Your Input Sincerely Appreciated

Hello.  Remember how I was going to tell you how Asher's next sticker chart went?  It went great--as in: he filled it up significantly faster than the last one even though I forgot to put a sticker on at least as many times as I remembered.  And then shortly after there was a sudden shift into him doing a great job at potty-training and taking care of it all himself--as in: I didn't ever tell him to go to the bathroom, and yet, mysteriously, his underwear stayed clean for days at a time.  Then, shortly after that, he developed some chronic constipation--as in: I took him to the doctor and we had an x-ray of his abdomen taken and there was stuff stuck all through his entire large intestine.  And shortly after that, we had total and complete relapse--as in: multiple puddles on my floor per day and a desperate struggle to do enough laundry to keep Asher in pants.

But that's not really why I'm here today.  I'm here to ask you about names.  I have a terrible time choosing names for my children.  So far, they have consistently been given a name as we are leaving the hospital (because if you don't want to do obnoxious paperwork and pay an extra fee, that's the deadline) and then I've gone home and stewed over if that name was really the best choice, or if I should actually change it to something else.

The problem is not that I don't give myself enough time to come up with something good.  In fact, Hugh is convinced that my problem is that I give myself way too much time.  And he might be partially right because, let's be honest, I have the gender-revealing ultrasound in the morning, and then go to the library and check out a stack of baby name books in the afternoon.  But I think my real problem is that, subconsciously, I am waiting for ultimate name nirvana.  I want to come across a name and be filled with the exhilarating conviction that that name is, without a doubt, the best name in the entire universe.  Except that I have never experienced that feeling.  Until recently.

Hugh usually takes a backseat in the whole baby-naming process.  When I ask him what he thinks of a certain name, he will tell me that it is "okay, I guess" unless he really hates it.  When I ask him to come up with something, he generally makes goofy suggestions that he knows we would never actually use, like Wilhelmina or Adolf.  He's not really interested in the whole thing until the baby is out and the cord is cut.    But this time, Hugh made a legitimate suggestion, and I had that moment of conviction I had been waiting for.  And then, immediately after, I started having doubts.  You see, I have some criteria, besides just sounding nice and having a nice meaning, that I usually judge names against, and the name Hugh suggested, Ariadne, doesn't fit a lot of them.

I don't want a name that is too common.
I prefer names with one traditional spelling so that people will know how to spell it when they hear it and how to say it when they see it.
I want my child's name to make it obvious to which gender he or she belongs.
I prefer names that are short enough and easy enough to say that there is a decent chance of it actually being used in its entirety.
I'm not a fan of made-up names.

Ariadne is definitely not too common.  And it does have one traditional spelling, and a specific gender, and is not made up, but if nobody has ever heard of it, those things might all be irrelevant.  And I think it might be doomed as far as people actually saying the whole thing, because, let's face it, it's a mouthful.

So, if you are still here after all of my blather, what do you think?  Did you know, without looking it up on Wikipedia, who Ariadne was?  Would you ever actually bother to pronounce all of those syllables?  Do you think that the whole world will misspell and mispronounce it?  The fate of one child may rest in your answers.