Naming the Nugget

The countdown begins to the ultrasound to find out what our little nugget is...I really hope it isn't a dinosaur.  To kill time I figured I would write about all things we have been thinking about up to this event. First up is what is Nugget's name going to be!

When I knew that I would be having children with Dufda, a Jordanian Muslim, I knew that the name choices that I had dreamed about my whole life were about to be thrown out the window and I was totally o.k with this.  If my last name was Smith, maybe my choices would have worked out better, it isn't so back to the drawing board.  The name of our baby always had two requirements: 

1. I must be able to pronounce the name

2. My mother must be able to pronounce the name

This sounds easy, right?  Wrong!  Jordanians have a way of adding the GH to the beginning of their names that makes it near impossible for us westerns to pronounce.  Throw on top of that my mother's sheer inability to read or simply repeat after me, we have our choices cut down greatly.  I also wanted the baby to have some sort of Middle Eastern name.   I toyed with our American names a little and they don't have the same air about them that a good Middle Eastern name has. Although, we know that no child of mine will ever possess these names, let's check out what names are topping the charts right now:

Boys Names

1. Jacob

2. Mason

3. William

4. Jayden

5.Noah

6. Michael

7. Ethan

8. Alexander

9. Aiden

10. Daniel

Girl Names

1. Sophia

2. Isabella

3. Emma

4. Olivia

5. Ava

6. Emily

7. Abigail

8. Madison

9. Mia

10. Chloe

My child won't have a popular name, because I had a popular name and I know how much it sucks.   Samantha is the 49th most popular name over the last 100 years, with about 536,186 Samantha's in the U.S.  Way to be original Mom and Dad. Wanna see where you name falls?  Click Here   I manage student housing for people who are, well duh, students.  They are in the 19-24 year old range.  I get this phone call from parents all the time:

Me: Thank you for calling Mckee Place Apartments. This is Samantha.  How can I help you?

Annoying Check Writer Parent: Aww Samantha, I won't forget your name because that is my daughter's name too!

Really! I never heard that one before.  I would like to respond with you and the 6 other people on my block who all named their daughters Samantha, but I just tell them how fantastic that is.  So after all that rambling, my child will not have a popular name.  And no there weren't 6 Samantha's on my block, there were three.  My brother, he is Josh, let's not even begin to count how many Josh's were on his soccer team.  I think it was close to 5.  

I told Dufda when we got married that he was able to chose the boy's name, if it met my two requirements.  He picked Jad, it's like Chad with a "J".  It isn't that hard, but my mother seems to still mess it up.  The name Jad is of Arabic orgin and means Benevolent.  In America, it means curly and frizzled.  I like both, so if Nugs is a boy, Jad will be the name.

So you think that if Dufda gets to pick the boy's name, then I would get to pick the girl's name.  Well your wrong, apparently Dufda still gets to pick the girl's name.  I was dead set on naming this baby Rya Yasmine, but then I realized that Rya with our last name was quite the tongue twister.  This led me to downloading every baby naming app there was and coming up with this list:

Ara

Azizah

Amberlee

Amira

Caliana

Raniyah

Zara

Monroe

Finlee

Kinda

After presenting my list to Dufda, naming this baby got really frustrating, real quick.  He didn't like any of them.  Personally, my favorite was Caliana.  Kinda wasn't on the list when Dufda received it.  We were actually driving down the road daydreaming about our future family and Dufda goes, "What about Kinda for a girl?"  Naturally I wanted to hate it, just because he came up with it, but I didn't hate it, in fact I loved it.  I know most of you look at that name and think it kinda looks like kinda.  Kinda is pronounced K ih n d ah, it rhymes with Linda (my mom, Linda herself, should be able to master this one) and means state of Arabia.  So after a plea to Dufda to please let me choose the girl's name, I think he gave in.  I am thinking Kinda Ann.  Ann is my middle name, and although I never thought of using it, Dufda gets his name on the birth certificate so I think I should get part of mine too.  Not that it will change my mind but what girls name would you have chosen off the list?