Cosmo (Or The Boy Without a Name)

Giving another human being a name is serious business. For months now, David and I have been working on choosing a name for our new boy . . . without any success whatsoever. We have been through the baby name books. We go round and round with the same group of names and never seem to find the right one. I sit in yoga class holding my belly, trying to feel what his name is. I practice calling my children in for dinner, "Ellie, Brendan, whatsyourname, time to come inside and wash up." Nothing.

Naming our little ones hasn't always been this hard. When we found out that we were having a girl back in 2004, Eleanor seemed like the natural choice. I have always loved the name (my Mom claims that I requested that people start calling me Eleanor in preschool because I was infatuated with another little girl by that name) and David's beloved grandmother was also named Eleanor. We never seriously discussed other options. Easy.

Brendan's naming was a bit more complicated. We went back and forth between Brendan and William, possibly Brendan William, or maybe William Brendan. I thought we had settled on Brendan William, and David disagrees (to this day). To his credit, he did point out at the time that maybe we shouldn't use both Brendan and William in case we had another boy. . . .

Which brings us to our current dilemma. If Brendan's middle name wasn't William, I think that we could easily agree on that. But what's done is done. We have been unable to agree on any other suitable names -- except for Cosmo.

When my sister-in-law was pregnant with her son in late 2007, Eleanor declared that she wanted to name their baby Cosmo. I explained that you don't get to pick the names of babies in other families. Upon learning that we were going to have a new brother or sister, Eleanor quickly surmised, "Perfect, now we can name our baby Cosmo."

So Cosmo it is. I must admit that the name is really catching on amongst our family -- who all refer to the baby as Cosmo. Brendan rubs my belly and says, "How Cosmo doin?" Eleanor informs strangers that we are going to have a new brother born in December named Cosmo (people give me a puzzled look because they aren't quite sure if it is a joke or not).

David and I can't even agree on how to spell Cosmo. I say Cosmo (so obviously the correct way) and he thinks it is Kozmo (which is crazy).

For now, that seems to be the best we can do. I imagine myself saying, "Have you met my son Cosmo? He is a clown." (which I think is all that you can be when your idiot parents name you Cosmo).