Avoiding the Jennifer Trap

“What do you think of Daniel?” I asked Andy. He was installing the new flat-screen television he claimed was an essential part of our apartment baby-proofing plan. I was sitting on our fake Eames chair with my feet on the ottoman and a pile of elevation-enhancing pillows.“Daniel who?” he asked.“Not Daniel the person,” I said. “Daniel the baby name.”Ever since we’d gone to dinner with Matthew, my platonic childhood friend, and his wife, Courtney, my nemesis, I’d been obsessed with names. They’d wanted to know which ones we’d chosen, but we’d kept mum, in part because Courtney was as pregnant as I was and they wouldn’t tell us theirs, in part because we hadn’t really decided our boy name. Between that conversation and my fast-approaching due date, the heat was on.Andy turned my way and scrunched up his face. “Daniel doesn’t do it for me,” he said.“What’s wrong with Daniel?” I asked my husband.“Too common,” he said, shaking his head.“For people our age, yes,” I said. “For people born now, not really.”It was already clear my husband knew little about the fine art of baby naming. He’d had no idea that the name he proposed – Ethan – was incredibly popular now. “Who cares if it’s popular,” he’d said when I told him. “There were at least three other Andys in my grade in elementary school, and look how great I turned out.”“It’s not that Ethan’s popular,” I explained. “It’s that it’s trendy.”“Oh,” he said, seeing my point. While a perennially prevalent name like David or Elizabeth was fine, neither of us wanted our kid to be this era’s Jennifer.So what were the trendy names now? Judging from our circle of friends, there seemed to be two main name schools. One was old lady/old man names like Sophie and Max, which bled into the camp I liked to call “trendy classics” like Emma, Grace, Charlie, and Henry. The other was unusual names. Among people we knew, this included names like Atticus and Thisbe.Our tastes definitely ran more toward the old lady/old man camp. The problem, however, was that this was the camp with the potential Jennifers.Take, for example, the name Ella. Four years ago, friends of ours gave their daughter this name. Everyone thought it was great. It sounded fresh and adorable but still substantial. With its shades of Fitzgerald, it seemed a clear but bubbly jazz standard of a name.Less than half a decade later, you can’t shake a stick in a city playground without hitting an Ella. Ella, it seems, is the new Emma – which very well might be this generation’s Jennifer. If so, the once inspired-seeming Ella is actually today’s Julie – the nearly as popular stepsister name.The crazy thing is not that these names become popular, it’s how quickly they become “over.” A few short years ago, Olivia seemed a great alternative to the all-over-the place Isabel/Isabella. Now it’s dead in the water. One need only look at Stella, Ava, or Lily – names that just two years ago seemed dazzling – to see how quickly today’s “Eureka! I’ve got it!” name becomes the next in line of the trend. Friends of ours almost named their now-2-year-old Stella. “Thank God we dodged that bullet,” they now say.At the beginning of my pregnancy, Amelia seemed like it had a lot going for it. In less than six months, I’ve heard of three. Willa and Alice also seem to be in the air.Andy and I were hoping to avoid the next everywhere name. We thought we had a good shot with our girl’s name: Annie. It still seemed classic but also sort of plain, which, to us, was a good thing. And, even better, we were naming for a relative: Andy’s grandmother. So if it became the next Sophie, it didn’t matter anyway.On the boy’s name, however, we were still stumped. Which is where the Citybaby message board came in. The surest way to take the temperature of a name was to post a name poll on the Web site. Thanks to my virtual Magic Eight Ball, I was able to glean that Caleb is very trendy now and Nate is “over,” thanks to “Six Feet Under.” You could also make names go head to head, by posting “Name poll: Abe or Benjamin?” (Six people said Benjamin, four said Abe, and one asked, “Why not Moses while you’re at it?”).Resigned to keep searching, I mentioned our boy name problem to my fellow preggo, the Celebrity.“What names are you thinking of?” she asked, and I rattled off our admittedly Old Testament-heavy list.“Those are all nice,” she said, nodding.“Have you guys picked out names yet?” I just had to ask.“We’ve narrowed the list a bit,” she said, deliberately noncommittal.I shot her a look. “Come on,” I said. “Remember, before anyone else we know knew, we told each other we were pregnant.” “Alright,” she said. “But first tell me your girl name.”“Okay,” I said. “We’re naming her for my husband’s grandmother. Annie.”“That’s sweet,” she said, smiling.“We think so,” I said, though, truth be told, a few years back, we would have gone with another Anglicanized version of her Hebrew name: Hannah. Now, however, it seemed way too trendy.“Well,” the Celebrity said, “if it’s a girl, we’re going with a family name, too. Beatrice, but we’ll call her Bea, for my mother.”“Cute.” I nodded my support.“And if it’s a boy,” she said, grinning conspiratorially, “we’re naming him Oak.”“Oak?” I said, unsure if I’d heard her right with her accent.“Yes, Oak. Like the tree,” she added by way of explanation.“Oak,” I nodded, remembering there was a third naming camp: inanimate object names, though this camp was only prevalent among celebrities.“Well,” Andy said later that day when I told him about the Celebrity’s choice of boy name, “at least it isn’t trendy.”The Brooklyn Chronicles, a work of fiction, appears each Friday. Previous installments are available at www.nysun.com/archive_chronicles.php. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.

Avoiding the Jennifer Trap

Avoiding the Jennifer Trap

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