Naming names

Em and Mark are thinking about baby names. They've decided upon a lovely name for a girl, but haven't decided upon one yet for a boy. What a daunting task. It's not like choosing the perfect crib or the best diaper service. A name sticks with you forever, and in some ways I believe it even influences how others relate to you. So I guess I'd nix the stripper names and the cutesy spellings. Like so the names of old men (this is personal: I'd have trouble bouncing a "Milton" on my knee) and the names of cities (remember the trend of naming a child for the place he was conceived?). When Curt and I were expecting Em, we knew for certain that if we had a boy, we'd name him Christopher Ernest, so he'd have the same initials as my husband (and his middle name would be after my Dad). We had no clue what we would name a girl until I was well into my ninth month of pregnancy. We hadn't considered the name Emily before that, but when we finally did, we knew we'd found perfection. And I never liked the name Peoria anyway.