Keeping the baby's name a secret

Everyone wants to know what we're going to name the baby. Good luck with that. We're not telling.

Before Evangeline was born, we called her "Quaggy," short for "Quagmyra." That comes from a situation about four years ago when friends of ours were expecting their second child, and hadn't settled on a name. Since they were open to suggestions, I suggested Quagmyra, which became insanely popular afterward, even more than the other favorite, Lucifera.

The baby's current place-holder is Coyoge.

"Coyoge" comes from Wile E. Coyote, and is pretty much how Evangeline pronounces that name. She understands that Coyoge is in mommy's belly now, but for some reason she has decided that "Meep" is in my belly. (It's a learning process. Meep also has been known to zip from one belly to another.)

We have real names picked out for Coyoge, depending on whether the child turns out to be a boy or a girl. We're not revealing them until the baby is born because of the tsursis we got from relatives who didn't like the name Evangeline and kept telling us in hopes that we would change our minds.

My younger brother is especially distraught that we won't tell him the names we've picked since neither he nor his wife objected to "Evangeline," which they thought rather lovely anyway. I reminded him that two other members of our family registered their disapproval, and he should take his frustration out on them.

To be honest, when Coyoge finally is born, I'm tempted to repeat what I did when Evangeline was born and leave people in the dark a little longer. When I called my parents to share the news about her, I told my mother, "The baby was born at 3:36 p.m., and weighs 8 pounds 14 ounces. The baby is 22-and-a-half inches long, and both the baby and Natasha are fine."

I kept delaying telling her the baby's sex as long as I could. I think this time I'll let them know the baby's sex but not what we name him or her.



Copyright © 2002 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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