My baby daughter can now hold her own feet:
A skill which is delightful, if not particularly useful.
Another fact about Lily: she was due on Adolf Hitler’s birthday. I Googled “April 20th birthdays” and was relieved to find that Luther Vandross and Carmen Electra also shared this birthdate, and that both had yet to espouse an ambition of building a Reich which lasted 1000 years.
We found out Lily's gender at 21 weeks gestation, when our Hungarian sonographer informed us, "It is lady." So then we could start choosing names. We quickly ruled out Adolf, but took longer to decide on contenders.
“Why don’t we call her April?” I asked. “That’s pretty.”
“Yeah, pretty ridiculous,” my boyfriend said. “What if she’s premature – are we going to call her March?”
For inspiration, I downloaded a free iPhone app called “Baby Names”. It didn’t feature Adolf, April or Ariane, but did contain dubious endorsements such as “I love this it help me find a name for 3 kids”.
There were 50,000 names to choose from, including lots of weird ones. Jaxon? Piper? Trinity? I didn’t want to have to explain to little Chase or Serenity that I picked their name from a free computer program.
Next time I went to the doctor, he spun a calendar wheel and murmured “April 20th”.
“That’s Hitler’s birthday,” I informed him.
“Oh well,” he soothed, “only four per cent of babies are born on their due date.”
In the event, ours turned up five days late. We wanted to call her something sweet and classic, and came up with Lily.
However, a few weeks ago, the Office for National Statistics announced that Lily (if you count misspelt 'Lilly's) is now this year's most popular name. Her class will no doubt be full of Lilys.
We would never have had this problem with Adolf.
[PS Sorry for forgetting to enable comments last time. They're enabled now.]
9 comments:
I love the name Lily. And when she's a bit older, you can be super cheesy and get her lilies on special occasions.
It's nice that Lily can hold her feet. That means she can hold her own bottle (you saw what methods I have to resort to with my little man, who has not yet mastered such skill).
PS - maybe you should have named her Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, pronounced Albin.
(see article: http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/07/12/an-apple-by-any-other-name/)
While I can see the appeal of choosing a unique/unusual name for a child, popular names are just affirmation that lots of people agree with you. It's not as if anyone looks down on Davids, Steves or Sarahs. A zany name can bring its own problems. Lily is very elegant. Adolfina would have been a reasonable compromise, but I think you did the right thing.
And holding one's feet might not be very useful, but may indicate a predilection for high diving.
Lily's a lovely name, and she's obviously quite pleased with her toes. Just hope that her name isn't shortened to Lil, as often happened 50+ years ago. I know a young man called Winchester (he gets called Winnie, like Winnie-the-Pooh). One of his brothers is called Berkeley and his sister is Anastasia. The only one with a fairly ordinary name is Eliot. I often wonder how their names were chosen.
Since we talk about a German here (well, an Austrian really) I will use a German term about your daughter: Lily is uber cute.
I was born on the 21st of April, a day after Hitler's birthday, but right on the Queen's birthday. Not nearly as bad, but for a republican like me it is odd.
Thank you for sharing Lily´s cuteness and her new abilities with us.
Her name´s perfectly chosen, the learned botanist in me tells . Beauty and elegance. And there are beautiful songs with her name: Lily Of The West or Lilywhite for instance. In those songs lily stands for her irresistible attractiveness combined with her unattainableness - well, she does not have to stick to the later.
Regarding Adolf I do have to admit I come from the same country that he came from - and if a boy´s named Adolf here in Austria you just know what´s the political background of his family.
About every 365th person shares the same birthday - and they are all different indeed. We all look desperately for some rules to explain the world and make predictions - we must fail, since there is no predestination unless we live a self fulfilling prophecy. Lily won´t turn out as a second Oliver Cromwell I do hope, Ella Fitzgerald´s voice and Wolfgang Pauli´s brains would serve her well though. I wish her all the best and the perfect environment to develop to whatever she choses to.
@Alessa: You're right - when she was born, everybody sent us bunches of lilies! She does a good impression of holding her own bottle too, though she can't quite hold it on her own yet. And thanks for the article - can't believe there is actually a kid called Adolf Hitler. So wrong.
@Graham: Thanks. I like the idea of her being a high diver. Apparently there are swimming classes where they throw babies in and they naturally swim. Feel a bit apprehensive though so haven't taken her yet!
@Margaret: Thanks a lot. Maybe Winchester, Berkeley and Anastasia were entered in a "longest baby names" competition?
@Guillaume: Cheers. And hey, you also share a birthday with Iggy Pop and Robert Smith (The Cure), and I'm betting neither of them are royalists.
@NoGodZone: Thanks for looking up April 25th birthdays - I hadn't done that yet. Nice to know she shares a birthday with Al Pacino, Bjorn from Abba and Ella. I'll try and steer her away from any Cromwell-like tendencies!
You know, I've never heard Carmen Electra NOT say she was going to start a thousand year Reich. And I have a photograghic memory when it comes to Hollywood blondes . . . but probably nothing to worry about.
Very true. Luther Vandross hasn't said that he won't either. Oh well...
Post a Comment