I feel a bit silly posting about this because I’m not even pregnant yet, but here goes; I’ll try to give the reader’s digest version.
My husband and I settled on a girl’s name a ways back: [name]Josephine[/name]. It’s not my most favorite name in the universe, but he and I both love it and it’ll be tough to broach the subject again, because for the most part, his taste in names is epically horrible and he’s rather stubborn about it in all its craptastic awfulness.
Pros:
(1) We love it. [name]Both[/name] of our first (trunk) novels had main characters named [name]Josephine[/name]; that’s how much we like it.
(2) It has strong feminist associations, a la [name]Josephine[/name] [name]Butler[/name] and [name]Josephine[/name] [name]Baker[/name].
(3) It sounds particularly good with our last name.
(4) It just feels right, y’know? Like I can picture myself, my sister, his sister, my mother, my grandmother with that name. Few names fit that bill.
Cons:
(1) Our old grad school roommate and BFF is about to have a son named [name]Joseph[/name]. Is this even an issue? I dunno.
(2) [name]Joseph[/name] is the middle name and moniker of my dad’s older brother. I don’t want my dad thinking that I’m naming my daughter after my uncle, particularly as first childs’ naming traditions are strong on that side of my family.
(3) I’m generally not a huge fan of feminine variants of male names. I prefer names that are quintessentially women’s names. I’m not sure why this is but I think it has something to do with feminism.
(4) Um, ya, both of our first novels had main characters with this name. Think about it.
It’s not the end of the world if it’s not usable; our backup is [name]Genevieve[/name] (a name I personally prefer in sound) and my spouse tends to acquiesce to my second favorite girl name category (stately feminine classics with a long history e.g. [name]Evelyn[/name], [name]Margaret[/name], [name]Eleanor[/name]) but not my first (vintage rarities with a touch of whimsy, e.g. [name]Cecily[/name], [name]Rosemary[/name], [name]Meredith[/name]). He does acknowledge that the person going through labor gets the final say, though he really doesn’t like it.
What say you, berries?