Name your baby something smart, He'll have it all his life.

In the past 5 years, I have heard a lot of baby names. We have tried a lot of names out, as we have had 3 babies in the past 4 years. Ultimately, the name you pick sticks, and the child has the name for all his days. That is a heavy weight to bear.

For Zane, I loved his name before he was even conceived. It is short, masculine (no question if he is a little boy or a little girl, even before you meet him) and suits every age, from infancy to adulthood. There are few shaming nicknames that can come from his name. It was perfect, and luckily my husband agreed.

Nora was more of a challenge. For the longest time, we thought of naming her Linnea, after Brian's grandmother. Those were some big orthopedic shoes to fill, though, and I wanted her to have her own identity. She was nameless for a while, too. All the girl names he liked were too flowery, all the ones I liked were too androgynous. We did not agree on any of them. I don't remember agreeing to name her Nora (though he swears I did) but when I arrived back to my hospital room after my c-section, there she was in her bassinette, a card propped in the front proclaiming "Nora Louise Erickson." I didn't have any better ideas, so I went along with it.

Luna's name was the last name of a villian in a YA novel I read while pregnant. Actually his name was Gabriel Luna. And since I was forbidden from naming her Gabriel/Gabrielle, I settled for Luna. Luna has morphed into Luna Tuna, an unfortunate nickname that I should have forseen, but I don't mind. She will only mind after she is 13 or so, so I think we are good.

I have heard a lot of really dumb names in my day, though, working in Pediatrics, and formerly in Pediatrics in a Ghetto Hospital.

One woman had twin boys and had no idea what to name them until she looked at her menu selections: Lemonjello and Orangejello (said l'mongelo and o'rangelo) were born. Jesus.

Optimus Prime is a friend of a friend's little boy. I wonder if they are that big of nerds, or if they just thought that was the coolest name ever. Yes, I was named after a Transformer. Not any Transformer, but the leader of the Autobots. THAT CHILD WILL HAVE TO GET A JOB SOMEDAY!!!

My neighbors, who are whiter than white, have a little girl named Beyonce. I refuse to call her that, and my kids won't either. Its just too embarassing to say. We all call her Bea.

The best one, though, was the little boy who came to the ER many years ago. Shithead. Sure, they said it "She-they-ed" but it still read Shithead. The shit of it was, they had beaten him to death. So somewhere out there, there is a little headstone in a graveyard that reads "Shithead Smith." Jesus.

People really need to consider connotation and denotation when going through the baby name book, is all I am saying.