What's in a Name

A lot of people have been asking how we came up with Harris' name. There's no real significance to the name (in fact it's almost anti-climatic when I think about it).

It's always every parent's objective to name their child something unique, yet not freakish. Although the current trend is skewing on the freakish side - ESPN, Dixie-Dot, Sin, Dwarf, Chevette (what does it say when you name your child after one of the worst cars GM ever built? Why not Gremlin?) - we decided to buck the trend and pick something a little more normal.

Around 48 weeks into the pregnancy Patty and I started kicking around baby names. Some were straightforward - Oscar, Spencer, Owen. Some were more unique - Clement, Chet, Quinn. And some were just thrown in for a laugh - Toast, Rasputin, Socks. But nothing was making an impression on us. Patty started pouring through Baby Name books and that almost made things worse.

I was sitting next to our bookshelf and started glancing at authors' sir names that might work as first names, Anderson, Cooper, Doyle - we were on to something. We starting thinking about sir names that we liked and Harris really, really resonated with us. So which Harris did we name him after? Ed Harris. Not that we're huge fans of his, he just had a last name that we happen to like.

Name your children for the future we've been told (although I'm not sure what sort of future the aforementioned Dwarf is going to have). Makes me wonder about two babies I recently heard about: Satin and Electra. I suppose those parents want their girls to have a future in porn.