it's a boy

Unmistakable proof of masculinity (an obvious protrusion from between little legs) revealed itself Monday when vfg (I wanted to write "the blooming purple petunia," but that seemed a bit much) went under the transducer probe.

So, a baby goat. A baby male goat. Cool.

...

As I've been working on names it strikes me as a pretty good idea to write them down. I'll likely regret this later, but for now this post is my worksheet.

For years we've been saying our boy name would be this:

Reuben Wilde Goates
[my maternal grandfather/Oscar Wilde/Surname]

This name is attractive for many reasons. Wilde Goates. I mean, that's poetry. There's also a nice symmetry, both with the 6-5-6 letter combination, but also the Wilde-with-an-'e' and Goates-with-an-'e' combination. We also really like the name Ben, but aren't super keen on Benjamin. We keep coming back to this as our first choice, though my wife has at times expressed reservations about "Wilde" (because she doesn't want a wild child, and because of moral reservations about his namesake).

Ralph Waldo Emerson Goates
[Emerson (of course)/Surname]

I've always sort of liked those names where someone is named completely after somebody else. Like George Washington Carver, the slightly more romantic George Washington Hayduke, or from my daughter's current favorite movie, Benjamin Franklin Gates. The trouble is thinking of someone you admire enough to give your kid that person's whole name. Ralph Waldo Emerson fits the bill as a personally deeply admired poet, philosopher, theologian, etc. A quintessential American thinker. More Mormon that most Mormons. And I think "Emerson" would be a great name. He'd go by Emerson.

Other full-name possibilities include Thomas Jefferson Goates or John Steinbeck Goates, but (really, no offense to anyone) Tom and John just aren't really doing it for me.

Utah Anders Goates
[a really cool place/a sort of family name (Anderson)/surname]

Louis L'Amour fans will recognize Utah as the name of one of his more Clint Eastwood style characters, Utah Blaine. No doubt in part from that influence, the name to me conjures up images of stone-hard masculinity. Adventurism. Toughness. Red-rock landscapes and snow-covered peaks. All that good stuff. But when I suggested it, Val blew a hole through my sail, "Utah's a girl's name." Is it? Has it become that? Sad...

I also like Anders. It's sort of my own invention. Well, it's obviously an old name, and I like Ander better than Anders, but if I said I was naming him after the Andersons in my wife's line, anyone who knows anything would know that the father of the son from which "Anderson" came was named Anders, not Ander. Plus, there's already a Zander in the family (a cousin), so that would get confusing.

Those are the most complete names I've come up with. Now for the rag-tag list of name possibilities that are somehow attractive that could get incorporated somehow, first, middle, something:

Anders
Emerson
Kimball
Michaux
Noah
Reuben
Utah
Wasatch

It's not a very long list.

I've been trying to come up with a couple names that are somehow bicycle related too. A name of a bicycle part, a race, a classic climb or something. But there's nothing too romantic in crank or spoke and I don't know what a Roubaix is (other than a place in France).

I'm also running through plant names, geological terms (mostly mountain-type stuff), places in Brazil I know, and cool Portuguese words, but I'm coming up empty. (I think one of the coolest Portuguese words is vergonha, but I can hardly name a kid that!)

One last thought. I remember when I was a senior in High School ('91) that I had decided to someday name my kid Eddie (or Edward) after the three great Eddies: Eddie Merckx, Eddie Van Halen, and Eddie the dog on American Flyers. (A few years later I would have added a forth Eddie, Eddie Vedder.) That no longer seems an attractive idea.

I welcome your thoughts.