Never let it be said that I don't have any readers. I have received more than 100 suggestions for baby names, and I assure you Natasha and I gave each one the individual attention it deserved.
As expected, several people suggested their own names for the baby. Kimberly may be "a lovely name," as noted by Kimberly Brooks; and Minx may be "the best name ever," as stated by free-lancer Minx McCloud; but neither of those names is what I really wanted.
Surprisingly, only one reader submitted a name that was a play on the baby's last name. That reader was Lynn Winters Mineo, and in an e-mail, she asked me, "How about Olivia Anne Learn? Her nickname would be Liv Anne Learn."
Ba-boom-cha. I won't ask Ms. Mineo what names she picked for her own children, but you can rest assured my heart goes out to them.
That was it for the common names. Among the more unusual names suggested were Latrine and Garage Door, again suggested by Minx McCloud.
"These names are good because they are nongender-specific," she wrote.
Thankfully, Minx doesn't have any children, so we don't have to worry about how she might have warped her own progeny with sobriquets like Encephalitis McCloud and Cholera McCloud.
Several people suggested themes. John Harris, in addition to suggesting names from the recent -- i.e., later than 1970 -- Star Trek TV shows, suggested a few guidelines based on the "Dragonriders of Pern" fantasy novels by Anne McCaffrey.
"Use variations of more traditional names, varying the spelling or pronunciation, or inserting an apostrophe in unconventional places," he said. That would present suggest like B'Lair, or Jahn.
Another theme was suggested by Sam Clover:
"The novelist Nicholson Baker, author of 'Room Temperature,' called his baby girl in that novel 'the bug,'" he wrote. "You could follow suit on the insect theme with 'beetle' or 'butterfly.'"
My big fear with having a daughter named Butterfly Learn is that some demented entomologist will try to collect her, or if we go with Cockroach Learn, that someone will step on her. But Musca Domestica Learn does have a certain appeal, and the first two names even end in A, which makes it an automatic girl's name.
Andrew Yoder suggests the following:
"A good masculine name would be Atilla the Learn. For that matter, you could always try for Feminine Learn or Estrogina Learn and Masculine Learn or Testosterone Learn."
Other names on his list include: Bar Bell Learn, Southern Belle Learn; geographical names like Newark Learn, Easton Learn, and Egg Harbor Learn; and cartoon names like Shaggy, Velma, Bugs, Daffy, Goggles, Ricochet and (of course) Bullwinkle Learn.
The scary thing is, I know this guy, and he does have children.
A few people suggested Star Wars-type names, ranging from Ewok Learn to Jar Jar Binks Learn. My favorite suggestion along these lines came, again, from Sam Clover, who suggested a combination of letters and numbers, a la R2D2 and C3PO.
All things considered, the single most impressive list of names came from someone identified only as Ted. (Well, I have his e-mail address too, but it really would be rude to print that here.) Ted included a list of fonts that he took from Microsoft Word 97, complete with what these names would suggest about the baby.
A partial list: Arial, if the child appears to be overtly attentive; Bookman, a studious child; Braggadocio, a boisterous, overconfident child; Colonna, a fibrous child; Lucinda, a clairvoyant child; and Webdings, a scatterbrained Internet-ensconced child.
And of course, Helvetica. "Don't know what kind of child would have a name like Helvetica, but what a great name!" Ted writes. "Perhaps her middle name could be '12.'"
I'd like to thank everyone who suggested names for us; at this point, I think Natasha and I are stocked up on names for at least 50 more children, and neither one of us is anxious to have that large a family.
There was one final contributor worth noting. Michelle Graham, an old friend of Natasha's, sent me a list of unusual words from the dictionary, and also included this note:
"When I was in elementary school, I wanted to have fraternal twins (a boy and a girl) and name them Oreo and Orea. Hmmm ... maybe you shouldn't ask me for advice in the area of nomenclature."
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