YouTube Brill

So at some point, we actually have to pick a name. This sounds like one of the easier things when you're having a kid, but it turns out that its harder than putting together an IKEA couch without having leftover parts - basically impossible. Also, as easy as it is to just say a name and go with that, your kid is going to be stuck with that name for the rest of his/her life - and you're going to have to yell it at the top of your lungs in crowded places for about 18 years. So picking something like 'Pookie' is a non starter.

For any non-married/non-expecting guys reading this, this is basically what you're going to go through:

New relationship baby names - In the dating stage, you're going to stop by a book store and "accidentally" stumble into the baby name section and "somehow" a baby name book will appear in her hands and "all of the sudden" you'll be talking about baby names. If you haven't left the store immediately at this point, you're probably going to get married to this girl, because she's clearly smarter than you. Don't feel bad, it happens to all of us. Here's the thing, she's going to ask you what you think of names that sound normal but are spelled all weird and because you're just trying to figure out how the hell you ended up in the child book section at Borders you're going to nod a lot and try to get out of there. Bad move. Women remember everything. Four years from now when you're redlining all of eachother's ridiculous suggestions, she's going to say "but you said you liked that name before".

Having a kid baby names - whether she's already pregnant or just trying, there's this heady time at the beginning where picking baby names is all fun and games. You get to casually throw names up and then smack them down. You might even buy "An Idiot's Guide to Baby Names" book and try on all the HOF QBs to see how they fit. You play with famous names, religious names, popular names (Lebron Brill? No? Me neither), and then finally start going through them alphabetically. You'll probably walk away with a few non-committal favorites here and hey why not, it's not like you're under any pressure to really pick something.

Desparation sets in - We're probably a couple months away from this stage. We made it through the last stage with a couple clear favorites but none of them feel like a homerun yet. On the other hand, if someone gave me $100 I'd be OK with any of the ones on the short list. If for some reason we can't decide on a name by this stage though, we'll start looking in unconventional places. If that still doesn't work, we'll probably try to sell our baby's name to a dot com company for sponsorship. If that happens, all I can promise is that we hold out for a cool website name - like Amazon or something - and not something like youtube.

If all else fails, I'm still hoping I can swing LaSandra around to Wolfgang.

Edit 012308:

Alright, I've stumbled upon several other tools to help us get a name:

Seventh Sanctum - our kid's fantasy name would be Duskbrood the Rapid

Rum and Monkey - his British name would be Quentin Callaghan

Pirates! - and his pirate name would be "Shark bait" Cooke

We were clearly looking in the wrong places for names.