& making a name

Felix is everywhere these days.

When we first decided on a boy name for Squatch and bestowed it upon him, there really only seemed to be two Felixes:

1. Felix the Cat
2. Felix from The Odd Couple

Of course, there were others, but you never seemed to hear the name very often. It was one of those names that everyone knew to be a name, but you never met anyone named Felix.

Then he was born and everything changed. It started with the Olympics. Allyson Felix became a household name. Everyone was talking about her every time you turned on a station with a peacock. Squatch was only a few weeks old, and it was pretty cool to hear his name attached to someone getting such positive attention for what she was doing. Granted, it was her last name*, but it was still pretty cool. There was another track dude we saw running at the Olympics with the first name of Felix, but he wasn’t ‘Murican, so screw him.

*I kind of wished I could’ve snagged one of those track bibs with “Felix” written on it for him. Oh well.

Then in August, Felix Hernandez went and pitched a perfect game and “Felix” was all over the news again. I don’t know if we noticed it more because of our kid or because it took the attention away from Matt Cain’s perfect game, but once again, it was cool seeing Squatch’s name pop up in the news.* There seemed to be a trend happening, but I wasn’t quite sure.

*In order to cram this in, other recent athletes named Felix: Felix Potvin, Felix Pie, Felix Jones—all of which gathered brief headlines before mostly disappearing from the sports page.

I became sure when I saw the trailer for a movie:

In case you missed it at the beginning there, the game the main character comes from is called Fix-It Felix, Jr., which is also the name of the Jack McBrayer-voiced character. First off, how awesome does this movie look? I’m totally going to see this when it comes out. Second, there’s the name again! And this time it’s not just some athlete. It’s a video game hero. How is Squatch ever going to live up to that? We might as well have just named him Luigi and gotten it over with. Granted it’s not a real video game*, but still—what’s next, some dude soaring through the stratosphere like a superhero?

*Although they did create a version of Fix-It Felix game for iPhone. Karli downloaded it. She’s a nerd like that, too.

FOR THE LOVE—! Everywhere you look these days, there’s someone named Felix doing something awesome. Which on the one hand is very cool. Felixes represent. But on the other hand, did we just inadvertently, through some crappy timing, set the bar too high for Squatch? Or even worse—do we now look like we’re just following some kinda trend? Apparently, Felix was one of the top ten names in Quebec in 2006, which means Squatch shares his name with a bunch of six-year-olds in Montreal. Karli found an article recently that talked about how one trend is a rise in boy names with an X in them—the first one listed being Felix*. Are we just following the crowd?

*Full disclosure: The article was on the Disney baby blog, so this could be a subtle plug for the aforementioned movie.

One way to look at it: I think we’re just noticing it more because now we actually know a Felix, so every time we see one now, it stands out more. It’s like seeing the arrow in the FedEx logo for the first time, and then you can’t unsee it. There’s no trend happening in reality, just in our own minds.

Another way to look at it: We’re not trend followers, were trend setters, baby! He may be one of the youngest, but he’s the original. Ahead of the curve, sucker.

The original. O-effing-G, Baby.

& thoughts on names

There’s always a standard list of questions that people ask when they find out you’re pregnant (or, rather, your wife is).

• When’s it due?
• Do you know the sex?
• Do you have names picked out?
• And for the more daring ones—was it was planned?

We’ve been getting those questions a lot, and our answers have become pretty standardized already. Early July. We won’t know the sex. Yes, it was planned.

And when we get the name question, we play it like coy assholes. Yes, we have names picked out for either a boy or girl, but we’re not telling anyone.

Some people get that. You have a name picked out that you like. Both of you think it’ll be adorable on your little crotch monkey. You tell someone what you’re naming the kid, and they make a face. “I knew an Adrianne* in middle school. She was a biznatch,” they say. All of a sudden, that name you had picked out is ruined.  And then there’s the other people who just think you’re a coy asshole when you don’t tell them.

*This is not one of the names we have picked out. Don’t try searching for clues. You’re not getting one.

So, even though we’re not telling anyone, I still wanted to talk about my baby naming theories. Because theorizing on unimportant stuff is just fun.

We know a whole bunch of people who have named their baby Jack in recent years. Or they named it something close and are calling him Jack. And I don’t think it’s because of The Incredibles. I’ve also seen several recurrences of names like Ruth and Esther and Henry and other names that we’ve normally associated with someone sitting in an outdated armchair, head back and snoring loudly while Matlock is on the television. And I don’t think this is on accident, either.

Why wouldn't you name your kid after this guy? (Note to self: See if the wife is cool with "Punky.")

I think these names are being chosen precisely because nobody knew a Jack in middle school who was a douchewad, or worked with some asshat named Ruth or Dorothy. To so many people my age who are now having babies, Henry was the nice old man on Punky Brewster. Ruth and Dorothy and Rose were the cool ladies on Golden Girls. Or even better, those people were our own grandparents or the kind older people down the street who gave us cookies and smiled at us on our bicycles. Those names don’t have the same chance to carry the negative associations that other names do—names that were popular when we were growing up. It’s more likely that we knew a shitty person named Jacob or Amber than someone named Jack or Esther.

It’s probably a similar reason that people give their kids weird unique names or awkward creative spellings of established names. Maybe the name Joseph reminds you of the kid who gave you a wedgie in the lunch line, but you never knew a Geosiph or a Joecef. And you sure as hell never knew an Apple or a Pilot or a Serenity. I don’t necessarily get this strategy myself, but hey, some people really dig that kinda thing. I think you open kids up for a lot of tormenting that way (which countries like New Zealand and Sweden agree with, and thus keep parents from giving their kids outlandish names), but their kids aren’t my problem. Not till college, anyway.

As a dad-to-be, it’s kind of interesting now to see what people name their kids. Last year, we saw the Freakonomics documentary that talked about the tie between names and eventual success in life, which kind of got our attention and led us to have a few rules.

1. Nothing that could easily be the name of a stripper.
2. Nothing that would make people laugh out loud if they saw it on a résumé.
3. Nothing that rhymes with our last name.

And with those ground rules in place, we set about getting names. Sadly, my wife instituted another one:

• No comic book characters.

There goes my plans…