Genome, who probably has the best of the IRL names
I was a bit nervous about naming my children.
Most names are selected for aesthetic reasons. IYH, my children will be stuck with these names for many years. What kind of aesthetic decisions were you making 20 years ago? Twenty years ago, I was seven. I thought that high fashion included matching pink sweatpants and a Rainbow Brite belt. What about decisions made 30 years ago? We bought our house from people who last redecorated circa 1975. Their vision could be summed up as as, "wood panelling." Everywhere. The basement has wood panelling on the ceiling.
So I dodged the issue. All of my children are named for recently-dead relatives. We didn't even get creative. They all got the exact name, first and middle. This way, their names may be dated, but they are still family-dated. In fact, two of the names are arguably dated already.
Genome, though, dodged a bullet. Had he been a girl, he would have been "Bella." Only when I saw that Isabel/Bella was the number one girls name in his year did I realise that something was up. Gee, I thought, these kids can't all be named for my great-aunt.
Well, no. It actually had to do with a series of novels featuring sparkly vampires. A series of novels I had never heard of at the time Genome was born.
Children have a way of putting you out-of-the-loop.
My son is named for both his late grandfathers. However we had to put the initials we used in a certain order. Our last name starts with G, and the grandparents names started with F and A. So his initials are AFG because it wouldn't work the other way. Oddly enough friends of ours used the exact same first and middle names for their son. (We didn't meet them until the boys were 5).
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