're right. That one." The very first one he pointed to. He's good like that. BUT, I still need to see all the options so I also know that it's The One. I will even consider Mister Quack (although I will quickly dismiss it).

Update:
As for this site, Londo suggested Sweet Potato for the boy's pseudonym. It goes well with the Pumpkin, and is a good nickname. I'll probably go with that, although I still want to think about other options. It's my way.