Many of you know that we are going to introduce yet another Ostenson boy into the world this September. So far so good except we seem to have hit a brick wall when it comes to naming this little one. Joe and I, being overly thoughtful, overly idealistic and overly symbolical, have run out of meaningful, faith promoting, character building, and otherwise cool names that also don’t sound awfully outlandish….at least we think. It doesn’t help that there are nine uncles and twelve male cousins in the immediate family plus the scores of Hulets and Strebels that populate the Salt Lake Valley. So we really feel like we are scraping the bottom of the barrel. Just to give you a glimpse: we considered Melchizedek for a whole day and then it dawned on us that it might be a little embarrassing to not be able to spell your own name as a sixteen year old. Eros was a slightly better alternative but again we have to think about those teen years (“so guess who I’m named after baby …”) We tried on Gideon, Nimrod and Teancum thinking that it is possibly cool to name your son after a warrior, but then we decided not to ask for trouble, since we are likely to get it anyway. Nicholas is too jolly, Wolfgang is too brooding. Amadeus seems a little cumbersome and possibly guilt rendering. We had a whole list of names given to us by Joe’s brother that have ‘inappropriate connotations’ some that I never ever would have guessed…so we just avoided those entirely. Even though we do really like the “Avatar” cartoons I told Joe that we can’t name our son Aang, or Sokka. We were inspired by the Lost season finale and tried out Desmond for a while only to find out that it means “one from South Munster”. How lame is that?
So one day we were in the car, we had just finished a lively conversation with some members of Joe’s family who decided that I was being way to picky about this little boy’s name…possibly I am…anyway; we decided to ask the kids. ‘What do you think we should name the baby?’ I think Kipper said Melissa or something like…he still thinks we should have a girl. Liz was quiet. “How about Shadrack,” I said, I was on this kick that Shad sounds like a cooler Chad…don’t worry that one passed. “How about Gideon?” Joe said . Liz said, “I can’t even remember those names! Just call him Bob!”
So welcome to the family, Bob.
