Helen beat me to the punch on this post.

I’m sitting here with a slightly rumpled piece of paper that was tucked into one of those “Seventy billion perfect baby names” books. The paper starts conservatively, with a long list of neatly typed boy names, then spirals downward into a mess of blue, felt-tip madness – scratch-outs, additions, comments, doodles and even a game of tic-tac-toe and hangman.

It is this list we chose Emerson’s name, and it was flat-out war. Michael and I, knowing how opinionated and picky we are, started out early. After battling from 25 to seven names, we wrote them all out with the middle name (easily chosen from a tradition in Michael’s family) and each of our last names. We agreed that our children would have each of our last names – mine as a sort of second middle name, and then my husband’s surname. I never gave a thought to changing my last name when I got married. Hell to the no. And I decided that I wanted to balance the traditional patriarchy with the practicality of having a single, consistent surname for our kids. (People used to ask me if Michael minded about keeping my name. My standard reply is that if he would have minded, I wouldn’t have married him.)

After we had snug, final few names…Michael decided, at 3 am about a month or so before I gave birth, to insist on a new favorite – Emerson. I wasn’t sure I loved it at first, but some time, convincing, and the promise of naming rights for all future children sealed the deal. And, of course, we love it.

My parents, however, were not sure and were, let us say, they were pretty direct in their opinion. To say they pretty much abhorred every name we picked was an understatement. Maxwell, Beckett, Jamison, Bowie, Whitman, Sawyer…HATE. Even though as an expectant parent, your heart knows naming is absolutely your right and final decision, it was pretty demoralizing.

I think they love the name now, I knew to gird my loins for the onslaught this time around.

Naturally, we went right back to the short list to name Pilot Fish. Again, we’d already picked out a middle name – Wellington – which is a family name on my side. Michael’s last name is short and very common (at least around here) so the two names sound quite good together. Especially with MD, or PhD, or even Nobel Prize winner attached to it. Not that I’m thinking about those sorts of things.

Being the good book-dorks that we are, we wanted to stick with a literary name. We knew right away which one. We hunkered down over the name, knowing that once again we would be faced with vocal protest of my folks (and, funnily, other people of my parents’ generation). And we were not disappointed. I did manage to stem the flow a bit at one point, telling my father,that upon hearing I was getting my crap about the name we chose, my uber-conservative, 86-year old grandfather (my dad’s dad), yelled “It’s none of your parents’ damned business what you name your kid!” Go, Poppop.

To date, my parents still choke when they try to utter this baby’s name. Emotionally, I’m large unaffected. I know can’t win, and I don’t care. I’ve bluntly told them to get over themselves. We love it, we hope the child will love it and they will do and say nothing to make our son feel awkward about his name EVER.

In the meantime, we’ve been coaching Emerson on the name of his new baby brother. He’s got the hang of it now, but is more likely to call him “What-to-wear”, “Underwear” or “Wonderwear.” Unfortunately, some of those are starting to stick. Underwear – what a hell of a nickname.